Ch 9. Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle and Late Childhood Flashcards
Learning Disability
Difficulty in understanding or using spoken or written language or in doing mathematics. To be classified as a learning disability, the learning problem is not primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; intellectual disability; emotional disorders; or due to environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
Referral Bias
Happens when the likelihood of unusual outcomes increases as a result of referrals to a study.
Dyslexia
A category of learning disabilities involving a severe impairment in the ability to read and spell.
Dysgraphia
A learning disability that involves difficulty in handwriting.
Dyscalculia
Also known as developmental arithmetic disorder; a learning disability that involves difficulty in math computation.
ADHD
A disability in which children consistently show one or more of the following characteristics: (1) inattention, (2) hyperactivity, and (3) impulsivity.
Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
Serious, persistent problems that involve relationships, aggression, depression, fears associated with personal or school matters, as well as other inappropriate socioemotional characteristics.
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
Also called pervasive developmental disorders, they range from the severe disorder labeled autistic disorder to the milder disorder called Asperger syndrome. Children with these disorders are characterized by problems in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors.
Autistic Disorder
A severe autism spectrum disorder that has its onset in the first three years of life and includes deficiencies in social relationships, abnormalities in communication, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior.
Asperger Syndrome
A relatively mild autism spectrum disorder in which the child has relatively good verbal language skills, milder nonverbal language problems, and a restricted range of interests and relationships.
Individualized Education Plan (IEP)
A written statement that spells out a program specifically tailored to a child with a disability.
Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)
A setting that is as similar as possible to the one in which children who do not have a disability are educated.
Inclusion
Educating a child with special education needs full-time in the regular classroom.
Seriation
The concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length).
Transitivity
The ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions.
Neo-Piagetians
Developmentalists who argue that Piaget got some things right but that his theory needs considerable revision. They have elaborated on Piaget’s theory, giving more emphasis to information processing, strategies, and precise cognitive steps.
Long-term Memory
A relatively permanent type of memory that holds huge amounts of information for a long period of time.
Working Memory
A mental “workbench” where individuals manipulate and assemble information when making decisions, solving problems, and comprehending written and spoken language.
Strategies
Deliberate mental activities that improve the processing of information.
Elaboration
An important strategy for remembering that involves engaging in more extensive processing of information.
Fuzzy Trace Theory
States that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations: (1) verbatim memory trace, and (2) gist. In this theory, older children’s better memory is attributed to the fuzzy traces created by extracting the gist of information.
Critical Thinking
Thinking reflectively and productively, as well as evaluating evidence.
Mindfulness
Being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life’s everyday activities and tasks.
Creative Thinking
The ability to think in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions to problems.
Convergent Thinking
Thinking that produces one correct answer and is characteristic of the kind of thinking tested by standardized intelligence tests.
Divergent Thinking
Thinking that produces many answers to the same question and is characteristic of creativity.
Metacognition
Cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing.
Brainstorming
A technique in which individuals are encouraged to come up with creative ideas in a group, play off each other’s ideas, and say almost anything that comes to mind.
Intelligence
Problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to the experiences of everyday life.
Individual Differences
The stable, consistent ways in which people differ from each other.
The Binet Test
An individually administered intelligence test that was created by Binet. It is a cognitive ability and intelligence test that is used to diagnose developmental or intellectual deficiencies in young children. The test measures five weighted factors: knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial processing, working memory, and fluid reasoning.
Mental Age (MA)
Binet’s measure of an individual’s level of mental development, compared with that of others.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
A person’s mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100.
Normal Distribution
A symmetrical distribution with most scores falling in the middle of the possible range of scores and a few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
An IQ test designed to measure intelligence and cognitive ability in adults and older adolescents.
Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
Sternberg’s theory that intelligence consists of analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence.
Analytic Intelligence
The ability to analyze, judge, evaluate, compare, and contrast.
Creative Intelligence
The ability to create, design, invent, originate, and imagine.
Practical Intelligence
The ability to use, apply, implement, and put ideas into practice.
