Chapter 12 Flashcards
Concrete operational stage
7 to 11 years; thinking is more logical, flexible, and organized
Decentration
Ability to focus on several aspects of a problem
Reversibility
Thinking through a series of steps and the returning to the starting point
Seriation
Ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight
Transitive inference
Ability to seriate mentally
Cognitive maps
Mental representations of spaces
Spatial reasoning
Ability to locate landmarks on maps improves; 10 to 12 year old increasingly grasp scale; substantial individual differences exist, influenced by cultural contexts
Continuum of acquisition
Children master concrete operational tasks step by step, not all at once; gradual mastery of logical concepts indicates the limitations of concrete operational thinking
Executive function
Supports gains in planning, strategic thinking, and self-monitoring; influenced by combination of heredity and environmental factors; can be improved with direct and indirect training (including mindfulness training)
Inhibition and flexible shifting of attention
Inhibition improves sharply between 6 and 10; “Dimensional Change Card Sort” is used to assess children’s ability to switch rules in sorting; flexible shifting benefits from gains in inhibition
ADHD symptoms
Inability to stay focused when mental effort is required for more than a few minutes; often ignore social rules and lash out when frustrated
ADHD origins
Highly heritable, but also related to environmental factors such as a stressful home life
ADHD treatment
Best treated with medication combined with interventions that model and reinforce appropriate behavior
Rehearsal
Repeating items to oneself
Organization
Grouping related items together
Elaboration
Creating a relationship between pieces of information from different categories
Semantic memory
Children’s general knowledge base
Mental inferences
Enable knowledge of false belief and second-order false beliefs
Recursive thought
Ability to view a situation from at least two perspectives
Cognitive self-regulation
Continuously monitoring progress toward a goal; checking outcomes; redirecting unsuccessful efforts
Whole-language approach
Way of teaching children to read by presenting texts in their complete form
Phonics approach
Way of teaching children to read by first teaching basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds
IQ tests
Provide an overall score representing general intelligence and separate scores measuring specific mental abilities; do not measure all aspects of intelligence
Factor analysis
Used to identify abilities measured by intelligence tests
Group administered tests
Allow testing of large groups; require little training to administer; are useful for instructional planning; identify students who need further evaluation
Individually administered tests
Demand training and experience to give well; provide insight into whether a test score accurately reflects a child’s abilities; are often used to identify highly intelligent children and those with learning problems
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (5th edition)
Age 2 to adulthood; measure five intellectual factors (general knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial processing, working memory, and basic information processing)
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-V (WISC-V)
Ages 6 to 16; for younger children, the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised; measured four broad intellectual factors (verbal reasoning, perceptual/ visual-spatial reasoning, working memory, and processing speed)
Sternberg’s triarchic theory of successful intelligence
Analytical intelligence (information processing), creative intelligence (generating useful solutions to new problems), practical intelligence (adapting to, shaping, or selecting environments)
Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences
Linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, interpersonal, intrapersonal
Stereotype threat
Fear of being judged on the basis of a negative stereotype can trigger anxiety that interferes with performance
Flynn effect
Describes how IQs have increased steadily from one generation to the next; increase is a dramatic secular trend that applies internationally
Modernization
Contributes to greater participation by each successive generation in cognitively stimulating leisure activities
Dynamic assessment
A form of testing in which an adult introduces purposeful teaching into the testing situation; consistent with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development—revealing what a child can attain with social support
Pragmatics
Children can adapt to the needs of listeners in challenging communicative situations; ability to evaluate in organization, detail, and expressiveness
Bilingual development
Simultaneous bilinguals and sequential bilinguals; bilingual children sometimes engage in code switching; sensitive period for second-language development exists, though a precise age cutoff has not been found; higher the degree of bilingualism, the greater the cognitive gains
Traditional classrooms
The teacher is the sole authority
Constructivist classrooms
Children are active agents who reflect on and coordinate their own thoughts rather than absorbing those of others
Social-constructivist classrooms
Children jointly construct understandings with teachers and peers
Reciprocal teaching
Groups question, summarize, clarify, and predict in cooperative dialogues
Communities of learners
Adult and child contributors define and resolve problems
Educational self-fulfilling prophecies
Children may adopt teachers’ positive or negative views and start to live up to them
Homogeneous groups/classes
Can be a potent source of self-fulfilling prophesies
Heterogenous learning contexts
Can reduce achievement differences between SES groups and ethnic minority and majority students
Cooperative learning
Small groups work toward common goals; classmates consider one another’s ideas, challenge one another, correct misunderstandings, and resolve differences of opinion
Learning disabilities
Great difficulty with one or more aspects of learning, usually reading
