Chapter 12 - Cognitive Development, Middle Childhood Flashcards
Concrete operational stage
Piaget’s middle childhood stage, which extends from about 7 to 11 years. Compared with early childhood, thought is more logical, flexible, and organized.
Decentration
Focusing on several aspect of a problem and relating them, rather than centering on just one.
Reversibility
The capacity to think through a series of step and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point.
Seriation
The ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight
transitive inference
The ability to seriate mentally, seen in concrete operational children.
Cognitive maps
Children’s mental representations of spaces, such as a classroom, school, or neighborhood. Children at the end of middle childhood better grasp the notion of scale, making things proportional to one another.
Limitations of concrete operational thought
- works poorly when it comes to things they cannot see directly - abstract ideas.
- does not take into account the gradual acquiring of knowledge - a continuum of acquisition
Rehearsal
Repeating information for memory strategy
Organization
Grouping related items together
ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder)
Involves inattention, impulsivity, and excessive motor activity, resulting in academic and social problems
Elaboration
Creating a relationship, or shared meaning, between two or more pieces of information that are not members of the same category.
Recursive thought
The ability to view a situation from at least two perspectives - that is, to think simultaneously about what two or more people are thinking, a form of perspective taking.
Cognitive self-regulation
The process of continuously monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes, and redirecting unsuccessful efforts.
Whole-language approach
An approach in research that argued that from the beginning, children should be exposed to text in its complete form - stories, poems, letters, posters, and lists - so that they can appreciate the communicative function of written language.
Phonics approach
An approach in research that argued that children should first be coached on phonics - the basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds. Only after mastering these skills should they get more complex reading material.
Triarchic Theory of Successful Intelligence
Suggested by Sternberg, theory is made up of three broad, interacting intelligences: 1) analytical intelligence, or information processing skills; 2) creative intelligence, the capacity to solve novel problems; and 3) practical intelligence, application of intellectual kills in everyday situations. Intelligent behavior involves balancing all three intelligences to achieve success in life according to one’s personal goal and the requirements of one’s cultural community.
Analytical intelligence
- consists of information processing components that underlie all intelligent acts.
- not represented well on intelligence tests.
Creative intelligence
- creative, outside-the-box thinking way of approaching problem solving
- application of information processing skills in very effective ways
- usually high performers
Practical intelligence
- goal-oriented activity aimed at adapting to, shaping, or selecting environments
- these individuals adapt their thinking to fit with desires and everyday life demands.
Theory of multiple intelligences
Suggested by Howard Gardner, this theory defines intelligence in terms of distinct set of processing operations that permit individuals to engage in a wide range of culturally valued activities. Dismissing the idea of general intelligence, Gardner proposes at least eight independent intelligences.
List of Gardner’s 8 Intelligences
- Linguistic
- Logio-mathematical
- Musical
- Spatial
- Bodily-kinesthetic
- Naturalist
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
Linguistic intelligence
Sensitivity to osunds, rhythms, and meaning of words and the functions of language
Logico-mathematical
Sensitivity to, and capacity to detect, logical or numerical patterns; ability to handle long chains of logical reasoning.
Musical
Ability to produce and appreciate pitch, rhythm (or melody), and aesthetic quality of the forms of musical expressiveness
Spatial
Ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately, to perform transformations on those perceptions, and to re-create aspects of visual experience in the absence of relevant stimuli.
Bodily-kinesthetic
Ability to use the body skillfully for expressive as well a goal-directed purposes; ability to handle objects skillfully.
Naturalist
Ability to recognize and classify all varieties of animals, minerals, and plants.
Interpersonal
ability to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions of others.
Intrapersonal
Ability to discriminate complex inner feelings and to use them to guide one’s own behavior; knowledge of one’s own strengths, weaknesses, desires, and intelligences.
Flynn effect
IQs have increased steadily from one generation to the next
Stereotype anxiety
The fear of being judged on the basis of a negative stereotype - can trigger anxiety that interferes with performance.
Dynamic assessment
An innovation consistent with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, the adult introduces purposeful teaching into the testing situation to find out what the child can attain with social support.
Metalinguistic awareness
The ability to think about language as a system
Traditional classrooms
The teacher is the sole authority for knowledge, rules, and decision making and does most of the talking. Student are relatively passive - listening, responding when called on, and completing teacher-assigned tasks. Their progress is evaluated by how well they keep pace with a uniform set of standards for their grade.
Constructivist classroom
Encourages students to construct their own knowledge. Although constructivist approaches vary, many are grounded in Piaget’ theory, which views children as active agent who reflect on and coordinate their own thoughts, rather than absorbing those of others. A glance inside a constructivist classroom reveals richly equipped learning centers, small groups, and individuals solving self-chosen problems, and a teacher who guides and supports in response to children’s needs. Student are evaluated by considering their progress in relation to their own prior development.
Social-constructivist classroom
Children participate in a wide range of challenging activities with teacher and peers, with whom they jointly construct understandings. As children appropriate (take for themselves) the knowledge and strategies generated through working together, they become competent, contributing members of their classroom community and advance in cognitive and social development.
Reciprocal learning
A teacher and two to four students form a cooperative group and take turns leading dialogues on the content of a text passage. Within the dialogues, group members apply four cognitive strategies: questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting.
Communities of learners
Classrooms where teachers guide the overall process of learning, but no other distinction is made between adult and child contributors. All participate in joint endeavors and have the authority to define and resolve problems.
Educational self-fulfilling prophecies
When children adopt teachers’ positive or negative views and start to live up to them.
Cooperative learning
When small groups of classmates work toward common goals - by considering one another’s ideas, appropriately challenging one another, providing sufficient explanations to correct misunderstandings, and resolving differences of opinion on the basis of reasons and evidence.
Inclusive classrooms
When students with learning difficulties learn alongside typical students in the regular educational setting for part or all of the school day - a practice designed to prepare them for participation in society and to combat prejudices against individuals with disabilities.
Learning disabilities
Had by 5-10 percent of school-age children, when they have a great difficulty with one or more aspects of learning, usually reading. as a result, their achievement is considerably behind what would be expected on the basis of their IQ
Gifted
Children who display exceptional intellectual strengths.
Creativity
The ability to produce work that is original yet appropriate, something that others have not thought of that is useful in some way. A component of a “gifted” child
Divergent thinking
The generation of multiple and unusual possibilities when faced with a task or problem
Convergent thinking
Contrasted sharply with divergent thinking, this sort of thinking emphasizes involving arriving at a single correct answer and is emphasized on intelligence tests.
Talent
Outstanding performance in a specific field.
