Chapter 4 - The Cognitive and Intellectual Changes of Adolescence

Question 0

Prefrontal Cortex

Answer 0

The prefrontal cortex is the region of the cortex located behind the forehead that is involved in abstract thought.

Question 1

Myelination

Answer 1

Myelination is the formation of a fatty sheath surrounding a nerve fiber (axon), which increases speed of neural conduction.

Question 2

Object Permanence

Answer 2

Object permanence is Piaget’s term for the infant’s recognition that objects exist even when they cannot be seen.

Question 3

Schemes

Answer 3

Schemes is Piaget’s term for the precursors of concepts; they are ways of representing experience through one’s actions.

Question 4

Conservation

Answer 4

Conservation is the realization that something remains the same despite changes in its appearance.

Question 5

Differentiation

Answer 5

Differentiation is a process by which one distinguishes or perceives differences not previously recognized.

Question 6

Psychometric Approach

Answer 6

The psychometric approach is an approach that focuses on the measurement of individual differences in abilities contributing to intelligence.

Question 7

Intelligence

Answer 7

Intelligence is the ability to profit from experience and adapt to one’s surroundings; measured by intelligence tests.

Question 8

WAIS-R

Answer 8

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is an intelligence scale for adults that is individually administered.

Question 9

Cohort Differences

Answer 9

Cohort differences are experiential differences between groups of people born at different periods in time; these differences can be confounded with age changes.

Question 10

Cross-Sectional Research

Answer 10

Cross-sectional research is a research design in which several age cohorts are compared at a single time of measurement.

Question 11

Sequential Designs

Answer 11

Sequential design is a research design in which several age cohort groups are compared at several times of measurement; essentially, a number of longitudinal studies, each starting with a different age group.

Question 12

Culture-Fair Test

Answer 12

A culture-fair test is a measure of intelligence that minimizes cultural bias by using materials or requiring skills not likely to be more familiar to one segment of the population than to another.

Question 13

Information Processing

Answer 13

Information processing is an approach to cognition that focuses on the processes by which information is encoded, retrieved, and utilized.

Question 14

Automaticity

Answer 14

Automaticity is the ability to perform highly practiced cognitive operations without conscious attention.

Question 15

Speed of Processing

Answer 15

Speed of processing is the rate at which a cognitive operation (e.g., encoding, decoding, retrieval) or a combination of these can be performed.

Question 16

Working Memory

Answer 16

Working memory is brief memory that holds information for less than a minute while further processing occurs.

Question 17

Encoding

Answer 17

Encoding is the process by which information is transferred from one form to another in memory.

Question 18

Strategies

Answer 18

Strategies are activities that organize cognition so as to improve performance, such as repeating a phone number or categorizing a list of things to be remembered.

Question 19

Metacognition

Answer 19

Metacognition is an awareness of one’s thinking, cognitive abilities, and style.

Question 20

Metacomponents

Answer 20

Metacomponents are higher-order cognitive functions that select and monitor lower-order cognitive functions, for example, metacomponents are employed to determine which performance components are required to perform a task.

Question 21

Performance Components

Answer 21

Performance components are cognitive mechanisms, selected by metacomponents, that operate directly on the information to be processed.

Question 22

Knowledge-Acquistion Components

Answer 22

Knowledge-acquisition components are cognitive mechanisms - e.g., perception, memory retrieval - that, under the direction of metacomponents, acquire new information as needed.

Question 23

Multiple Intelligences

Answer 23

Multiple intelligences is the view that intelligence is comprised of a number of different capacities each relevant to a different domain - e.g., music, linguistics, mathematics, interpersonal relations. One’s ability in each domain is not necessarily highly correlated with ability in others.

Question 24

Practical Intelligence

Answer 24

Practical intelligence is distinguished from “academic intelligence” or intelligence measured by IQ tests. It requires the individual, rather than a teacher or an examiner, to define the problem to be solved and decide what constitutes a solution.

Question 25

Pseudostupidity

Answer 25

Pseudostupidity is the inability to see the obvious by making a simple task more complicated than it is.

Question 26

Imaginary Audience

Answer 26

The imaginary audience is the experience of being the focus of attention that emerges with adolescents’ ability to think about thinking in others and their confusion of the concerns of others with their own preoccupation with themselves.

Question 27

Personal Fable

Answer 27

The personal fable is the feeling of being special; it is thought to derive from the imaginary audience.

Question 28

Social Understanding

Answer 28

Social understanding is the ability to assume another’s perspective and coordinate this with one’s own.

Question 29

Inductive Reasoning

Answer 29

Inductive reasoning is reasoning from the particular to the general.

Question 30

Deductive Reasoning

Answer 30

Deductive reasoning is reasoning from the general to the particular.