Chapter 5 Flashcards
Four stages according to Piaget
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete
operational, and formal operational
schemes
organized patterns of functioning
that adapt and change with
mental
development
assimilation
the process by which people
understand an experience in terms
of their current stage of cognitive
development and way of thinking
accommodation
changes in existing ways of thinking
that occur in response to
encounters with new stimuli or
events
sensorimotor stage (of cognitive
development)
Piaget’s initial major stage of cognitive
development, which can be
broken down into six substages
Substage 1: Simple reflexes
During this period, the various reflexes that determine
the infant’s interactions with the world are at the center
of its cognitive life.
Substage 2: First habits
and primary circular
reactions
At this age, infants begin to coordinate what were
separate actions into single, integrated activities
Substage 3: Secondary
circular reactions
During this period, infants take major strides in shifting
their cognitive horizons beyond themselves and begin
to act on the outside world
Substage 4: Coordination
of secondary circular
reactions
In this stage, infants begin to use more calculated
approaches to producing events, coordinating several
schemes to generate a single act. They achieve object
performance during this stage.
Substage 5: Tertiary
circular reactions
At this age, infants develop what Piaget regards as
the deliberate variation of actions that bring desirable
consequences. Rather than just repeating enjoyable
activities, infants appear to carry out miniature
experiments to observe the consequences.
Substage 6: Beginnings
of thought
The major achievement of Substage 6 is the capacity
for mental representation, or symbolic thought. Piaget
argued that only at this stage can infants imagine
where objects that they cannot see might be.
Primary circular reactions
are schemes reflecting an infant’s repetition of interesting or enjoyable actions that focus on the infant’s own body, just for the enjoyment of doing
them.
Secondary circular reactions
are schemes regarding repeated actions that bring about
a desirable consequence
goal-directed behavior
in which several schemes are combined and coordinated
to generate a single act to solve a problem
object permanence
the realization that people and
objects exist even when they
cannot
be seen
mental representation
an internal image of a past event
or object
deferred imitation
an act in which a person who is
no longer present is imitated by
children who have witnessed a
similar act
information processing approaches
the model that seeks to identify
the way that individuals take in,
use, and store information
three aspects of information retrieval
encoding, storage, and retrieval
Encoding
is the process by which
information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory
