Chapter 5

Question 1

Behaviorist approach

Answer 1

Study of cognitive development that is concerned with basic mechanics of learning

Question 2

Psychometric approach

Answer 2

Study of cognitive development that seeks to measure intelligence quantitatively

Question 3

Piagetian approach

Answer 3

Study of cognitive development that describes qualitative stages in cognitive functioning

Question 4

Information-processing approach

Answer 4

Approach to the study of cognitive development that analyzes processes involved in perceiving and handling information

Question 5

Cognitive neuroscience approach

Answer 5

Study of cognitive development that links brain processes with cognitive ones

Question 6

Social-contextual approach

Answer 6

Study of cognitive development that focuses on environmental influences, particularly parents and other caregivers

Question 7

Classical conditioning

Answer 7

Person learns to make a reflex, or voluntary, response (blinking) to a stimulus (camera) that originally did not bring on the response

Question 8

Operant conditioning

Answer 8

Focuses on the consequences of behaviors and how they affect the likelihood of that behavior occurring again

Question 9

Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development

Answer 9

Standardized test of infants’ and toddlers’ mental and motor development - 1 month to 3.5 years
Tests: Cognitive
Language
Motor
Social-emotional
Adaptive behavior
Separate scores (developmental quotients) calculated for each scale - most commonly used for detection of emotional disturbances and sensory, neurological and environmental deficits

Question 10

Early intervention

Answer 10

Systematic process of providing services to help families meet young children’s developmental needs
Early educational intervention can help offset environmental risks and provide significant benefits even if the striking early gains that are often seen do not persist

Question 11

Most effective early interventions:

Answer 11

Start early and continue throughout the preschool years
Highly time-intensive (occupy more hours in a day or more days in a week, month, or year)
Center-based, providing direct educational experiences, not just parental training
Take a comprehensive approach, including health, family counseling, and social services
Tailored to individual differences and needs

Question 12

Object permanence

Answer 12

John Piaget’s term for the understanding that a person/object is still there even if it is out of sight
Develops gradually during sensor motor stage

Question 13

Object permanence at 4-8 months

Answer 13

They will look for something they have dropped, but if they cannot see it, it no longer exists

Question 14

Object permanence at 8-12 months

Answer 14

They will look for an object in a place where they first found it after seeing it hidden, even if they later saw it being moved to another place (A-not-B error)

Question 15

Object permanence at 12-18 months

Answer 15

They will search for an object in the last place they saw it hidden, however they will not search for it in a place where they did not see it hidden

Question 16

Object permanence at 18-24 months

Answer 16

Object permanence is fully achieved, toddlers will look for an object even if they did not see it hidden

Question 17

Habituation

Answer 17

Type of learning in which familiarity with a stimulus reduces, slows, or stops a response - familiarity breeds loss of interest
Researchers study habituation by repeatedly presenting a stimulus and then monitoring responses - gauge efficiency of infants’ information process by measuring how quickly babies habituate to familiar stimuli

Question 18

Dishabituation

Answer 18

Increase in responsiveness after presentation of a new stimulus
Liking to look at new things and habituating to them quickly correlates with later signs of cognitive development

Question 19

Visual preference

Answer 19

Tendency of infants to spend more time looking at one sight than another
Babies 2 days old prefer curved lines vs straight lines

Question 20

Visual recognition memory

Answer 20

Ability to distinguish a familiar visual stimulus from an unfamiliar one when shown both at the same time
Babies stare at novel stimulus (new) longer than familiar stimulus because it is exciting
When shown two sights at the same time, infants who quickly shift attention have better recognition memory and stronger novelty preference

Question 21

Speed of processing increases rapidly during infants ______ year

Answer 21

1st
Continues during 2nd and 3rd years, toddlers become able to distinguish new information from information they have already processed

Question 22

Cross-modal transfer

Answer 22

Ability to use information gained by one sense to guide another
(ex: when a person negotiates a dark room by feeling for the location of familiar objects)

Question 23

Joint attention

Answer 23

Fundamental importance to social interaction, language acquisition, and the understanding of others’ intentions and mental states - develops between 10 and 12 months, when babies follow adults gaze by looking or pointing in the same direction

Question 24

Innate learning mechanisms

Answer 24

Violation of expectations theory that infants are born with reasoning abilities that help them make sense of the information they encounter - or they acquire these abilities very early

Question 25

Core knowledge

Answer 25

Violation of expectations theory that at birth infants may already have intuitive knowledge of basic physical principles in the form of specialized brain modules that help infants organize their perceptions and experience

Question 26

Sound discrimination

Answer 26

Infants’ brains seem to be preset to discriminate basic linguistic sounds, perceive linguistic patterns, and categorize them to same or different beginning in the womb

Question 27

By _____ months, hearing babies have learned to recognize approximately 40 phonemes, or basic sounds, of their native language and adjust to slight differences in the way different speakers form those sounds

Answer 27

6-7 months

Question 28

Between ____ months, babies begin to become aware of the phonological rules of their language

Answer 28

6-12 months
“kib” acceptable as sound combination
“bnik” breaks phonological rules

Question 29

The average baby says a first word sometime between ______ months

Answer 29

10 and 14 months

Question 30

Linguistic speech

Answer 30

Verbal expression designed to convey meaning

Question 31

Holophrase

Answer 31

Single word that conveys a complete thought

“Da” may mean “i want that” or “i want to go out” or “where’s daddy”

Question 32

Receptive vocabulary

Answer 32

What infants understand-continues to grow as verbal comprehension gradually becomes faster and more accurate and efficient

Question 33

Expressive vocabulary

Answer 33

Spoken vocabulary - slow at first, most infants understand 150 words but only know 50 of them
16 and 24 months - “naming explosion” - go from saying 50 words to several hundred
Rapid increases in spoken vocabulary reflect increases in speed and accuracy of word recognition

Question 34

True or False

Nouns seem to be the easiest type of word to learn

Answer 34

True

Question 35

Children can put together a sentence at what age?

Answer 35

18 - 24 months
Age ranges
Most children who begin talking late catch up eventually

Question 36

True or False

A children’s first sentences usually deal with every day events, things, people or activities

Answer 36

True

Question 37

Telegraphic speech

Answer 37

Early form of sentence use consisting of only a few essential words
ex: “Damma deep” may mean “grandma is sweeping the floor.”

Question 38

Syntax

Answer 38

Rules for forming sentences in a particular language
Develops between 20 and 30 months
Become more aware of the communicative purpose of speech and of whether their words are being understood
By age 3, speech is fluent, longer, and more complex