Chapter 5: Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Flashcards
Sensorimotor stage
(0-2 years) Infants/toddlers ‘think’ with eyes, ears, hands, and mouths
Schemes
Specific psychological structures, organized ways of making sense of experience
Adaptation
Building schemes through direct interaction with the environment
Assimilation
Use our current schemes through direct interaction with the external world (A child grabbing his favorite toy, grabs a new toy with ‘grab and thrust schema’ but applies it to the new object)
Accommodation
Create new schemas, changing old ones to fit new experiences (equilibrium v disequilibrium)
Organization
Internal process that links schemas to create cognitive system
Circular reaction
Infants adapting to their first schemas through repetition ex: infant accidentally makes smacking noise while eating, repeats action enough to become expert at smacking
Intentional (goal directed) behavior
Coordinating schemas deliberately to solve simple problems (Ex: pushing obstacle schema and grasping object schema combine to help a baby find a hidden toy)
Object permanence
Understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight
Deferred imitation
6 months, the ability to remember and copy the behavior of models who aren’t present
Make-believe play
children act out everyday and imaginary events
Mental representation
internal depictions of info the mind can manipulate
Violation-of-expectation model
Babies are habituated to a physical event and follow it with an unexpected event to test their ability to separate a deviation from the physical world with reality (carrot test)
Inferred imitation
18 months, can infer others intentions (toddlers imitate actions an adult tries to produce, even if these are not fully realized)
Displaced reference
realization that words can be used to cue mental images of things not physically present (knowing that pics of objects and that object are the same, “blicket”)
Core knowledge perspective
Babies are born with a set of innate knowledge systems or core domains of thought, prewired under
Video deficit effect
Poorer performance after a video than a live demonstration
Core knowledge perspective
Babies are born with a set of innate knowledge systems or core domains of thought , prewired understandings permit a grasp of new info to support rapid development
Piaget’s Legacy
- Many cognitive stages of infancy aren’t abrupt and stagelike but gradual and continuous
- Aspects of infant cognition change unevenly
General model of info. processing
- Sensory register- sights and sounds are briefly held in mind while also trying to monitor or manipulate those items
- Short-term memory store retain attended-to information briefly so we can actively work on it to reach our goals
Central executive
Manages cognitive systems activities by directing the flow of info, implementing basic procedures, and engaging in more sophisticated activities
Automatic processes
So well-learned they require no space in working memory and permit us to focus on other info while performing it
Long-term memory:
Permanent knowledge base
Executive function
Diverse cognitive operations and strategies that enable us to achieve our goals in challenging situations