Chapter 5: Exam 1 Flashcards
Schemes
Psychologist Jean Piaget labeled children’s concepts of the world.
Assimilation
Used by children to absorb new events into exiting schemes.
4 Stages of Cognitive Development
- Sensorimotor
- Preoperational
During early childhood 2-5 years old
Pretend imaginative thinking, capacity for symbolic thought (language) - Concrete operational
In middle childhood, understanding concepts well when they are physically present (like learning addition) - Formal operational
Adolescents, abstract thinking in figurative language (literature and writing), and algebraic expressions. Outside social events and peers present hypothetical thinking as well.
Sensorimotor Stage
1st stage of cognitive development, which leads through infancy and is generally characterized by an increasingly complex coordination of sensory experiences with motor activity.
First two years of cognitive development
(a time when infants progress from responding to events with reflexes, or ready-made schemes, to goal-oriented behavior)
Six Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage
- Simple Reflex
- Primary Circular Reactions
- Secondary Circular Reactions
- Coordination of Secondary Schemes
- Tertiary Circular Reactions
- Invention of New Means Through Mental Combinations
Simple Reflex
1st month after birth is dominated by the assimilation of sources of stimulation into inborn reflexes such as grasping or visual tracking.
Primary Circular Reaction
Repetition of actions that first occurred by chance and that focus on the infant’s own body
(About 1 to 4 months)
Secondary Circular Reaction
Repetition of actions that produce an effect on the environment
(About 4 to 8 months)
Coordination of Secondary Schemes
Can coordinate schemes to attain specific goals beginning to show intentional, goal-directed behavior in which they differentiate between the means of achieving a goal and the goal or end of itself.
(About 8 to 12 months)
Tertiary Circular Reaction
Purposeful adaption of established schemes to new situations
(About 12 to 18 months)
Invention of New Means Through Mental Combinations
Serves as a transition between sensorimotor development and the development of symbolic thought. External exploration is replaced by mental exploration.
(About 18 to 24 months)
Object Permanence
Recognition that objects continue to exist when they are not in view
(an important aspect of sensorimotor development)
Truth or Fiction
For two-month infants, “out of sight” is truly “out of mind”
True
They do not reliably mentally represent the objects they see.
A-not-B error
error made when an infant selects a familiar hiding place (A) for an object rather than a new hiding place, even after the infant has seen it hidden in the new place
(8 to 12 months)
Deferred imitation
The imitation of people and events that occurred in the past (mentally represented behavior patterns)
early as 9 months to 18 months
Information Processing Approach
View of cognitive development that focuses on how children manipulate sensory information and/or information stored in memory.
(infants’ tools include their memory and imitation)
Infant’s memory
- Memory improves dramatically between 2 and 6 months and again by 12 months
*Older infants are more capable than younger ones of encoding information, retrieving information already stored, or both.
Truth or Fiction
One-hour old infant may imitate an adult who sticks out his or her tongue
True
This feat is probably made possible by mirror neurons
Mirror Neurons
They are activated when the individual performs a motor act or observes another individual engaging in the same act.
- Connected with emotions (frontal lobe)
*Active when people experience disgust, happiness, pain, and when they observe another experiencing an emotion - Also with the instinctive human ability to acquire language
Bayley Scales of Infant Development
(intellectual Development among Infants)
- Mental Scale - assesses verbal communication, perceptual skills, learning and memory, and problem-solving skills
- Motor Scale - Assesses gross motor skills, such as the ability to manipulate the hands and fingers
- Behavior Rating Scale - Based on examiner observation of the child during the test. Assesses attention span, goal-directedness, persistence, and aspects of social and emotional development.
* It Remains unclear how well results obtained in infancy predict intellectual functioning at later ages*
Truth or Fiction
Psychologists can begin to measure intelligence in infancy
True
They use items that differ from the kinds of items used with older children and adults
There is always controversy about what researchers are actually measuring when they set out to measure “intelligence.”
Visual Recognition Memory
Kind of memory shown in an infant’s ability to discriminate previously seen objects from novel objects (based on habituation)
*Increase over the first year after birth
- Test of visual recognition hold better promises as predictors of intelligence at older ages.
Prelinguistic
Vocalizations made by an infant before the use of language
- Children develop language according to an invariant sequence of steps, or stage
Truth or Fiction
Infant crying is a primitive form of language
Fiction
In true language, words are symbols for objects or events. Cries may express discomfort, but they are not symbols.
Cooing
Prelinguistic vowel-like sounds reflect feelings of positive excitement
(During 2nd month)
Early parent-child “conversations,” in which parents respond to coos and then pause as the infant coos, may foster infant awareness of taking turns as a way of verbally relating to other people
Babbling
The child’s first vocalizations that have sounds of speech
Frequently combining consonants and vowels, as in a ba, ga, and sometimes dada