Chapter 5.1 Piaget's approach to cognitive development

Question 1

Schemes

Answer 1

an organized pattern of sensoriomotor functioning (first related to physical activity)

Question 2

assimilation

Answer 2

the process in which people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development and way of thinking
(ex. Seeing a flying squirrel and calling it a bird)

Question 3

accommodation

Answer 3

changes in existing ways of thinking that occur in response to encounters with new stimuli or events
(ex. seeing a flying squirrel and calling it a “bird with a tail”)

Question 4

sensorimotor stage (or cognitive development)

Answer 4

Piaget’s initial major stage of cognitive development, which can be broken down into six substages

Question 5

Substage 1: simple reflexes

Answer 5

• First month of life
• inborn reflexes
• ex. infant sucks at anything place in his lips

Question 6

Substage 2: First habits and primary circular reactions

Answer 6

• months 1 to 4
• coordinate separate actions into single, integrated activities
• ex. combining grasping an object with sucking on it

Question 7

Substage 3: Secondary circular reactions

Answer 7

• months 4 to 8
• Shift cognitive horizons beyond themselves, act on the outside world
• ex. picking up a rattle and shaking it in different ways to see how the sound changes

Question 8

Substage 4: Coordination of secondary circular reactions

Answer 8

• months 8 to 12
• coordinating several schemes to generate a singe act (object permanence)
• ex. pushing a toy out of the way to reach another toy that is lying under it)

Question 9

Substage 5: Tertiary circular reactions

Answer 9

• months 12 to 18
• deliberate variation of actions that bring desirable consequences; miniature experiments
• ex. dropping a toy repeatedly, varying the way he drops it, observing each time to see where it falls

Question 10

Substage 6: Beginnings of thought

Answer 10

• from 18 months to 2 years
• capacity for mental representation of symbolic thought
• ex. plotting the unseen trajectories of objects, so they know where a ball is likely to end up if it rolls under the couch

Question 11

goal-directed behavior

Answer 11

behavior in which several schemes are combines and coordinated to generate a single act to solve a problem

• Substage 4
• ex. pushing a toy out of the way to reach another toy that is lying under it

Question 12

Object permanence

Answer 12

the realization that people and objects exist even when they cannot be seen
- Substage 4

Question 13

mental representation

Answer 13

an internal image of a past event or object

• Substage 6
• ex. imagining where objects might be that they cannot see

Question 14

deferred imitation

Answer 14

an act in which a person who is no longer present is imitated by children who have witnessed a similar act

• substage 6
• ex. being able to pretend that they are dirving a car after they have witnessed such scenes played out in reality

Question 15

preoperational stage

Answer 15

according to Piaget, the stage from approximately age two to age seven in which children’s use of symbolic thinking grows, mental reasoning emerges, and the use of concepts increases
- ex. seeing a mom picking up car keys prompting “go to store?” because the child sees the keys as a symbol of a car ride

Question 16

operations

Answer 16

organized, formal, logical mental processes

Question 17

symbolic function

Answer 17

the ability to use a mental symbol, a word, or an object to stand for or represent something that is both physically present
- ex. using a mental symbol for “car” and understand that a small toy car is representative of the real thing

Question 18

centration

Answer 18

the process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects

• ex. choosing the row of buttons that looks longer rather than the one that actually contains more buttons
• focusing on appearance instead of quantity

Question 19

conservation

Answer 19

the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects

• ex. saying there is more juice in the tall, thin glass than there was in the short one
• believing that the amount of liquid in two glasses differs because of the differences int he containers’ shapes

Question 20

transformation

Answer 20

the process in which one state is changed into another

- ex. seeing several worms during a walk and believing that they are all the same worm

Question 21

egocentric thought

Answer 21

thinking that does not take into account the viewpoints of others

• ex. receiving socks as a gift and frown as he opens the package, unaware that his face can be seen by others
• ex. a child talking to them self in the presence of others

Question 22

intuitive thought

Answer 22

thinking that reflects preschoolers’ use of primitive reasoning and their avid acquisition of knowledge about the world

• ex. asking “why” about everything
• ex. thinking they know the answers to all kinds of questions w/o a basis for their confidence

Question 23

Piaget’s formal operation stage

Answer 23

• Ages 12 to 15
• developing the ability to think abstractly
• ex. testing understanding by systematically conducting rudimentary experiments and observing the results