Chapter 6 - Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Flashcards
Jean Piaget
With a background in biology, Piaget believed that the child’s mind forms and modifies psychological structures so they achieve a better fit with external reality…children’s thinking develops as they act directly on the environment
Sensorimotor stage
Piaget’s first stage, which spans the first two years of life. Piaget believed that infants and toddlers “think” with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment. They cannot yet carry out many activities inside their heads.
Schemes
According to Piaget, these specific psychological structures - organized ways of making sense of experiences, and they change with age via adaptation and organization
Adaptation
Involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment. it consists of two complimentary activities: Assimilation and Accommodation
Assimilation
We use our current schemes to interpret the external world. i.e., when Timmy dropped objects, he was assimilating them to his sensorimotor “dropping scheme”
Accommodation
We create new schemes or adjust old ones after noticing that our current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely. i.e., when Timmy dropped objects in different ways, he modified his dropping scheme to take account of the varied properties of objects.
Cognitive equilibrium
When children are not changing much, they assimilate more than they accommodate; a steady, comfortable state.
Disequilibrium
When children are in times of rapid cognitive change, or cognitive discomfort. Children shift between assimilation and accommodation continually, over time.
Organization
A process that occurs internally, apart from direct contact with the environment. Once children form new schemes, they rearrange them, linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system. i.e., Timmy will eventually relate “dropping” to “throwing” and to his developing understanding of “nearness” and “farness”
Stages within sensorimotor stage
1) Reflexive schemes (birth-1 month)
2) Primary circular reactions (1-4 months)
3) Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)
4) Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 months)
5) Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months)
6) Mental representation (18 months-2 years)
Circular reaction
This reaction provides a special means of adapting their first schemes. It involves stumbling onto a new experience caused by the baby’s own motor activity. The reaction is “circular” because, as the infant tries to repeat the event again and again, a sensorimotor response that originally occurred by chance strengthens into a new scheme.
Primary circular reaction (1-4 months)
Babies start to gain voluntary control over their actions, by repeating chance behaviors largely motivated by basic needs.
Secondary circular reaction (4-8 months)
Motor achievements such as sitting up and reaching for objects strengthen this reaction, through which babies try to repeat interesting events in the surrounding environment that are caused by their own actions.
Intentional (goal-directed) behavior
When babies ages 8-12 months combine schemes that lead to new and more complex action sequences. There is a coordination of schemes to deliberately solve simple problems.
Object permanence
The understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight. This awareness is not yet complete, however; babies make the A-not-B search error.
A-not-B search error
If babies reach several times for an object at a first hiding place (A), then see it moved to a second place (B), they still search for it in the first hiding place (A). This led Piaget to believe they still do not have a clear image of the object as persisting even when hidden from view.
Tertiary circular reaction
From 12-18 months, toddlers repeat behaviors with variation. i.e., Timmy dropped objects over the basement steps, trying this action, then that, then another. This exploratory approach makes 12-18 month children better problem solvers.
Mental repressions
Internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate. Mostly fall into two categories, 1) images (mental pictures of objects, people, spaces) and 2) concepts (categories in which similar objects or events are grouped together.
Deferred imitation
The ability to remember and copy the behavior f models who are not present.
Make-believe play
When children act out everyday and imaginary activities.
Violation-of-expectation method
Method of research where researchers may habituate babies to a physical event, (expose them to the event until their looking declines) to familiarize them with a situation in which their knowledge will be tested. Or they may simply show babies an expected event (one that is consistent with reality) and an unexpected event (a variation of the first event that violates reality). Heightened attention to the unexpected event suggests that the infant is “surprised” by a deviation from physical reality and, therefore, is aware of that aspect of the physical world.
Displaced reference
A symbolic capacity that emerges around the first birthday, this is the realization that words can be used to cue mental images of things not physically present.
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. Each of these prewired understandings permits a ready grasp of new, related information and therefore supports early, rapid development.
Sensory register
Information enters the sensory register, where sights and sounds are represented directly and stored briefly.
Short-term memory store
The second part of the mind, where we retain attended-to information briefly so we can actively “work” on it to reach our goals.
