Chapter 7: Cognition Flashcards
What is Jean Piaget’s theory called?
Piaget’s constructive approach
The main theme of this theory is about how children come to know their world by constructing their own schemes or cognitive structures through active exploration.
Constructive approach/ Cognitive Development (Jean Piaget)
The activity of knowing and the process through which knowledge is acquired and problems are solved.
Cognition
According to Piaget, it is a basic life function that helps an organism adapt to its environment.
Intelligence
These are cognitive structures – organized patterns of action or thought that people construct to interpret their experiences.
Schemes
2 inborn (nature) intellectual functions according to Piaget that children use to create knowledge.
Organization
Adaptation
Children systematically combine existing schemes into new and more complex ones.
Organization
The process of adjusting to the demands of the environment.
Adaptation
2 complimentary processes where adaptation occurs.
Assimilation
Accomodation
The process by which we interpret new experience in terms of existing schemes or cognitive structures.
Assimilation
The process of modifying existing schemes to better fit new experiences.
Accommodation
A negative conflict we experience when new events challenge our old schemes; uncomfortable state of mind that the child seeks to resolve.
Disequilibrium
Process of achieving mental stability where our internal thoughts are consistent with the evidence we are receiving from the external world.
Equilibration
States that new knowledge is constructed through change in the neural structures of the brain in response to experience.
Neuroconstructivism Theory
The main theme of this theory is that cognitive growth occurs in sociocultural context and evolves out of a child’s social interaction.
Sociocultural Perspective/Theory (Lev Vygotsky)
It is the gap between what the learner can accomplish independently and what she can accomplish with the guidance and encouragement of a more skilled partner.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
The aid and support of parents and other knowledgeable guides.
Guided Participation
When a more skilled person gives structured help to a less-skilled learner but gradually reduces the help as the less-skilled learner becomes more competent.
Scaffolding
A preschool’s speech to oneself that guides his/her speech and behavior; a critical step in the development of mature thoughts.
Private Speech
Behavior emerges from interaction between person and context; human performance is dynamic, it changes in response to change in context.
Dynamic Skill Framework (Kurt Fischer)
Human performance changes in response to change in context.
Dynamic
A person’s ability to perform a particular task in specific context.
Skill
Used to capture findings that people’s abilities vary with context.
Developmental Range
Earliest in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; a time of tremendous growth and change; it is through the senses and motor abilities that infants gain a basic understanding of the world around them.
Sensorimotor Stage
Child understands the environment purely through inborn reflexes such as sucking and looking.
Reflexes
Involves coordinating sensation and new schemas.
Primary Circular Reactions
Child becomes more focused on the world and begins to intentionally repeat an action in order to trigger a response in the environment.
Secondary Circular Reactions
Child starts to show clearly intentional actions; child may also combine schemas in order to achieve a desired effect.
Coordination of Secondary Schemes
The tendency of 8-12 months olds to search for an object in the place where they last found it (A) rather than in its new hiding place (B).
A-not-B error
Children begin a period of trial-and-error experimentation.
Tertiary Circular Reactions
Children begin to develop symbols to represent events or objects in the world.
Beginning of Thought
Is the fundamental understanding that objects continue to exist - they are permanent - when they are no longer visible or otherwise detectable to the
senses.
Object Permanence
The ability to use images, words, or gestures to represent or stand for objects and experiences.
Symbolic Capacity
Focus on the most obvious features of an object or
situation; preschoolers can be fooled by appearances.
Perceptual Salience
The idea that certain properties of an object or
substance do not change when its appearance is altered in some superficial way.
Concept of Conservation
The logical understanding that the parts are included within the whole.
Class Inclusion
Tendency to view the world solely from their own perspective and to have difficulty recognizing other points of view.
Egocentrism
Involves mastering the logical operations missing in the preoperational stage, becoming able to perform systematic mental actions on objects
Concrete-operational Stage
Allows the child to mentally reverse the
pouring process and imagine the water in its original container
Reversibility
Allows the child to better understand the process of change involved in pouring the water.
Transformational thought
The child has logic, not just appearance, as a guide.
Logical Operations
Involves going from a specific experience to a general principle.
Inductive logic
Enables children to arrange items mentally along a
quantifiable dimension such as length of weight.
Seriation
Describes the necessary relations among elements in a series.
Transivity
Reasoning from general ideas or rules to their specific implications.
Hypothetical Deductive Reasoning
Separate prior knowledge and beliefs from the demands of the task at hand.
Decontextualize
Imaginary audience phenomenon involves confusing their own thoughts with those of a hypothesized audience for your behavior.
Adolescent Egocentrism
A tendency to think that you and your thoughts and feelings are unique.
Personal Fable
Ways of thinking that are more complex than those of the formal operational stage
Postformal Thought
Understanding that knowledge depends on its context and the subjective perspective of the knower.
Relativistic Thinking
Detecting paradoxes and inconsistencies among ideas and trying to reconcile them
Dialectical Thinking
