Chapter 9: Cognitive development

Question 1

epistemology

Answer 1

study of the origins of knowledge and how we know what we know

Question 2

adaptation

Answer 2

Piaget believed that adaptation is composed of two prosseses, assimilation and accommodation, which work together to drive development forward

Question 3

equilibration

Answer 3

state in which children’s schemes are in balance and undisturbed by conflict (Piaget’s theory)

Question 4

reflexive schemes

Answer 4

from birth to 1 month of age; the first substage of sensorimotor development, when infants use their innate reflexes (e.g. sucking, grasping) to explore the world

Question 5

coordination of secondary schemes

Answer 5

from approximately 10-12 months; 4th substage of Piaget’s sensorimotor development, when infants begin to deliberately combine schemes to achieve specific goals

Question 6

tertiary circular reactions

Answer 6

from approximately 12-18 months; 5th substage in Piaget’s account of sensorimotor development, when the child begins to search for novelty and uses trial and error to explore the characteristics/ properties of objects, and develop new ways of solving problems

Question 7

beginning of thought

Answer 7

from approximately 18-24 months; final substage of Piaget’s account of sensorimotor development, when children become able to form enduring mental representations

Question 8

deferred imitation

Answer 8

ability to copy/ mimic the actions of others, some time after they have seen these actions, an important type of learning in humans, and facilitated by mirror neurons

Question 9

symbolic function substage

Answer 9

1st substage in Piaget’s preoperational stage of reasoning, in which children acquire the ability to mentally represent objects that are not physically present

Question 10

intuitive substage

Answer 10

from approximately 4 to 7 years; 2nd part of Piaget’s preoperational stage of thinking, when children begin to classify/ order/ quantify in a more systematic manner

Question 11

pretend play

Answer 11

“make-believe play” in which the child may pretend to be other people or act out real-life situations

Question 12

three mountains task

Answer 12

task used by Piaget where the child is shown a model of three mountains and asked to choose the view that would be seen by someone in a different location from themselves, and the preoperational typically chooses the view from their own location

Question 13

rational imitation

Answer 13

where infants produce an action that they think the adult intended to do, rather than what the adult actually did

Question 14

seriation task

Answer 14

putting items in a coherent/ logical order

Question 15

transitive inference

Answer 15

relation between two or more premises that leads to an inference that is logically necessary

Question 16

false positive

Answer 16

believing something to be true when in fact it is false

Question 17

class inclusion

Answer 17

ability to coordinate and reason about part and wholes simultaneously in recognising relations between classes and subclasses

Question 18

categorisation

Answer 18

grouping together of items that have some characteristics in common

Question 19

reversibility

Answer 19

ability to imagine a series of steps in both forward and reverse directions; characteristic of thinking in Piaget’s concrete operations stage

Question 20

horizontal décalage

Answer 20

refers to the non-synchronous development of children in Piagetian task (e.g. cases in which children may succeed on conservation of number of tasks but not on conservation of continuous quantity)

Question 21

vertical décalage

Answer 21

within Piagetian terminology this is where the child has a level of understanding at one level that has to be reconstructed at a later age at a different stage of understanding

Question 22

phenomenism

Answer 22

knowledge that is limited to appearances such that, in tasks that involve distinguishing reality from appearance, children report only appearance

Question 23

realism

Answer 23

believing that things are as they appear and not what they might be, e.g. saying that a sponge that looks like a rock is a rock

Question 24

scaffolding

Answer 24

process whereby adults structure and simplify a child’s environment in order to facilitate their learning

Question 25

overlapping waves

Answer 25

central concept in Siegler’s theory of development in which at any one time the child has a number of strategies that can be used to solve problems; over time less efficient strategies are replaced by more effective ones

Question 26

private speech

Answer 26

as children master language they can use internal self-directed speech to guide their thinking and planning

Question 27

guided participation

Answer 27

children’s ability to learn from interaction with others