Cognition and Development Flashcards
What is cognitive development?
Describes the development of all mental processes, in particular thinking, reasoning and a person’s understanding of the world.
Piaget: What is schema?
Schemas contain the understanding of an object, person, or idea. They are mental frameworks of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing. Become more complex during development as more information is acquired.
Piaget: What is assimilation?
A form of learning that takes place when new information is acquired or there is a more advanced understanding of an object, person or idea. The new information does not radically change the understanding of the topic, so information can be incorporated into an existing schema
Piaget: What is Accommodation?
Learning that takes place when new information is acquired that radically changed the understanding of a topic. The new information formation means that new schemas need to be formed to deal with the knowledge
Piaget: What is equilibrium?
A stats of balance. This is a ‘pleasant’ feeling.
Piaget: What is disequilibrium?
A state of unbalance. This is an ‘unpleasant’ feeling. It motivates a return to equilibrium
Piaget: What is equilibration?
Takes place when new information is encountered and built into the understanding of a topic, either by assimilating it into an existing schema or accommodating it by forming a new one.
Piaget: What is object permanence?
The ability to realise that an object still exists when it passes out of the visual field. Piaget believed this ability appears around 8 months. Prior to this, children lose interest in an object once they cannot see it and are thought to no longer be aware of its existence
Piaget: What is conservation?
The ability to realise that the quantity remains the same even when the appearance of an object or group of objects changes. For example, the volume of liquid stays the same when poured between containers of different shapes.
Piaget: What is egocentrism?
The child’s tendency to only be able to see the world from their own point of view. This applies to both physical objects - demonstrated in the three mountains task - and arguments, in which a child can only appreciate their own perspective
Piaget: What is class inclusion?
An advanced classification skill in which there is recognition that classes of objects have subsets and are themselves subsets of larger classes. Pre-operational children usually struggle to place things in more than one class
Vygotsky: What is Zone of proximal development (ZPD)
The gap between a child’s current level of development, defined by the cognitive tasks they can perform unaided, and what they can potentially do with the right help from a more expert other, who may be an adult or more advanced child
Vygotsky: What is Scaffolding?
The process of helping a learner cross the ZPD and advance as much as they can, given their stage of development. Typically, the level of help given declines as the learner crosses the ZPD
Baillargeon: What is knowledge of the physical world?
Understanding how the physical world works. An example is object permanence and understanding that an object still exists outside a field of view
Baillargeon: What is the nativist approach?
A theory that suggests humans are born with innate abilities
Baillargeon: What is the physical reasoning system (PRS)?
An innate system that provides a framework for reasoning about the displacements and interactions of physical objects
Baillargeon: What is violation of expectation?
An approach to investigating infants’ knowledge of the world. The idea is that if children understand how the physical world operates then they will expect certain things to happen in situations. If these do not occur and children react accordingly, they have intact knowledge of the that aspect of the world
Selman: What is social cognition?
Describes the mental processes individuals make use of when engaged in social interaction. E.g., humans make decisions on how to behave based on their understanding of a social situation
Selman: What is perspective taking?
An individual’s ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective (point of view) of other people. This cognitive ability underlies typical social interaction
What is theory of mind?
The personal understanding (a theory) of what other people are thinking and feeling. It is sometimes called ‘mind-reading’.
What is autism?
More correctly called autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is an umbrella term for a wide range of behaviours. All disorders on the spectrum have differences in three main areas: autism empathy, social communication, and social imagination
What is the Sally-Anne study?
A study used to test ToM. To understand the story participants, must identify that Sally will look for a marble in the wrong place because she does not know that Anne has moved it. Very young children and children with ASD find this difficult.
What is the mirror neurone system?
The mirror neurone system consists of specialised brain cells called mirror neurones distributed
