Cognitive Development Flashcards
Who’s idea was it that children construct their world as a result of both experience and mental maturity.
Knowledge about the world grows in stages that parallel our mental growth.
Piaget’s Idea
What 2 categories did Piaget divide education into?
1) Passive education
2) Active education
Passive education relies on ________.
Memory
Active education relies on ________.
Intelligence, understanding & discovery
What was Piaget’s view on education?
Education is too passive (relying on memory). It should be more active (relying on intelligence, understanding, and discovery).
How did Piaget describe knowledge as a process; not a state?
- The child’s knowledge of the world changes as his
cognitive system develops. - Knowledge is biased!
- Everyone has their own reality.
T or F? Piaget’s thinking was deeply routed in biology?
True
What quality did mollusks have that Piaget thought the same principles would apply to human thought?
Mollusks adjusted themselves to their environment and actively assimilated in ways that were allowed by their biological structure.
Piaget defined Intelligence as ________.
an adaptation to the environment.
Piaget called cognitive development a ______.
mental embryology.
T or F? Piaget was a structuralist.
True
Structuralism is _____
The breaking down of mental processes into their most basic components.
-an early school of thought
Piaget’s methodology:
semi-clinical interview.
What was Piaget’s approach with his semi-clinical interview?
Ask a question – not interested if the child gets the question “right”, but is more interested in the child’s reasoning.
T or F?
According to Piaget the thinking of younger versus older children has similar elements.
True
How did the similar elements of thinking in younger versus older children operate differently?
These elements are combined in different ways to form the organized whole or thought.
This progression goes through a series of stages.
What is a period of time in which a child’s thinking and behavior in a variety of situations reflect a particular type of understanding or underlying mental structure?
A structured whole in a state of equilibrium.
A Stage
Elements of a stage theory.
Qualitative versus quantitative changes that occur within each stage.
Qualitative changes
Changes like type or kind.
QUALITY
Ex: emergent reader to full reader.
Quantitative changes
changes in degree, amount, speed, efficiency,
Quantity - as in can be measured.
Like the # of vocabulary words
Sociocentric
Able to take the perspective of others
Piaget referred to egocentrism as ________.
The hidden side of the mind
In Piaget’s theory, actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.
A mental image or pattern of action; a form of organizing information that a person uses to interpret the things they see, hear, smell, and touch; organization,
e.g. in the same way a desk organizer files supplies.
Schema or schemes
assimilation
children use existing schemes to incorporate new information.
Ex: Calling a plane a bird. Or all men Daddy
accommodation
Incorporating new experiences into existing schemes.
Ex: Now being able to differentiate between a bird and plane.
A mechanism that Piaget proposed to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next.
equilibration
Cognitive conflict. Inconsistencies and counter examples to one’s existing scheme
Disequilibrium
An internal search for _______ creates motivation for change in order to have consistency in one’s schemes.
Equilibrium
Grouping isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system.
organization
the Piaget processes that work together to guide development.
Schemes
Assimilation & Accomodation
Organization
Equilibration & Stages of Development
The first of Piaget’s stages, which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age, during which infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions.
sensorimotor stage
understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.
object permanence
object permanence happens during what stage
sensorimotor
The second Piagetian developmental stage, which lasts from about 2 to 7 years of age; children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings.
preoperational stage
The first substage of preoperational thought, occurring roughly between the ages of 2 and 4. In this substage, the young child gains the ability to represent mentally an object that is not present.
symbolic function substage (of Preoperational)
The inability to distinguish between one’s own and someone else’s perspective; an important feature of preoperational thought.
Piaget’s term that one believes everybody sees the world in exactly the same way that they do.
egocentrism
A facet of preoperational thought—the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action.
animism
The second substage of preoperational thought, occurring between approximately 4 and 7 years of age. Children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions.
intuitive thought substage (of Preoperational)
Reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what before they had done only physically.
operations
Focusing attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others is called _______.
Which stage does this occur in?
centration (preoperational)
The awareness that altering the appearance of an object or a substance does not change its basic properties is called _________.
Which stage has a lack of this?
conservation (preoperational)
The third Piagetian stage, which lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age; children can perform concrete operations, and logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning as long as the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples.
concrete operational stage
The concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length).
seriation
The ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions.
Piaget argued this is characteristic of concrete operational thought.
transitivity
Child using sounds or movement (symbols) like vroom vroom to communicate a car
According to Piaget, the ______ ________ is a representational ability that emerges when the child is about 18 months old. It is a unified capacity that enables the child to represent an object or an event that is not present (a signified) by means of another object that is present (a signifier).
semiotic function
Classification
An important skill within concrete operational stage. classify or divide things into different sets or subsets and to consider their interrelationships.
Ex: Family Tree / Dad can also be an Uncle, brother, son and grandfather
cognitive ability to develop hypotheses about ways to solve problems and can systematically deduce which is the best path to follow in solving the problem.
hypothetical-deductive reasoning
The heightened self-consciousness of adolescents, which is reflected in adolescents’ beliefs that others are as interested in them as they are themselves, and in adolescents’ sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility.
adolescent egocentrism (David Elkind)
That aspect of adolescent egocentrism that involves feeling that one is the center of attention and sensing that one is on stage.
imaginary audience (David Elkind)
The part of adolescent egocentrism that involves an adolescent’s sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility.
personal fable (David Elkind)
Like Piaget, Vygotsky emphasized that children actively construct their knowledge and understanding. How do their theories differ?
Piaget - interaction w/ physical world
Vygotsky - social interaction
Vygotsky’s term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with guidance and assistance from adults or more-skilled children.
zone of proximal development (ZPD)
In cognitive development, a term Vygotsky used to describe the changing level of support over the course of a teaching session, with the more-skilled person adjusting guidance to fit the child’s current performance level.
scaffolding
T or F?
Dialogue is an important tool of scaffolding in the zone of proximal devleopment
True
