Cognitive Development Flashcards
1
Q
What is cognition?
A
the process of knowing and acquiring knowledge
2
Q
What aspects are included in the concept of cognition?
A
- attention
- perception
- learning
- thinking
- memory
3
Q
What is cognitive development?
A
changes in knowledge that are age-related
4
Q
What is classical conditioning?
A
the process of an automatic, conditioned response being paired with a specific stimulus
5
Q
What is operant conditioning?
A
the process of learning through reward and punishment
6
Q
reinforcement ____ the probability that an event will occur again
A
increases
7
Q
punishment ____ the probability that an event will occur again
A
decreases
8
Q
positive involves the ____ of something
A
presentation
9
Q
negative involves the ____ of something
A
removal
10
Q
What is positive reinforcement?
A
something is given to increase the likelihood of a behavior
11
Q
What is negative reinforcement?
A
something is taken away to increase the likelihood of a behavior
12
Q
What is positive punishment?
A
something is given to decrease the likelihood of a behavior
13
Q
What is a negative punishment?
A
something is taken away to decrease the likelihood of a behavior
14
Q
If Billy gets into a fight and:
His mom spanks him –> He stops getting into fights
This is an example of ____.
A
positive punishment
15
Q
If Billy gets into a fight and:
His mom doesn’t do anything –> He keeps getting into fights
This is an example of ____.
A
negative reinforcement
16
Q
If Gina takes some aspirin for her bad headache and:
Her headache continues –> She stops taking aspirin
This is an example of ____.
A
positive punishment
17
Q
If Gina takes some aspirin for her bad headache and:
Her headache goes away –> She keeps taking aspirin
This is an example of ____.
A
negative reinforcement
18
Q
How is operant conditioning used in developmental research?
A
- infant kicking
- high-amplitude sucking
19
Q
What did Jean Piaget study?
A
how children gain intelligence
20
Q
What was Jean Piaget’s view on intelligence?
A
it is a basic life function that enables an organism to adapt to its environment
21
Q
What does the constructivist approach of cognitive development entail?
A
- children are intrinsically motivated to learn important lessons on their own
- children take an active approach to construct knowledge for themselves
- infants have basic building blocks –> building intelligence
22
Q
Intelligence comes in the form of ____.
A
schemas
23
Q
What are schemas?
A
organized patterns of thought and making sense of experience
ex: what happens at a restaurant
24
Q
What is cognitive equilibrium?
A
a match between thought processes and one’s enviornment
i.e. when your schema matches reality
25
What two biological tendencies help relieve a mismatch between one's schema and reality?
1. adaptation
2. organization
26
What is the process of adaptation?
the tendency to respond to the demands of the environment to meet one's goals
| ex: accept the changes in reality
27
What is the process of organization?
the tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge
28
What is assimilation?
the process by which people **incorporate new information** into already existing schemas
* integrating reality into one's own view
29
What is accommodation?
the process by which people **modify a schema** to incorporate new information
* changing one's view to better match reality
30
What is equilibration?
the process by which people **balance assimilation and accommodation** to create stable understanding
31
What is disequilibration?
when reality doesn't match our perception of the world
32
A ____ believes that children's thinking at any particular stage is ____ different from that which preceded it and that which will follow it.
stage theorist; qualitatively
33
What are the four stages of Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development?
1. Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
2. Preoperational (2-7 years)
3. Concrete Operational (7-12 years)
4. Formal Operational (12+ years)
34
What is the sensorimotor stage?
children gain knowledge **through their own actions** (i.e. reflexes, senses, motor responses)
35
What concept is supposedly learned at the end of the sensorimotor stage, and what experiment helped test this?
object permanence; "A not B" test
36
What does the "A-Not-B" error tell us about cognitive development?
infants understand object permanence, but cannot hold image of the object in their mind and cannot inhibit the motor response to reach for the place they already looked at
37
What is the preoperational stage?
children gain knowledge through engaging in **symbolic play**
38
In what stage do children exhibit egocentrism?
preoperational stage
39
What is egocentrism?
a child's inability to see a situation from another person's point of view
40
In the mountains experiment, how did the child display egocentrism?
even though he sat on the experimenter's side, he was not able to describe what she sees because he only thinks about his own perspective
41
What is centration and how does it relate to the preoperational stage?
the tendency to focus on a single, perceptaully striking feature of an object or event
* children tend to be limited to focusing on these features, which affects their conservation concept
42
What is the conservation concept and what experiment showed that preoperational children don't understand this?
the idea that merely changing the appearance of objects **does not change their key properties**
| i.e. putting the same amount of water in a taller glass
43
Children who could not understand water poured into skinnier glass was the same centrated on ____.
height
44
Children who could not understand that quarters spread out were the same amount of quarters centrated on ____.
length
45
What is the concrete operational stage?
children gain knowledge through the **development of logical thought**
* only applicable to real or imaginable concepts (not abstract)
46
What is the formal operational stage?
cognitive development culminates in the ability to **think abstractly** and to **reason hypothetically**
* can think like a scientist
47
Why did Piaget believe that the attainment of the formal operational stage is not universal?
formal education is not universal
48
What tasks are given to study the formal operational stage?
* pendulum task
* eye question
49
What are the four weaknesses of Piaget's theory?
1. stage model depicts children's thinking as consisttent, but there's more variability to them
2. cognitive competence of infants and young children was underestimated
3. understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development
4. vague about the mechanisms and cognitive processes that produce cognitive growth
50
What does the sociocultural approach of cognitive development entail?
focuses on the contribution of other people and the surrounding culture to children's development
51
What is guided participation?
more knowledgable individuals allow less knowledgable individuals to engage with them in a higher level than they could manage on their own
| i.e. kids can do more with adults than on their own
52
The sociocultural approach sees development as ____ and change as ____.
continuous; quantitative
53
What is the difference between Piaget and Vygotsky's theories of cognitive development?
PIaget believed that children's development precedes their learning.
Vygotsky believed that social learning precedes development.
54
According to Vygotsky, what do children need to learn?
culture --> to transform basic functions into higher mental functions
55
What are tools of intellectual adaptation?
tools that allow one to use basic mental processes more efficiently
56
Culture transforms developmental processes via ____.
tools of intellectual adaptation
57
How is language an example of a tool of intellectual adaptation?
* we live in a literate society where most people learn how to write
* to enhance memory, we write things down
58
What does the base-10 system in other cultures tell us about how culture affects cognition?
* culture changes the way we think about numbers in comparison to other cultures
* Chinese kids able to count higher than American kids
59
What is the Zone of Proximal Development?
activities in which the learner can do it with guidance
60
What is scaffolding?
more skilled individual provides a temporary framework that supports children's thinking at a higher level than children can manage on their own
| i.e. choosing which puzzle we think Andrew can do at his level
61
What is stretching?
children can perform one step above their assessed competence when under the guiding hand of the more experienced partner
62
What are the components of guided participation?
* scaffolding (done by the more knowledgable other)
* stretching (done by the child)
63
Under what process does cognitive change occur?
internalization
64
What is internalization?
internalizing the voice of the more knowledgable members of society
65
How did Vygotsky and Piaget interpret self-talk differently?
* Vygotsky saw it as "private speech"
* Piaget saw it as "egocentric speech"
66
What does Vygotsky's "private speech" entail?
tool used by preschooler and young grade schoolchildren to plan and regulate their problen-solving activities
67
What does Piaget's "egocentric speech" entail?
nonsocial speech that reflected children's egocentric perspective
68
In Vygotsky's "private speech," ____ drives ____.
In Piaget's "egocentric speech," ____ drives ____.
* Vygotsky: language drives cognitive development
* Piaget: cognitive development drives language
69
What three reasons did Vygotsky give about what cooperative learning is ideal for cognitive development?
* motivation
* requires explanation and working through conflicts
* more likely to use higher level processing
70
What is the information processing theory of cognitive development?
input --> we do something to it --> output
71
In the metaphor of the mind as a computer:
Hardware = ____
Software = ____
Hardware = nervous system
Software = rules, strategies, mental programs
72
In the information processing theory of cognitive development, development is ____ and ____.
continuous; hierarchical
73
What is the term **continuous** defined as in terms of cognitive change?
* changes constantly occurring, rather than being restricted to special transition periods
* occurring in small increments, rather than abruptly
74
What is sensory memory?
refers to sights, sounds, and other sensations that are just entering the cognitive system and are briefly held in raw form until they are identified
75
What is working memory?
a workspace in which information from the environment and relevant knowledge are brought together, attended to, and actively processed
76
What is long-term memory?
refers to information retained on an enduring basis
77
What is the capacity and duration of sensory memory?
* moderate amount of information (3-7 units)
* fraction of a second (0.5-3 seconds)
78
What is the capacity and duration of working memory?
* limited capacity (7-9 chunks)
* 5 to 15 seconds (without rehearsal)
79
What is the capacity and duration of long-term memory?
* infinite capacity
* permanent duration
80
True or False:
The capacity and duration of working memory remains constant over development.
False
Its capacity and speed increase over childhood and adolescence.
81
What are three sources of learning and memory development?
1. processing speed
2. mental strategies
3. content knowledge
82
How does processing speed change over time?
children execute basic processes with greater speed over the course of childhood
83
What contributes to increased processing speed?
biological maturation and experience
| i.e. myelination and increased connectivity
84
What are two mental strategies that emerge between ages 5-8?
1. rehearsal
2. selective attention
85
What is selective attention?
the process of intentionally focusing on **information that is most relevant** to the current goal
86
What is rehearsal?
the process of **repeating information over and over** to aid memory
87
What is utilization deficiency?
initial uses of strategies do not improve memory as much as later uses
| i.e. learning how to type
88
What is the overlapping-waves theory?
children use a variety of approaches to solve problems, and with age and experience, strategies that produce more successful performance become more prevalent
89
What theory of development is similar to the overlapping-waves theory?
Darwin's theory of variation and selection
90
Memory span is affected by ____ knowledge.
prior
91
The more you ____, the more you ____.
The more you know, the more you **can** know.
92
In the ten year-old chess experts vs. typical adults task, what did the results show?
10 year-old chess experts outperformed the adults by a large margin when memorizing chess pieces, but performed worse when memorizing numbers
