Cognitive Development Flashcards
Piaget’s Theory
Children construct schemas, or mental patterns that tell them how things relate to one another and what they should expect to experience in the world.
Cognitive development
Refers to an individual’s intellectual growth from infancy to adulthood.
Assimilation
Addition of new items to schemas.
Accommodation
Changing of schemas in response to new information.
Piaget’s Stages of Development #1
Sensory-motor stage: birth-2, creation of object permanence (the understanding that objects or events continue to exist even if they can no longer be heard, touch, or seen.
Piaget’s Stages of Development #2
Preoperational period: 2-7, symbolic representation (words or mental images), use of language; learn conservation (value is constant even if the appearance or arrangement changes).
Piaget’s stages of development #3
Concrete operations: 7-11, logical thinking about concrete objects; learn empathy; learn new, complex set of schemas of ideas called operations.
Piaget’s stages of development #4
Formal operations: 11-adult, abstract reasoning and hypothesis testing.
Schema
Mental categories that, like computer files, contain knowledge about people, events, and concepts. Because schemas influence which stimuli we attend to, how we interpret stimuli, and how we respond to stimuli, they can bias and distort our thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors.
Conservation
Refers to the fact that even though the shape of some object or substance is changed, the total amount remains the same.
Egocentrism
Thinking refers to seeing and thinking of the world only from your own viewpoint and having difficulty appreciating someone else’s viewpoint.