Cognitive Development Flashcards
Jean Piaget: How does development happen: Continuously
-Equilibration: people balance knowledge to create stable schemas (understandings of the world). When in disequilibrium, need to adapt/something needs to change…
–Assimilation: incorporate information into an preexisting schema
–Accommodation: adapt current knowledge structures in response to a new experience
Jean Piaget: How does development happen: Discontinuously
-Invariant sequence: sequence of stages are stable for all people through all time; stages are not skipped
–Qualitative change: children of different ages/stages think in different ways
–Brief transitions: transitions to higher stages of thinking are not necessarily continuous
Piagetian Stages: Sensorimotor
–Birth-2yrs
–Understands world through senses and actions
Piagetian Stages: Preoperational
–2yrs-7yrs
–Understands world through language and mental images
Piagetian Stages: Concrete Operational
–7yrs-12yrs
–Understands world through logical thinking and categories
Piagetian Stages: Formal Operational
–12yrs onward
– Understands world through hypothetical thinking and scientific reasoning
Preoperational Stage: Symbiotic play
an object can be represented by another item
Preoperational Stage: Egocentrism (what is 3 mountain task)
- perceive the world from their own POV
- difficulty with tasks involving perspective-taking (3 mountain tasks)
- 3 mountain task- doll in front of a mountain, give child pictures of different POV of the mountain, the child had to choose the picture that is the doll’s POV
Preoperational Stage: Centration
focus on a striking feature to the exclusion of other less striking features
-leads to difficulty with conservation–the notion that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in form (conservation tasks)
Concrete Operational Stage: Classifications
- the ability to understand hierarchies
- Can solve conservation tasks but not more advanced
- -difficulty with tasks that require systematic thinking (Pendulum Problem) shorter, longer, heavier, lighter, metal object
- -difficulty with tasks that require deductive Sensori reasoning (feather)
Sensorimotor Stage: Object Permanence
the idea that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible
Sensorimotor Stage: A-not-B error
reaching to location A even after object moved to location B; reveals incomplete sense of object permanence
Sociocultural Theory: How does development happen?Zone of proximal development
range between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal social support
Sociocultural Theory: How does development happen? Intersubjectivity
shared communication
Sociocultural Theory: How does development happen? Joint attention
infants and social partners focus on common referent
Sociocultural Theory: How does development happen? Social referencing
children look to social partners for guidance on how to respond to unfamiliar events
Sociocultural Theory: How does development happen? Social scaffolding
more competent people provide temporary frameworks that lead children to high-level thinking
Information Processing Theory (Vygotsky)
- Computational (computer) system
- Continuous cognitive change
- Particularly concerned with learning, memory, and problem-solving skills
- Attention, working memory, long-term memory, categorization, decision-making
IP: Development means changes in processing
Example: Executive Function
Processes that allow for control of behavior:
-Working Memory: holds and processes information that is being “worked on” in some way. Working memory consists of at least three components: a short-term store, a processing component, and a control mechanism
Inhibitory Control: involves the ability to focus on relevant stimuli in the presence of irrelevant stimuli
task-switching: that involves the ability to unconsciously shift attention between one task and another
Information Processing Example: Executive Function & DCCS
- The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task is widely used to study the development of EF
- Children are asked to sort cards by shape or color and then switch and sort by the other dimension
- 3-year-olds perseverate, while 4-year-olds can switch rules
- Switch costs are still seen in adulthood
IP: How does development happen?: Domain-general processing & Domain-specific processing
- Domain general – same process, different areas/topics
- –Kail (1988)
- –Memory capacity same for multiple tasks
- Domain specific – particular, specific process for unique areas/topics
- –Chi & Ceci (1987)
- –Chess digit span specific to chess players
Overregularization errors
are grammatical mistakes that young children make because they are applying grammatical rules too stringently
private speech
self-talk
logical extension
When learning a word, children extend it to other objects in the same category.
mutual exclusivity assumption
When learning new words, young children assume that objects have only one label or name. in learning new words: They assume that objects have only one label or name.
joint attention
is the shared focus of two individuals on an object
intersubjectivity
is having a shared, common agreement in the definition of an object. So most people would experience intersubjectivity when asked to picture an apple- the definition of an apple would be the same.
