Cognitive Development in Infancy

Question 1

Piaget

Answer 1

theory of cognitive development, unifies biology and experience

Question 2

adaptation

Answer 2

adjusting to new environmental demands

Question 3

schemes

Answer 3

actions or mental representations that organize knowledge

Question 4

assimilation

Answer 4

children use their existing schemes to deal with new info or experiences, like incorporating “bike” and “motorcycle” into the category of “car” heard from a caregiver

Question 5

accommodation

Answer 5

children adjust their schemes to take new info and experiences into account, like removing “bike” and “motorcycle” from the category of “car”

Question 6

organization

Answer 6

grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order system to make sense of the world

Question 7

disequilibrium

Answer 7

cognitive conflict when counterexamples to existing schemes present themselves, necessitating assimilation or accommodation

Question 8

equilibrium

Answer 8

mechanism by which children shift from one stage of thought to the next, maintaining balance of understanding through assimilation and accommodation

Question 9

sensorimotor stage

Answer 9

birth to about 2 years old

Question 10

substages of sensorimotor stage

Answer 10

1-Simple reflexes-1 month
sensation and action coordinated primarily through
reflexive behaviors such as rooting and sucking
2-First habits & primary circular reactions-1-4 months
infant coordinates sensation & 2 types of schemes
3-Secondary circular reactions-4-8 months
more object-oriented, moves beyond preoccupation with
self, imitates simple actions but only those s/he is
already able to produce
4-coordination of secondary circular reactions-8-12 mo.
hand-eye coordination, actions become more outward
directed, coordinate schemes and intentionality
5-tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity-12-18
mo.
6-internalization of schemes-18-24 months
ability to use primitive symbols

Question 11

habit

Answer 11

scheme based on a reflex that has become completely separated from its eliciting stimulus, like sucking even when no bottle is present

Question 12

circular reaction

Answer 12

repetitive action

Question 13

primary circular reaction

Answer 13

scheme based on the attempt to reproduce an event that initially occurred by chance

Question 14

secondary circular reaction

Answer 14

scheme that is not intentional or goal-directed, but is repeated because of consequences, like shaking a rattle because of fascination

Question 15

coordination of secondary circular reaction

Answer 15

infants coordinate schemes with intentional action, like manipulating a stick in order to bring a desired toy within reach

Question 16

tertiary circular reactions

Answer 16

schemes in which infant purposely explores new possibilities with objects, continually doing new things to them and exploring the results

Question 17

primitive symbol

Answer 17

internalized sensory image or word that represents an event, so that the infant can think about concrete events w/out directly acting them out or perceiving them

Question 18

object permanence

Answer 18

understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched, achieved by the end of the sensorimotor period

Question 19

the A-not-B error

Answer 19

when a toy is hidden at A and later at B, the child still looks for the toy at location A, not consistent and sensitive to the delay between hidings

Question 20

core knowledge approach

Answer 20

Spelke, infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems involving space, number sense, object permanence, and language

Question 21

attention

Answer 21

focusing of mental resources on select info, improving cognitive processing, happens by 4 months old

Question 22

orienting/investigative process

Answer 22

directing attention to potentially important locations in the environment (where) and recognizing objects and their features (what)

Question 23

sustained attention

Answer 23

focused attention, new stimuli elicits orienting response followed by sustained attention

Question 24

habituation

Answer 24

decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus

Question 25

dishabituation

Answer 25

increase in responsiveness after a change in stimulation

Question 26

joint attention

Answer 26

individuals focus on the same object or event, requires the ability to track another person's behavior (like following a gaze), one person's directing another's attention, and reciprocal interaction

Question 27

memory

Answer 27

retention of info over time, as a part of encoding

Question 28

encoding

Answer 28

process by which info gets into memory

Question 29

implicit memory

Answer 29

memory without conscious recollection, such as memory of skills and routine procedures performed automatically

Question 30

explicit memory

Answer 30

conscious memory of facts and experiences

Question 31

infantile/childhood amnesia

Answer 31

inability to remember events that happened before 3 years of age

Question 32

deferred imitation

Answer 32

infant copies someone but after a delay of hours or days, having retained that memory to repeat it

Question 33

categories

Answer 33

group objects, events, and characteristics on the basis of common properties

Question 34

concepts

Answer 34

ideas about what categories represent

Question 35

perceptual categorization

Answer 35

based on similar perceptual features of objects (such as size, color, and movement) as well as parts of objects (such as legs for animals)

Question 36

conceptual categorization

Answer 36

the ability (beginning at 7-9 months) to categorize things correctly even though they share similar features, such as birds being animals and airplanes being vehicles

Question 37

Gesell

Answer 37

developed a test that helped sort out babies with normal functioning from ones with abnormal functioning; test has 4 categories of behavior: motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social; DQ combines subscores into an overall score

Question 38

developmental quotient

Answer 38

DQ, Gesell test, combines subscores of motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social into one score

Question 39

Bayley Scales of Infant Development III

Answer 39

Bayley, assesses infant behavior and predicts later development; has 5 subscales: cognitive, language, motor (these 3 directly w/ infant), socioemotional, and adaptive (these 2 thru parent questionnaire)

Question 40

Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence

Answer 40

focuses on the infant's ability to process info by encoding an object's attributes, detecting similarities & differences, forming & retrieving mental representations, only infant test to correlate with later IQ scores

Question 41

language

Answer 41

form of communication based on a system of symbols, all languages share the characteristics of infinite generativity and organizational rules

Question 42

infinite generativity

Answer 42

ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules

Question 43

phonology

Answer 43

sound system of a language, including sounds that are used and how they may be combined

Question 44

morphology

Answer 44

units of meaning involved in word formation

Question 45

syntax

Answer 45

the way words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences

Question 46

semantics

Answer 46

meaning of words and sentences

Question 47

pragmatics

Answer 47

appropriate use of language in different contexts

Question 48

infant communication milestones

Answer 48

``` crying-birth cooing-2-4 months recognizing own name-5 months-7 months babbling-6 months gesturing, esp. pointing-8-12 months first words-18 months ```

Question 49

vocabulary spurt

Answer 49

rapid increase in vocabulary beginning around 18 months old

Question 50

overextension

Answer 50

tendency to apply a word to inappropriate objects

Question 51

underextension

Answer 51

tendency to apply a word too narrowly, when the child fails to use a word to name a relevant event or object

Question 52

telegraphic language

Answer 52

use of short and precise words without grammatical markers such as articles, auxiliary verbs, and other connectives: "want ball"

Question 53

Broca's area

Answer 53

left frontal lobe of brain involved in producing words, damage will result in difficulty producing words correctly

Question 54

Wernicke's area

Answer 54

left hemisphere region involved in language comprehension, damage will result in poor comprehension and often fluent but incomprehensible speech

Question 55

aphasia

Answer 55

damage to Broca's or Wernicke's area that produces a loss or impairment of language processing

Question 56

Chomsky

Answer 56

humans are biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time and in a certain way through a LAD (supported by evidence: uniformity of language milestones across languages and cultures, children create language even w/out well-formed input, biological substrates of language

Question 57

language acquisition device

Answer 57

LAD, Chomsky, biological endowment enabling a child to detect phonology, syntax, and semantics

Question 58

Tomasello

Answer 58

interaction view of language, emphasizes that children learn language in specific contexts, through joint attention with caregivers (like a dad reading a book to his son)

Question 59

child-directed speech

Answer 59

language spoken at a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences

Question 60

recasting

Answer 60

rephrasing something the child has said, turning it into a question or restating the child's immature utterance in the form of a fully grammatical sentence

Question 61

expanding

Answer 61

restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, what a child has said

Question 62

labeling

Answer 62

identifying names of objects

Question 63

interactionist view of language acquisition

Answer 63

incorporates both biological predispositions and environmental contributions for how language is acquired