Cognitive development in infancy, childhood and adolescence / Piaget's Theories Flashcards
intermodal processing is…
associating sensations of an object from different senses and matches their own actions to behaviours they have observed visually
explicit memory requires maturation of
the hippocampus over at least the first 18 months
by 10 months infants are..
already forming basic level categories for animals
Leppanen, Richmond, Vogel-Farley, Moulson, and Nelson (2009), found that like adults,
infants were able to discriminate happy– sad (between category) differences in facial expressions and were not able to discriminate within category (happy– happy) facial expressions.
Sensory processing occurs in
anatomically discrete neural modules
By three months, infants pay more attention
to a person if speech sounds are synchronised with lip movements
By four to five months, they
follow a conversation by shifting visual attention between two speakers
Explicit memory refers to
memories that can be consciously recalled
Implicit memory refers to
memory expressed in behaviour that may not be represented consciously
Working memory involves
information held briefly in consciousness.
Representational flexibility is the ability to
retrieve memories despite changes in the cues that were present at encoding
complete development of explicit memory depends on ..
maturation of the hippocampi and the temporal lobes sometime between eight and 18 months
in the earliest days of life, infants prefer
novel words to those to which they habituated a day before, suggesting recognition memory that lasts at least a day
EEG recordings suggest that five-month olds can
tell the difference between tones of two different pitches — preferring the novel one — a day later
rudiments of working memory can be seen by
six months of age, as infants appear to be able to hold spatial information in mind for three to five seconds
Research also suggests that working memory deficits may eventuate in some children born prematurely or of low birth weight, due to
the impact of damage to, or early disturbance in, cerebral development
Piaget had a keen interest in epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with
the nature of knowledge.
Assimilation
involves interpreting actions or events in terms of one’s present schemas — that is, fitting reality into one’s existing ways of understanding. (fitting reality into existing knowledge)
Schema
is an organised, repeatedly exercised pattern of thought or behaviour
Accommodation
is the modification of schemas to fit reality.
For Piaget, the driving force behind cognitive development is
equilibration
Equilibration is..
balancing assimilation and accommodation to adapt to the world.
According to Piaget, people assimilate and accommodate when
confronted with new information throughout their lives.
At each stage of development, however, children use a distinct underlying logic, or ________ , to guide their thinking.
blank answer: structure of thought
The same four stages (1), (2), (3), (4), occur in the same sequence for everyone,
Answer: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational
A fundamental principle of Piaget’s developmental theory is that.
every stage builds on the next, as children wrestle with problems their old structures will not resolve and work their way towards new solutions by trying out and adjusting schemas currently in their repertoire
sensorimotor stage
infants think with their hands, mouths and senses, lasts from birth to about two years of age.
Sensorimotor thought primarily takes the form of..
action
According to Piaget, the practical knowledge infants develop during this period forms
the basis for their later ability to represent things mentally.
object permanence
the recognition that objects exist in time and space independent of the child’s actions on, or observation of, them
According to Piaget, before the age of about _______, an object such as a ball exists for an infant only when it is in sight. If it is hidden from view, it no longer exists.
blank answer: eight to 12 months
During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely
egocentric
preoperational stage begins roughly around (1)___ and lasts until (2)____.
(1) Answer: age two (2) Answer: ages five to seven.
preoperational stage is…
characterised by the emergence of symbolic thought — the ability to use arbitrary symbols, such as words, to represent concepts.
(To put it another way, when children can play with the world in their minds, they no longer have to think exclusively with their hands or mouths.)
Preoperational thought continues, however, to be limited by ____
egocentrism
A related limitation of preoperational thought is
centration
centration is
the tendency to focus, or centre, on one perceptually striking feature of an object without considering other features that might be relevant
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development:
Sensorimotor
0-2 Years (Thought and action are virtually identical, as the infant explores the world with its senses and behaviours; object permanence develops; the child is completely egocentric.)
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development:
Preoperational
2-7 Years (Symbolic thought develops; object permanence is firmly established; the child cannot coordinate different physical attributes of an object or different perspectives.)
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development:
Concrete operational
7-12 Years (The child is able to perform reversible mental operations on representations of objects; understanding of conservation develops; the child can apply logic to concrete situations.)
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development:
Formal operational
12+ Years (The adolescent (or adult) can apply logic more abstractly; hypothetical thinking develops.)
Operations
are internalised (i.e., mental) actions the individual can use to manipulate, transform and then return an object to its original state
conservation
basic properties of an object or situation remain stable (are conserved) even though superficial properties may be changed.
Another hallmark of formal operational reasoning is
the ability to frame hypotheses and figure out how to test them systematically
the time it takes to transition through the stage depends largely on
environmental factors.
Piaget began his work studying
intelligence
his theory is fundamentally about the way
intelligence develops in children.
