Cognitive Development in Infants/Toddlers 1

Question 1

sensorimotor stage

Answer 1

spans the first two years of life where toddlers “think” with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment and cannot yet carry our many activities inside their heads

Question 2

schemes

Answer 2

organized ways of making sense of experience

Question 3

adaption

Answer 3

involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment

Question 4

organization

Answer 4

process that takes place internally apart from direct contact with the environment

Question 5

assimilation

Answer 5

using current schemes to interpret the external world

Question 6

accommodation

Answer 6

creating new schemes or adjusting old ones after noticing that the current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely

Question 7

circular reaction

Answer 7

provides a special means of adapting their first schemes; it involves stumbling onto a new experience caused by the baby’s own motor activity; the reaction is circular because the infant tries to repeat the event again and again, a sensorimotor response that originally occurred by chance becomes strengthened into a new scheme

Question 8

reflexive schemes

Answer 8

• birth to 1 month

- newborn reflexes

Question 9

primary circular reactions

Answer 9

• 1 to 4 months

- simple motor habits centered around the infant’s own body; limited anticipation of events

Question 10

secondary circular reactions

Answer 10

• 4 to 8 months

- actions aimed at repeating interesting effects in the surrounding world; imitation of familiar behaviors

Question 11

coordination of secondary circular reactions

Answer 11

• 8 to 12 months
• intentional or goal oriented behavior; ability to find a hidden object in the first location in which it is hidden (object permanence); improved anticipation of events; imitation of behaviors slightly different from those the infant usually performs

Question 12

tertiary circular reactions

Answer 12

• 12 to 18 months
• exploration of the properties of objects by acting on them in novel ways; imitation of novel behaviors; ability to search in several locations for a hidden object

Question 13

mental representation

Answer 13

• 18 months to 2 years
• internal depictions of objects and events as indicated by sudden solutions to problems; ability to find an object that has been moved while out of sight (invisible displacement); deferred imitation; and make-believe play

Question 14

What are babies’ motivations for primary circular reactions?

Answer 14

basic needs

Question 15

intentional/goal directed behavior

Answer 15

coordinating schemes deliberately to solve simple problems

Question 16

object permanence

Answer 16

the understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight

Question 17

What is a means-end action sequence?

Answer 17

foundation for all problem solving

Question 18

A-not-B search error

Answer 18

if they reach several times for an object at a first hiding place then see it moved to a second the still search for it in the first hiding place