Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Viewpoint, & Information-Processing Perspective

Question 1

Cognitive Development
the activity of knowing and the
processes through which knowledge is acquired.

Answer 1

Cognition

Question 2

Looks at changes, or stages, in
the quality of cognitive functioning. It is concerned with how the mind
structures its activities and adapts to the environment.

Answer 2

Piagetian Approach

Question 3

• in Piaget’s theory, a basic
  life function that enables an
  organism to adapt to its
  environment.

Answer 3

Intelligence

Question 4

• Piaget’s term for the state of
  affairs in which there is a balanced,
  or harmonious, relationship
  between one’s thought processes
  and the environment.

Answer 4

Cognitive Equilibrium

Question 5

• one who gains knowledge by
  acting or otherwise operating on objects and events to discover their properties.

Answer 5

Constructivist

Question 6

• an organized pattern of thought or action that one constructs
  to interpret some aspect of one’s experience (also called cognitive
  structure).

Answer 6

Scheme

Question 7

is the tendency to create categories, by observing the
characteristics that individual members of a category have in
common.

Answer 7

Organization

Question 8

is a term used for how children handle new information about
the environment, achieved through processes of assimilation and
accommodation. An inborn tendency to adjust to the demands of
the environment.

Answer 8

Adaptation

Question 9

is taking new information and incorporating it into
existing cognitive structures.

Answer 9

Assimilation

Question 10

is adjusting one’s cognitive structures to fit the
new information.

Answer 10

Accommodation

Question 11

Toddler who has
never seen
anything fly but
birds thinks that all
flying objects are
“birdies.”

Answer 11

Equilibrium

Question 12

Seeing an
airplane in the
sky prompts
child to call
the flying
object a
birdie.

Answer 12

Assimilation

Question 13

Toddler experiences
disequilibrium upon
noticing that the new
birdie has no
feathers and doesn’t
flap its wings.

Answer 13

Accomodation

Question 14

Forms hierarchical
scheme consisting of
a superordinate class
(flying objects) and
two subordinate
classes (birdies and
airplanes)

Answer 14

Organization

Question 15

• Sequencing fixed.
• Individual differences entering emerging stages

Answer 15

Invariant developmental sequence

Question 16

• The tendency to
  attribute life to objects that are not
  alive.

Answer 16

Animism

Question 17

• Children assume
  everyone else thinks, perceives, and
  feels as they do.

Answer 17

Egocentrism

Question 18

• the ability to keep the true
  properties or characteristics of an object in mind despite the
  deceptive appearance the object has assumed; notably lacking
  among young children during the preconceptual period.

Answer 18

Appearance/reality distinction

Question 19

• the recognition that
  the properties of an object or
  substance do not change when its
  appearance is altered in some
  superficial way.

Answer 19

Conservation

Question 20

• the process whereby we explain and predict what people do
  based on what we understand their desires and beliefs to be.
• develops after preschool age

Answer 20

Belief-desire reasoning

Question 21

• a type of task used in theory of mind studies in which children must infer that another person does not
  possess knowledge that they possess.

Answer 21

False-belief task

Question 22

• Piaget’s term for a child’s uneven
  cognitive performance; an inability
  to solve certain problems even
  though one can solve similar
  problems requiring the same
  mental operations.

Answer 22

Horizontal décalage

Question 23

• a formal operational ability to
  generate hypotheses and use
  deductive reasoning
• Benchmark for formal operations
• Thought is rational, systematic
  and abstract.

Answer 23

Hypothetico-deductive reasoning

Question 24

• development of an individual over his or her lifetime.

Answer 24

Ontogenetic Development

Question 25

• change over relatively brief periods of time

Answer 25

Microgenetic Development

Question 26

• changes over evolutionary time

Answer 26

Phylogenetic Development

Question 27

• changes in one’s culture

Answer 27

Sociohistorical Development

Question 28

• the temporary support that
  parents, teachers, or others give a child in
  doing a task until the child can do it alone.

Answer 28

Scaffolding

Question 29

• Involved in planning and monitoring
  what is attended to, and what is
  done with the information

Answer 29

Control processes or executive
functions

Question 30

– knowledge of one’s
cognitive abilities and processes
related to thinking

Answer 30

Metacognition

Question 31

– thought without
awareness
-An early developing ability that
shows little difference across age

Answer 31

Implicit cognition

Question 32

– thought with
awareness
- Large age differences

Answer 32

Explicit cognition

Question 33

increases dramatically
- Myelination of reticular formation through puberty

Answer 33

Attention span

Question 34

: Ignoring Irrelevant Info
- Also improves with age; less distraction

Answer 34

Selective Attention

Question 35

: Dismissing Information That is
Clearly Irrelevant
- Improves with age; neurological maturation

Answer 35

Cognitive Inhibition

Question 36

– schemes for recurring events
organized in terms of causal and
temporal sequences
- Organizes world
- Tend to remember info

Answer 36

Scripts

Question 37

– based on repetition
- Older children use rehearsal more
efficiently
- Active or cumulative
–
repeating several earlier items as they
rehearse a successive word

Answer 37

Rehearsal

Question 38

• Type of problem solving requiring
  one to make an inference

Answer 38

Reasoning

Question 39

• Applying existing knowledge to
  help reason about something not
  known yet

Answer 39

Analogical Reasoning

Question 40

– knowing about
analogical reasoning is important
- Teaching children the value of
reasoning by analogy increases use of
this type of thinking

Answer 40

Metacognition