DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY (CHAP 4) Flashcards
are mental categories of related events, objects, and
knowledge.
psychological
structures that organize experience
Schemes
- According to Piaget, taking in information that is compatible with what one already
knows. Imagine a baby who has the familiar grasping scheme. She will soon discover that the
grasping scheme also works well on blocks, toy cars, and other small objects.
Assimilation
changing existing knowledge based on new knowledge. Soon
the
infant learns that some objects can only be lifted with two hands and that some can’t be lifted at all.
Changing the scheme so that it works for new objects (e.g., using two hands to grasp heavy objects)
illustrates accommodation
Accommodation
A process by which children reorganize their schemes to return to a state of
equilibrium when
disequilibrium occurs. Disequilibrium occurs when children discover that their current schemes are
not adequate because they are spending too much time accommodating and much less time
assimilating.
Equilibration
- from birth to roughly 2 years of age, is the first of Piaget’s four periods of cognitive development
Sensorimotor Thinking
reflexes are first modified by experience
1 and 4 months
infants become active experimenters
about 12 months
understanding, acquired in infancy, that objects exist independently of oneself
Object permanence
infants have full understanding of object
permanence.
approximately 18 months
difficulty in seeing the world from another’s outlook
Egocentrism
- They may even credit inanimate objects with life and lifelike properties
A preschool child may think that the sun is unhappy on a cloudy
day or that a car hurts when it’s in an accident
Animism
narrowly focused thought that characterizes
preoperational youngsters.
Centration
Child believes that people see the world as he or she does
Egocentrism
Child focuses on one aspect of a problem or situation but ignores other relevant aspects
Centration
Child assumes that an object really is what it appears to be
Appearance as reality
- mental and neural structures that are built-in and that allow the mind to operate
Mental hardware
mental “programs” that are the basis for performing particular tasks
Mental software
processes that determine which information will be processed further by an individual
Attention
An individual views a strong/unfamiliar stimulus &changes in heart rate and brainwave activity occur
Orienting response
- becoming unresponsive to a stimulus that is presented repeatedly
Habituation
a form of learning that involves pairing a neutral stimulus and a response
originally
produced by another
Classical conditioning
- view of learning, proposed by B. F. Skinner, that emphasizes reward and
punishment
Operant conditioning
Older children, adolescents, and young adults learn much simply by watching others behave.
Imitation
refers to people’s
memory of the significant events and experiences of their own lives.
Autobiographical Memory
most youngsters know some number words and have begun to count.
2 years of age
There must be one and only one number name for each object that is counted.
One-to-one principle
Number names must be counted in the same order. A child who counts in the
same sequence—for example, consistently counting four objects as “1, 2, 4, 5”—shows understanding
of this principle.
Stable-order principle
The last number name differs from the previous ones in a counting sequence by
denoting the number of objects
Cardinality principle
mutual, shared understanding among participants in
an activity
Intersubjectivity
cognitive growth results from
children’s involvement in structured activities with others who are more skilled than they.
Guided Participation
e area between the level of performance a child can achieve when working independently
and a higher level of performance that is possible when working under the guidance or direction of
more skilled adults or peers
Zone of Proximal Development
is a style in which teachers gauge the amount of assistance they offer to match the learner’s needs.
Scaffolding
a child’s comments that are not intended for others but are designed instead to help regulate the
child’s own behavior
Private speech
Vygotsky’s term for
thought
inner speech
The basic building blocks of language which are unique sounds that can be joined to create
words.
Phonemes
speech that adults use with infants that is slow and has exaggerated changes in pitch and volume;
Infant-Directed Speech
Infant-Directed Speech also known as
first noted in mothers, although it’s now known that most caregivers talk this way to infants.
motherese
early vowel-like sounds that newborns or babies produce such as “ooooooo” or “ahhhhhh”
Cooing
speechlike sounds that consist of vowel– consonant combinations;
Babbling
a child’s connections between words and referents that are made so quickly that he or she cannot
consider all possible meanings of the word.
Fast Mapping
Parents encourage word learning by carefully watching what interests their children. When toddlers
touch or look at an object, parents often label it for them. When a youngster points to a banana, a
parent may say, “Banana, that’s a banana.”
Joint Attention.
Children hear many unfamiliar words embedded in sentences containing words they already know.
The other words and the overall sentence structure can be helpful clues to a word’s meaning
Sentence Cues
A common mistake is underextension, defining a word too narrowly
Underextension
defining a word too broadly
Overextension
the ability to remember speech sounds briefly; an important skill in
acquiring vocabulary.
Phonological memory
When infants learn two languages simultaneously, they often progress somewhat slowly at first.
Bilingualism
- language-learning style of children whose vocabularies are dominated by names
of objects, persons, or actions
Referential style
- language-learning style of children whose vocabularies include many social
phrases that are used like one word.
Expressive style
- speech used by young children that contains only the words necessary to
convey a message
telegraphic speech
words or endings of words that make a sentence grammatical
grammatical morphemes -
Sometimes children apply rules to words that are exceptions to the rule, errors
grammatical usage that results from applying rules to words that are
exceptions to the rule
overregularizations
