Exam 2 Flashcards
Assimilation
occurs when children incorporate new information into their existing knowledge schemas.
Schemes
are actions or mental representations that organize knowledge. change with age
Accommodation
occurs when children adjust their schemas to fit new information and experiences.
Piaget’s Concept of Organization
isolated behaviors and thoughts are grouped into a higher order system.
Equilibration
mechanism by which children shift from one stage of thought to the next. It occurs as children seek to resolve cognitive conflict, or disequilibrium.
sensorimotor stage
birth-2 years. many stages
simple reflexes substage
0–1 month. involves coordinating sensation and action through reflexive behaviors (rooting and sucking).
Primary circular reactions
1–4 months. is a scheme based on the infant’s attempt to reproduce an event that initially occurred by chance.
secondary circular reactions
4–8 months. involves the infant becoming more object-oriented or focused on the world, moving beyond preoccupation with the self in sensorimotor interactions.
coordination of secondary circular reactions
8–12 months. includes several significant changes that involve the coordination of schemes and intentionality.
tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity substage
12–18 months. the infant becomes intrigued by the variety of properties that objects possess and by the many things they can make happen to objects.
internalization of schemes substage
18–24 months. the infant develops the ability to use primitive symbols.
Object permanence
involves understanding that objects and events continue to exist, even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.
Preoperational Stage
encompasses the period from 2 years to 7 years of age. Stable concepts are formed, mental reasoning emerges, and egocentrism and magical beliefs dominate the child’s world. The term preoperational emphasizes that a child is not able to think in an operational way.
Operations
are reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously could do only physically.
symbolic function substage
first substage of preoperational thought, occurring roughly between the ages of 2 and 4. In this substage, the young child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present.
Egocentrism
the inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective.
Animism
is the belief that inanimate objects have “lifelike” qualities and are capable of action.
Intuitive Thought Substage
occurs between approximately 4 and 7 years of age. Children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions.
Centration
involves focusing or centering attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.
conservation
which is the awareness that altering an object’s or a substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties.
concrete operational stage
lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age, children can perform concrete operations, and they can reason logically as long as reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples.
Horizontal décalage
Piaget’s concept that similar abilities do not appear at the same time within a stage of development.
Classification
One important skill that characterizes children in the concrete operational stage is the ability to classify things and to consider their relationships.
seriation
the ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension)
transitivity
the ability to logically combine relations to reach certain conclusions
formal operational stage
individuals between 11 years and 15 years old move beyond concrete experiences and think in abstract and more logical ways.
Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
the formal operational concept that adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or best guesses, about ways to solve problems, such as an algebraic equation. They then systematically deduce, or conclude, which is the best path to follow in solving the equation.
zone of proximal development (ZPD)
Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but that can be learned with the guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children.
Scaffolding
refers to the changing level of support that is provided to a child over the course of a teaching session.
private speech
when children use language to guide their behavior; it is an important tool in childhood years.
Teaching Strategies
1.Assess the child’s ZPD.
2.Use the child’s ZPD in teaching.
3.Use more-skilled peers as teachers.
4.Monitor and encourage children’s use of private speech.
5.Place instruction in a meaningful context.
6.Transform the classroom with Vygotskian ideas.
information-processing approach
analyzes how children manipulate information, monitor it, and create strategies for handling it.
Encoding
is the process by which information gets into memory.
Automaticity
refers to the ability to process information with little or no effort.
Strategy construction
is the creation of new procedures for processing information.
metacognition
means knowing about knowing.
Attention
is the focusing of mental resources.
Selective attention
is focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant.
Divided attention
involves concentrating on more than one activity at the same time.
Sustained attention
(vigilance) is the ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time.
Executive attention
involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.
Orienting/Investigative Process
Attention in the first year of life is dominated by an orienting/investigative process.
This process involves directing attention to potentially important locations in the environment and recognizing objects and their features.
Between 3 months and 9 months of age, infants can deploy their attention more flexibly and quickly.
habituation
decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus
dishabituation
the recovery of responsiveness after a change in stimulation
joint attention
in which individuals focus on the same object or event.
Memory
is the retention of information over time.
Short-term memory
is a memory system with a limited capacity in which information is usually retained for 15–30 s unless strategies are used to retain it longer.
Long-term memory
relatively permanent, long-lasting type of memory.
Working memory
kind of mental “workbench” where individuals actively use memory to manipulate and assemble information when they make decisions, solve problems, and comprehend written and spoken language.
Constructing Memory
Children construct and reconstruct their memories.
schema theory
people mold memories to fit information that already exists in their minds.
Fuzzy trace theory
states that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations:
Verbatim memory trace, which consists of precise details
Fuzzy trace or gist, which is the central idea of the information
First Memories
Infants can remember perceptual-motor information. Even by 2½ months, the baby’s memory is incredibly detailed.
Implicit memory
refers to memory without conscious recollection.
Explicit memory
refers to the conscious memory of facts and experiences.
Explicit memory improves across the second year of life.
Infantile Amnesia
The inability to remember little if anything from the first 3 years of your life is called infantile, or childhood, amnesia.
Memory Span
Rehearsal of information and speed of processing are important factors in memory span.
Strategies
involve the use of mental activities to improve the processing of information.
Organization
If children logically organize information when they encode it, their memory benefits.
Elaboration
involves engaging in more extensive processing of information.
Imagery
Using mental imagery can help young schoolchildren to remember pictures.
Thinking
involves manipulating and transforming information in memory. We think in order to reason, reflect, evaluate ideas, solve problems, and make decisions.
Concepts
are cognitive groupings of similar objects, events, people, or ideas.
Infants as young as 3–4 months of age can group together objects with similar appearances, such as animals.
executive function
encompasses a number of high-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex.
Critical thinking
involves grasping the deeper meaning of ideas, keeping an open mind about different approaches and perspectives, and deciding for oneself what to believe or do.
Scientific Thinking
Like scientists, children ask fundamental questions about reality and seek answers to questions that seem trivial or unanswerable to other people.
Scientific reasoning often is aimed at identifying causal relations.
Intelligence
the ability to solve problems and to adapt to and learn from experiences.
The Binet Tests
Binet devised a method to identify children who were unable to learn in school.
Mental age (MA)
an individual’s level of mental development relative to others.
Intelligence quotient (IQ)
is a person’s mental age divided by chronological age (CA), multiplied by 100. If mental age is the same as chronological age, then the person’s IQ is 100.
normal distribution
is symmetrical, with most scores falling in the middle of the possible range of scores and few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range.
The Wechsler Scales
provide an overall IQ score and several composite scores in different areas of intelligence.
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
proposes three main types of intelligence.
Analytical intelligence
ability to analyze, evaluate, compare, and contrast.
Creative intelligence
ability to create, design, invent, originate, and imagine.
Practical intelligence
the ability to use, apply, implement, and put into practice.
Howard Gardner
Eight Frames of Mind
Arnold Gesell
Tests of Infant Intelligence
developed a measure that helped sort out typically developing from atypically developing babies.
The current version of the Gesell test has four categories of behavior: motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social.
developmental quotient (DQ)
combines subscores in these categories to provide an overall score.
Bayley Scales of Infant Development
used in assessing infant development.
The current version, Bayley-III, has five scales: Cognitive, Language, Motor, Socioemotional, and Adaptive.
Language
form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols.
Infinite generativity
the ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules and is a basic characteristic of human language.
Phonology
is the sound system of language. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language.
Morphology
word formation based on meaning. A morpheme is the smallest unit of sound that carries meaning in a language.
Syntax
the way words are combined for acceptable phrases and sentences.
Semantics
refers to the meaning of words and sentences.
Pragmatics
refers to the use of appropriate conversation and knowledge underlying the use of language in context.
Babbling and Other Vocalizations
Early vocalizations are to practice making sounds, to communicate, and to attract attention.
Gestures
Infants start using gestures, such as showing and pointing, at about 8–12 months of age.
Recognizing Language Sounds
Long before they begin to learn words, infants can make fine distinctions among the sounds of the language.
First Words
Infants recognize their name when someone says it as early as 5 months of age.
The infant’s first spoken word usually occurs between 10 months and 15 months of age.
Two-Word Utterances
By 18–24 months of age, two-word utterances begin to occur, relying heavily on gesture, tone, and context in order to provide meaning:
Identification: “See doggie.”
Location: “Book there.”
Repetition: “More milk.”
Possession: “My candy.”
Attribution: “Big car.”
Agent-action: “Mama walk.”
Question: “Where ball?”
Telegraphic speech
the use of short and precise words to communicate and is characteristic of young children’s two- or three-word utterances.
Metaphor
an implied comparison between two ideas that is conveyed by the abstract meaning contained in the words used to make the comparison.
Satire
literary work in which irony, derision, or wit are used to expose folly or wickedness.
dialect
language distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation
Broca’s area
area in the left frontal lobe of the brain involved in producing words.
Wernicke’s area
area of the left hemisphere involved in language comprehension.
aphasia
a loss or impairment of language processing.
language acquisition device (LAD)
is a theoretical construct developed by Noam Chomsky, who proposes that a biological endowment enables children to detect certain language categories, such as phonology, syntax, and semantics.
Child-directed speech
language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences.
Recasting
rephrasing something the child has said, perhaps turning it into a question or restating the child’s
Expanding
is restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, what a child has said.
Labeling
identifying the names of objects.
Interactionist View of Language
emphasizes the contributions of both biology and experience in language development.
