Human Development Flashcards
Animism
Refers to children believing that nonliving objects have lifelike qualities. (Preoperational age 2-4)
When it begins to rain, a child exclaiming “the sky is pouring water on me” is an example of
Animism
Imaginary friends in a child 2-4 yrs old are an example of
Animism
Causal Reasoning “Causality”
Children believe that their thoughts can cause action, whether or not the experience have a causal relationship.
Level 1 Causal Reasoning
Reality is defined by appearance.
Level 2 Causal Reasoning
Child appeals to an all-powerful force
Level 3 Causal Reasoning
Child appeals to causes in nature
Level 4 Causal Reasoning
Child now approaches an adult explanation
A 3-year-old says “When I move along, the clouds move along too”
Reality is defined by appearance
A 5-year-old says “God moves the clouds”
Child appeals to an all-powerful force
A 7-year-old says “The sun moves the clouds”
Child appeals to causes in nature
A 10-year-old says “The clouds move because of wind currents”
Child now approaches an adult explanation
Centration (preoperational)
The tendency for a child to focus on only one piece of information at a time while disregarding all others.
A child is playing outside on a swing when his mother decides to bring him for a nap. The child becomes upset because all he can focus on is riding the swing.
Centration
Egocentrism (preoperational)
Until about age 5, young children cannot differentiate between their own perspectives and feelings, and someone else’s.
Equilibrium
Development is motivated by the search for a stable balance toward effective adaptions.
Three phases of equilibrium
- Children begin in a state of balance
- Thought changes and conflict emerges
- Through the process of assimilation and accommodation, a more sophisticated mode of thought surfaces.
Irreversibility (preoperational)
Children make errors in their thinking because they cannot understand that an operation moves in more than one direction and the original state can be recovered.
If Emma plays with a ball of clay, she believes that the clay must always be in this same form to remain the same amount. When a classmate plays with the clay and gives it back as a long, narrow piece, Emma thinks she’s getting back less.
Irreversibility.
Metacognition (concrete operations)
A child’s awareness of knowing about one’s own knowlege. Helps children plan their own problem-solving strategies.
A child who is thinking about thinking.
Metacognition
Object permanence (sensorimotor)
Recognition that objects and events continue to exist when they are not visible. This recognition ability begins when the child is about 8 months old.
Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning (formal operations)
Done by mentally forming a logical and systematic plan to work out the right solution after considering all the possible outcomes.
The ability to form ideas about “what might be”
Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
Inductive Reasoning (concrete operations)
Drawing conclusions from specific examples to make a general conclusion, even when the conclusion is not accurate.
Transductive Reasoning (preoperational)
Children mentally connect specific experiences, whether or not there is a logical causal relationship.
Bill was mean to his little sister. His sister got sick. Bill reasoned that he made his sister sick.
Transductive Reasoning
Piaget’s preoperational period
suggests that development of symbolic thought and imagination is boundless.
At what age do children begin to ask “why questions”
around age 5
At what period are children known for loving to hear stories, sing songs, and recite nursery rhymes.
Preoperational period (2 through 7 years)
Preoperational Period Age
2 through 7 years
Concrete Operations Period
marked by the child’s ability to solve simple problems while thinking about multiple dimensions of information.
At what period are children known for metacognition, trial-and-error has a clear sense of seriation, transitivity, reversibility, and conservation.
Concrete Operations Period (7 through 11 years)
Concrete Operations Period Age
7 through 11 years
Formal Operations Period
The mental transformations experienced during adolescence are logical and continue to progress beyond the skills developed during childhood.
Marked by the adolescents ability to reason abstractly and solve complex problems, thus expanding possibilities for understanding the world.
Formal Operations Period
Characteristics: Infant’s physical response to immediate surroundings
Sensorimotor Period
Characteristics: Egocentric- Focus on symbolic throught and imagination
Preoperational Period
Characteristics: Mastery of conservation- the child begins to think logically.
Concrete Operations Period
Characteristics: Thinking based on abstract principles.
Formal Operations Period
Assimilation
children incorporate new information with existing schemees in order to form a new cognitive structure.
A preschool child calls a lion “doggie” because the child only knows one type of four-legged animal.
Assimilation
Accommodation
occurs when children take existing schemes and adjust them to fit their experience.
A preschool child plays with the keys on a piano to hear the different sounds of musical notes. When he tries this with an electric keyboard, he quickly learns that the keyboard must be turned on before it can be played.
Accomodation
Piaget’s two fundamental cognitive concepts as children move from state to stage
Assimilation and accomodation
Conservation
a conceptual tool that allows a child to recognize that when altering the appearaance of an object, the basic properties do not change.
Piaget used this concept when referring to numbers, volumes, weights, and matter.
Conservation
Piaget named four stages of cognitive development
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations.
His theory proposes that cognitive development begins with a child’s innate ability to adapt to the environment, and that development is a result of the child’s interface with the physical world, social experiences and physical maturation
Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget
Schemes/Schemas
are the way children mentally represent and organize the world.
Seriation (concrete operation)
ability to arrange objects in logical progression.
Symbolic Function Substage
the child uses words and images (symbols) to form mental representation
Transitive Inference (concrete operation)
the ability to draw conclusions about a relationship between two objects by knowing the relationship to the third object.
Morality
an internalized set of subjctive rules influcning the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of an individual in deciding what is right and wrong.
