Lifespan Development

Question 1

Adolescent Egocentrism (Elkind)

Answer 1

Adolescent egocentrism appears at the beginning of the formal operational stage. As defined by Elkind, its characteristics include the personal fable and the imaginary audience.

Question 2

Adult Attachment Interview

Answer 2

Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has confirmed a relationship between parents’ own attachment experiences and the attachment patterns of their children. For example, children of adults classified as dismissing on the AAI often exhibit an avoidant attachment pattern in the Strange Situation.

Question 3

Androgyny

Answer 3

The research has found that, for both males and females, androgyny (which combines masculine and feminine characteristics and preferences) and, to a lesser degree, masculinity were associated with higher levels of self-esteem than was femininity. Androgyny has also been linked to greater flexibility when coping with difficult situations, higher levels of life satisfaction, and greater comfort with one’s sexuality.

Question 4

Brain Development (Cerebral Cortex, Neurogenesis)

Answer 4

The cerebral cortex is largely undeveloped at birth but shows dramatic growth during the first two years of life primarily as the result of an increase in interconnections between neurons and myelination of nerve fibers. During the first few months of life, the primary motor and sensory areas of the cortex undergo substantial development, while the prefrontal cortex continues to mature through childhood and adolescence and may not be fully developed until the early or mid-20s. By about age 30, the brain starts to gradually shrink as the result of the atrophy of neurons, and there is an acceleration of this cell death after age 60. However, there is evidence that the brain attempts to compensate for neuronal loss by forming new interconnections between neurons and neural pathways and by creating new neurons (neurogenesis) in the hippocampus and possibly other areas of the brain.

Question 5

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model

Answer 5

Bronfenbrenner described development as involving interactions between the individual and his/her context or environment, and his ecological model describes the context in terms of five environmental systems or levels: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

Question 6

Child Sexual Abuse

Answer 6

In terms of the outcomes of child sexual abuse for male and female victims, some studies have found no consistent gender differences; but, when differences are found, the outcomes are worse for females than for males. The research has also found that the effects of sexual abuse tend to be less severe when the abuse was committed by a stranger than by a family member or other familiar person.

Question 7

Childhood (Infantile) Amnesia

Answer 7

Studies investigating episodic (autobiographical) memory have found that adults are usually able to recall very few of the events they experienced prior to age three or four. This is referred to as childhood or infantile amnesia.

Question 8

Coercive Family Interaction Model (Patterson)

Answer 8

Patterson et al.’s coercive family interaction model proposes that children initially learn aggressive behaviors from their parents who rarely reinforce prosocial behaviors, rely on harsh discipline to control their children’s behavior, and reward their children’s aggressiveness with approval and attention and that, over time, aggressive parent-child interactions escalate. They developed the Oregon model of parent management training (PMTO)to help stop this coercive cycle by teaching parents effective parenting skills and providing parents with therapy to help them cope more effectively with stress.

Question 9

Compensatory Preschool Programs

Answer 9

Research evaluating the effects of Head Start and other compensatory preschool programs has found that, while initial IQ test score gains produced by these programs are usually not maintained, children who attend these programs tend to have better attitudes toward school and are less likely to be retained in a grade, be placed in special education classes, and drop out of high school and more likely to attend college than their peers who do not attend such programs.

Question 10

Conservation

Answer 10

As defined by Piaget, conservation is the ability to understand that the physical characteristics of an object remain the same, even when the outward appearance of that object changes. Conservation depends on the operations of reversibility and decentration and develops gradually during the concrete operational stage, with conservation of number occurring first, followed by conservation of liquid, length, weight, and then displacement volume.

Question 11

Contact Comfort (Harlow)

Answer 11

Research by Harlow with rhesus monkeys indicated that an infant’s attachment to his/her mother is due, in part, to contact comfort, or the pleasant tactile sensation that is provided by a soft, cuddly parent.

Question 12

Critical And Sensitive Periods

Answer 12

A critical period is a time during which an organism is especially susceptible to positive and negative environmental influences. A sensitive period is more flexible than a critical period and is not limited to a specific chronological age. Some aspects of human development may depend on critical periods, but, for many human characteristics and behaviors, sensitive periods are probably more applicable.

Question 13

Divorce and Diminished Capacity to Parent

Answer 13

Divorced parents often experience emotional distress and changes in functioning that include a diminished capacity to parent. For example, custodial mothers may be uncommunicative, impatient, and less warm and loving toward their children (especially sons), and they monitor their children’s activities less closely and are less consistent but more authoritarian in terms of punishment.

Question 14

Down Syndrome

Answer 14

Down syndrome is caused by an extra number 21 chromosome. It is characterized by intellectual disability, retarded physical growth and motor development, distinctive physical characteristics, and increased susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease, leukemia, and heart defects.

Question 15

Early Reflexes

Answer 15

Reflexes are unlearned responses to particular stimuli in the environment. Early reflexes include the Babinski reflex (toes fan out and upward when soles of the feet are tickled) and the Moro reflex (flings arms and legs outward and then toward the body in response to a loud noise or sudden loss of physical support).

Question 16

Effects Of Age On Memory

Answer 16

Several aspects of memory show age-related declines, especially recent long-term (secondary) memory. Deficits in secondary memory are believed to be due primarily to a reduced spontaneous use of effective encoding strategies. The working memory aspect of short-term memory also exhibits substantial age-related decline.

Question 17

Effects Of Divorce On Children (Child’s Age, Sleeper Effect, Parental Conflict)

Answer 17

The effects of divorce are moderated by several factors including the child’s age and gender. With regard to age, preschool children exhibit the most problems immediately after the divorce, but long-term consequences may be worse for children who were in elementary school at the time of the divorce. Boys exhibit more problems than girls initially, but there may be a “sleeper effect” for girls who do not exhibit negative consequences immediately after the divorce but exhibit problems in adolescence and early adulthood. The negative consequences of divorce are reduced when the conflict between parents is minimized.

Question 18

Effects Of Maternal Employment

Answer 18

Research investigating the effects of maternal employment has found it to be associated with greater personal satisfaction for the working mother (especially when she wants to work) and, in terms of the children, with fewer sex-role stereotypes and greater independence. For lower-SES boys, maternal employment is associated with better performance on measures of cognitive development; but for upper-SES boys, it may result in lower scores on IQ and achievement tests.

Question 19

Empty Nest Syndrome

Answer 19

Contrary to what is commonly believed, adults do not usually experience distress and a sense of loss (i.e., the “empty nest syndrome”) when all of their children come of age and leave home. Instead, the studies suggest that they usually experience an increase in marital satisfaction and other positive changes.

Question 20

Erikson’s Stages Of Psychosocial Development

Answer 20

Erikson’s theory of personality development proposes that the individual faces different psychosocial crises at different points throughout the life span. These are: trust vs. mistrust; autonomy vs. shame and doubt; initiative vs. guilt; industry vs. inferiority; identity vs. role confusion; intimacy vs. isolation; generativity vs. stagnation; and integrity vs. despair.

Question 21

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Answer 21

Prenatal exposure to alcohol can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) which encompasses a range of conditions that involve largely irreversible physical, behavioral, and/or cognitive abnormalities. Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is the most severe form of FASD and is characterized by facial anomalies; retarded physical growth; heart, kidney, and liver defects; vision and hearing impairments; cognitive deficits; and behavioral problems. Alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder (ARND) is characterized by cognitive deficits and behavioral problems without prominent facial anomalies, retarded physical growth, or physical defects, while alcohol-related birth defects (ARBD) involves physical defects without other prominent symptoms.

Question 22

Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development

Answer 22

Freud’s theory of personality development proposes that development involves five invariant stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital), in which the libido shifts from one area of the body to another.

Question 23

Gay And Lesbian Parents

Answer 23

The research on gay and lesbian parenting suggests that the nature of the parent-child relationship is more important than a parent’s sexual orientation. Overall, children of gay and lesbian parents are similar to children of heterosexual parents in terms of social relations, psychological adjustment, cognitive functioning, gender identity development, and sexual orientation.

Question 24

Gender Identity (Kohlberg, Bem)

Answer 24

According to Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory, the development of a gender identity involves a sequence of stages that parallels cognitive development: By age two or three, children acquire a gender identity; that is, they recognize that they are either male or female. Soon thereafter, they realize that gender identity is stable over time (gender stability). By age six or seven, children understand that gender is constant over situations and know that people cannot change gender by superficially altering their external appearance or behavior (gender constancy). Bem’s gender schema theory attributes the acquisition of a gender identity to a combination of social learning and cognitive development. According to Bem, children develop schemas of masculinity and femininity as the result of their sociocultural experiences. These schemas then organize how the individual perceives and thinks about the world.

Question 25

Genotype Versus Phenotype

Answer 25

Genotype refers to a person’s genetic make-up; phenotype refers to observable characteristics, which are due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Question 26

Goodness-Of-Fit Model (Thomas And Chess)

Answer 26

According to Thomas and Chess’s goodness-of-fit model, behavioral and adjustment outcomes are best for children when parents’ caregiving behaviors match their child’s temperament.

Question 27

Heteronomous vs Autonomous Morality (Piaget)

Answer 27

Piaget distinguished between two stages of moral development. The stage of heteronomous morality (or morality of constraint) extends from about age seven through age ten. During this stage, children believe that rules are set by authority figures and are unalterable. When judging whether an act is “right” or “wrong,” they consider whether a rule has been violated and what the consequences of the act are. Beginning at about age 11, children enter the stage of autonomous morality (or morality of cooperation). Children in this stage view rules as being arbitrary and alterable when the people who are governed by them agree to change them. When judging an act, they focus more on the intention of the actor than on the act’s consequences.

Question 28

Horizontal Decalage

Answer 28

As described by Piaget, horizontal decalage refers to the gradual development of an ability (e.g., conservation) within a particular stage of development.

Question 29

Identity Statuses (Marcia)

Answer 29

Marcia proposes that the achievement of an identity (including values, beliefs, and goals) involves four identity stages (statuses) that reflect the degree to which the individual has experienced an identity crisis and is committed to an identity: diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement.

Question 30

Information Processing Theories

Answer 30

Information processing theories describe cognitive development as involving increasing information processing capacity and efficiency. For example, improvements in memory are due to increased memory capacity, enhanced processing speed, and greater automaticity. In contrast to Piagetians, information processing theorists focus on development within specific cognitive domains such as attention, memory, and reasoning rather than on identifying global principles of development.

Question 31

Internal Working Model (Bowlby)

Answer 31

Bowlby distinguished between four stages of attachment development that occur during the first two years of life - preattachment, attachment-in-the-making, clearcut attachment, and the formation of reciprocal relationships. According to Bowlby, as a result of experiences during these stages, a child develops an internal working model, which is a mental representation of self and others that influences the child’s future relationships.

Question 32

Klinefelter Syndrome

Answer 32

Klinefelter syndrome occurs in males and is due to the presence of two or more X chromosomes along with a single Y chromosome. A male with this disorder has a small penis and testes, develops breasts during puberty, has limited interest in sexual activity, is often sterile, and may have learning disabilities.

Question 33

Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Development

Answer 33

According to Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory, moral development coincides with changes in logical reasoning and social perspective-taking and involves three levels that each include two stages: preconventional (punishment and obedience; instrumental hedonism), conventional (good boy/good girl; law and order), and postconventional (morality of contract, individual rights, and democratically-accepted laws; morality of individual principles of conscious).

Question 34

Malnutrition During Prenatal Development

Answer 34

Malnutrition during prenatal development is associated with miscarriage, stillbirth, and low birth weight and may result in suppression of the immune system, intellectual disability, and other serious problems. Severe malnutrition in the third trimester (especially protein deficiency) is particularly detrimental for the developing brain and can lead to a reduced number of neurons, reduced myelinization, and neurotransmitter abnormalities.

Question 35

Maternal Depression

Answer 35

Children of depressed mothers are at higher risk for emotional and behavioral problems, although the exact nature and severity of the problems depend on several factors including genetic predisposition and the quality of early mother-child interactions. There is evidence that the physiological signs of distress in children associated with maternal depression (e.g., elevated heart rate, greater right frontal lobe asymmetry) are apparent by the time the child is three months of age. In addition, studies of toddlers have linked maternal depression (especially chronic, severe depression) to passive noncompliance and higher-than-normal rates of aggressiveness when interacting with peers.

Question 36

Memory Strategies of Children

Answer 36

Preschoolers sometimes use non-deliberate memory strategies but do so in an ineffective way, while children in the early elementary school years use somewhat more effective techniques but are often distracted by irrelevant information. In addition, when taught rehearsal or other memory strategies, young children may apply them to the immediate situation but do not subsequently use them in new situations. By age nine or ten, children begin to regularly use rehearsal, elaboration, and organization, and, in adolescence, these strategies are “fine-tuned” and used more deliberately and selectively.

Question 37

Montessori Method

Answer 37

The Montessori Method is an approach to education that emphasizes child-centered, experiential learning and sense discrimination (i.e., learning through seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching).

Question 38

Nativist Approach To Language Acquisition (Chomsky)

Answer 38

The nativist approach to language acquisition stresses the role of biological mechanisms (e.g., Chomsky’s language acquisition device) and universal patterns of development.

Question 39

Niche-Picking

Answer 39

Niche-picking is also known as active genotype-environment correlation and occurs when individuals deliberately seek environments that are consistent with their genetic make-up.

Question 40

Object Permanence

Answer 40

According to Piaget, an important accomplishment of the sensorimotor stage is the development of object permanence (the “object concept”), which allows the child to recognize that objects and people continue to exist when they are out of sight.

Question 41

Parenting Style

Answer 41

Baumrind and colleagues distinguish between four parenting styles that reflect various combinations of responsivity and demandingness: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and rejecting-neglecting. High parental responsivity combined with moderate control (an authoritative style) is associated with the best outcomes for children and adolescents, including greater self-confidence and self-reliance, achievement-orientation, and social responsibility.

Question 42

Patterns Of Attachment (Ainsworth)

Answer 42

Research using Ainsworth’s Strange Situation has revealed four patterns of attachment: secure, insecure/ambivalent, insecure/avoidant, and disorganized/disoriented. Each pattern is associated with different caregiver behaviors and different personality and behavioral outcomes. For example, infants who exhibit a disorganized attachment pattern are at an increased risk for aggressive behavior problems in childhood.

Question 43

Perception in Newborns (Vision, Auditory Localization, Pain)

Answer 43

Of the senses, vision is least well developed at birth. At birth, the newborn sees at 20 feet what normal adults see at about 200 to 400 feet; but, by about six months, the infant’s visual acuity is probably very close to that of a normal adult. With regard to specific types of visual stimuli, newborns prefer to look at high-contrast patterns, and their preference for more complex patterns increases with increasing age. The fetus hears sounds in the uterus during the last months of development, and newborns are only slightly less sensitive to sound intensity than adults. Some auditory localization is evident shortly after birth, seems to disappear between two and four months, and then reappears and improves during the rest of the first year. The research has confirmed that newborns are sensitive to pain. For example, male newborns who are circumcised without anesthesia often react with a loud cry, a facial grimace, and an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. There is evidence that exposure to severe pain as a newborn can impact later reactions (e.g., in some cases, can increase sensitivity to pain).

Question 44

Phenylketonuria (PKU)

Answer 44

PKU is caused by a pair of recessive genes and produces intellectual disability unless the infant is placed on a diet low in the amino acid phenylalanine soon after birth.

Question 45

Phonemes Versus Morphemes

Answer 45

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that are understood in a language. The English language has 45 phonemes - for example, b, p, f, v, and th. Morphemes (e.g., “un” and “ing”) are the smallest units of sound that convey meaning. Morphemes are made up of one or more phonemes.

Question 46

Physical Maturation In Adolescence

Answer 46

Early and late physical (sexual) maturation in adolescence has been associated with several consequences. For example, early maturation has mixed consequences for boys. It has been linked to greater popularity with peers and superior athletic skill but also to dissatisfaction with body image and increased risk for drug and alcohol use, delinquency, and depression. For girls, early maturation has been linked primarily to negative consequences: Early-maturing girls tend to have a poor self-concept, be unpopular with peers, be dissatisfied with their physical development, have low academic achievement, be more likely to engage in sexually precocious behavior and drug and alcohol use, and be at increased risk for depression and eating disorders.

Question 47

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Answer 47

According to Piaget, cognitive development involves four universal and invariant stages: During the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), the child learns about objects and other people through the sensory information they provide and the actions that can be performed on them. A key accomplishment of the preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7) is the development of the symbolic (semiotic) function, which is an extension of representational thought and permits the child to learn through the use of language, mental images, and other symbols. Limitations of this stage include precausal reasoning and egocentrism. Children in the concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 11) are capable of mental operations, which are logical rules for transforming and manipulating information. As a result, they are able to classify in more sophisticated ways, seriate, understand part-whole relationships in relational terms, and conserve. Finally, a person in the formal operational stage (age 11+) is able to think abstractly and is capable of hypothetico-deductive reasoning.

Question 48

Precausal Reasoning (Magical Thinking/Animism):

Answer 48

As described by Piaget, the preoperational stage of cognitive development is characterized by precausal (transductive) reasoning, which reflects an incomplete understanding of cause and effect. One manifestation of precausal reasoning is magical thinking (the belief that thinking about something will cause it to occur); another manifestation is animism (the tendency to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects).

Question 49

Rejected And Neglected Children

Answer 49

A distinction is made between rejected and neglected children; and the studies have found that, overall, outcomes are worse for children who are actively rejected by their peers: Rejected children express greater loneliness and peer dissatisfaction and are less likely to experience an improvement in peer status when they change social groups.

Question 50

Relational Crisis (Gilligan)

Answer 50

Gilligan proposed that, in early adolescence, girls experience a relational crisis due to pressures to conform to cultural stereotypes of femininity. As a result, they become disconnected from themselves (e.g., they experience a “loss of voice”).

Question 51

Remarriage (Child’s Age, Stepfathers)

Answer 51

Although there is evidence that, when compared to children in intact biological families, children in stepfamilies have more adjustment problems, the differences between the two groups of children are generally small. Problems are often most severe when remarriage occurs when children are in early adolescence, and this is particularly true for girls residing with a biological mother and stepfather. In terms of parenting style, the typical stepfather tends to be distant and disengaged from his stepchild.

Question 52

Rutter’s Indicators

Answer 52

Rutter argued that the greater the number of risk factors a baby is exposed to, the greater the risk for negative outcomes. He concluded that the following six family risk factors are particularly accurate predictors of child psychopathology: severe marital discord, low socioeconomic status, overcrowding or large family size, parental criminality, maternal psychopathology, and the placement of a child outside the home.

Question 53

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Effect

Answer 53

Research by Rosenthal and Jacobson found that teachers’ expectations about students can have a “self-fulfilling prophecy effect” on their academic performance, motivation, and self-esteem of students.

Question 54

Semantic And Syntactic Bootstrapping

Answer 54

Semantic and syntactic bootstrapping are mechanisms that facilitate early language development. Semantic bootstrapping refers to using knowledge of the meaning of a word to infer its syntactical category; while syntactical bootstrapping refers to using syntactical knowledge to deduce the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

Question 55

Sexual Activity In Late Adulthood

Answer 55

The research has generally confirmed that sexual activity in mid-life and earlier is a good predictor of sexual activity in late adulthood. For example, Landau et al. (2007) found that sexually active adults 57 to 85 years of age reported a frequency of sexual activity similar to the frequency reported in an earlier study of adults ages 18 to 59. However, their survey results also indicated that the number of older adults identifying themselves as “sexually active” decreased with increasing age

Question 56

Sibling Relationships

Answer 56

Most interactions between young siblings involve prosocial, play-oriented behaviors. However, middle-childhood is usually marked by a paradoxical combination of closeness/conflict and cooperation/competition. During this period, sibling rivalry increases and is most intense among same-gender siblings who are 1-1/2 to 3 years apart in age and whose parents provide inconsistent discipline. In adolescence, siblings spend less time together, their relationship becomes less emotionally intense and more distant, and the friction between them usually declines as they begin to view one another as equals.

Question 57

Signs Of Attachment

Answer 57

Obvious signs of attachment to a primary caregiver are usually not apparent until about six months of age. These include social referencing, separation anxiety, and stranger anxiety.

Question 58

Social-Cognitive Factors and Aggression

Answer 58

The research on social-cognitive factors has found that aggressive children differ from their less aggressive peers in terms of self-efficacy beliefs (they are more likely to say that it is easy to perform aggressive acts but difficult to inhibit aggressive impulses) and beliefs about the outcomes of their behaviors (they expect that aggression will be followed by positive consequences including reduced aversive treatment by others). Aggression has also been linked to a hostile attribution bias, which is the tendency to misinterpret the positive or ambiguous acts of others as intentionally hostile.

Question 59

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (Carstensen)

Answer 59

An assumption underlying socioemotional selectivity theory is that social goals have two primary functions - the acquisition of knowledge and the regulation of emotion - and it predicts that social goals correspond to perceptions of time left in life as being limited or unlimited. According to this theory, older adults perceive time as limited and, consequently, tend to prefer emotionally close partners.

Question 60

Stages of Grief (Kubler-Ross)

Answer 60

Kubler-Ross (1969) concluded that people progress through the following five stages of grief when facing their own death or other important loss: (a) denial and isolation (“No, this isn’t happening to me!”); (b) anger (“Why me?”); (c) bargaining (“Yes me, but not until my grandchild is born”); (d) depression (“Yes, me”); and (e) acceptance (“My time is close and that’s alright”).

Question 61

Stages of Language Acquisition (Crying, Babbling, First Words, Telegraphic Speech)

Answer 61

Language development occurs in a predictable sequence of stages. Infants initially produce three distinct patterns of crying: a basic (hunger) cry, an anger cry, and a pain cry. Babbling begins at about four months of age and consists of the repetition of simple consonant and vowel sounds (e.g., “bi-bi-bi”). Early babbling includes sounds from all languages; but, between nine and 14 months of age, babies narrow their repertoire of sounds to those of their native language. Most infants speak their first word between the ages of 10 and 15 months and, by 18 months, speak about 50 words. First words are most often nominals, or labels for objects, people, or events, although action words, modifiers, and personal-social words (e.g., please) also occur. By 18 to 24 months of age, children exhibit telegraphic speech - i.e., they string two or more words together to make a sentence (e.g., “me go,” “more juice”). While these phrases initially contain only nouns, verbs, and adjectives, by 27 months, prepositions and pronouns have been added.

Question 62

Teacher Feedback

Answer 62

The research indicates that teachers tend to respond differently to boys and girls. Boys generally receive more correction, criticism, praise and help than girls do. Moreover, the nature of the feedback is gender-related; e.g., boys are more often criticized for sloppiness and inattention, girls for inadequate intellectual performance.

Question 63

Turner Syndrome

Answer 63

Turner syndrome occurs in females and is caused by the presence of a single X chromosome. Females with Turner syndrome are short in stature, have characteristic physical features (e.g., drooping eyelids, webbed neck), have retarded or absent development of the secondary sex characteristics, and may exhibit certain cognitive deficits.

Question 64

Underextension/Overextension

Answer 64

During the course of language development, children exhibit a number of errors including underextension and overextension. Underextension occurs when a child applies a word too narrowly to objects or situations, while overextension occurs when a child applies a word to a wider collection of objects or events than is appropriate.

Question 65

Visual Changes In Adulthood

Answer 65

After age 65, most individuals experience visual changes that interfere with reading, driving, and other aspects of daily life. In addition to presbyopia (loss of near vision), common changes include loss of visual acuity, reduced perception of depth and color, increased light sensitivity, and deficits in visual search, dynamic vision (perceiving the details of moving objects), and speed in processing what is seen.

Question 66

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Zone of Proximal Development, Scaffolding)

Answer 66

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory proposes that cognitive development is always first interpersonal (when the child interacts with an adult or other teacher) and then intrapersonal (when the child internalizes what he/she has learned). According to Vygotsky, cognitive development is facilitated when instruction falls within the child’s zone of proximal development, which refers to the discrepancy between a child’s current developmental level (the level at which the child can function independently) and the level of development that is just beyond his or her current level but can be reached when an adult or more experienced peer provides appropriate scaffolding (instruction, assistance, and support).