Module 14 : Infancy and Childhood

Question 1

Maturation

Answer 1

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Question 2

Cognition

Answer 2

All the mental activities involved with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating.

Question 3

Schema

Answer 3

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Question 4

Assimilation

Answer 4

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Question 5

Accommodation

Answer 5

Adapting to our current understandings to incorporate new information.

Question 6

Sensorimotor Stage

Answer 6

In Piaget’s theory, the stage from birth to about 2 years of age. During which infants know the world mostly in terms of sensory impressions and motor activities.

Question 7

Object Permanence

Answer 7

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.

Question 8

Egocentrism

Answer 8

In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.

Question 9

Preoperational Stage

Answer 9

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

Question 10

Conversation

Answer 10

The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume and number remain the same despite changes in the form of objects.

Question 11

Theory of Mind

Answer 11

People’s ideas about their own and other’s mental states about their feelings, perceptions and thoughts and the behaviors these might predict.

Question 12

Concrete Operational Stage

Answer 12

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Question 13

Formal Operational Stage

Answer 13

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Question 14

Stranger Anxiety

Answer 14

The fear of strangers that infants commonly display beginning by about 8 months of age.

Question 15

Attachment

Answer 15

An emotional tie with another person, shown in young children by seeking closeness to their caregiver and showing distress on separation.

Question 16

Critical Period

Answer 16

An optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.

Question 17

Imprinting

Answer 17

The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period early in life.

Question 18

Basic Trust

Answer 18

According to Eric Erikson, a sense that the world is perdicitable and trustworthy said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.