MODULE 2 - Cognitive Influences on Human Development

Question 1

Constructivism (2)

Answer 1

1. children actively construct their own understandings of the world based on their interactions with it.
2. Children use their current understandings of the world to help them solve problems, but they also revise their understandings to make them better fit reality

Question 2

Piaget (2)

Answer 2

1. viewed intelligence as a process that helps an organism adapt to its environment.
2. As humans mature, they acquire ever more complex cognitive structures, or organized patterns of thought or action, that aid them in adapting to their environments.

Question 3

Piaget was an interactionist:

Answer 3

The interaction between biological maturation (most importantly, a developing brain) and experience (especially discrepancies between the child’s current understanding and new experiences) is responsible for the child’s progress from one stage of cognitive development to a new, qualitatively different stage.

Question 4

Piaget proposed four major periods of cognitive development:

Answer 4

1. sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2),
2. the preoperational stage (ages 2–7),
3. the concrete operations stage (ages 7–11), and
4. the formal operations stage (ages 11–12 or older)

Question 5

invariant sequence

Answer 5

all children everywhere progress through the stages in the order they are listed without skipping stages or regressing to earlier stages

Question 6

Sensorimotor (birth–2 years)

(3)

Answer 6

1. Infants use their senses and motor actions to explore and understand the world.
2. At the start, they have only innate reflexes, but they develop increasingly “intelligent” actions.
3. By the end, they are capable of symbolic thought using images or words and can therefore plan solutions to problems mentally.

Question 7

Preoperational (2–7 years)

(2)

Answer 7

1. Preschoolers use their capacity for symbolic thought to develop language, engage in pretend play, and solve problems.
2. But their thinking is not yet logical; they are egocentric (unable to take others’ perspectives) and are easily fooled by perceptions, failing conservation problems because they cannot rely on logical operations.

Question 8

Concrete operations (7–11 years)

(2)

Answer 8

1. School-age children acquire concrete logical operations that allow them to mentally classify, add, and otherwise act on concrete objects in their heads.
2. They can solve practical, real-world problems through a trial-and-error approach but have difficulty with hypothetical and abstract problems.

Question 9

Formal operations (11–12 years and older)

(2)

Answer 9

1. Adolescents can think about abstract concepts and purely hypothetical possibilities.
2. With age and experience, they can trace the long-range consequences of possible actions, and they can form hypotheses and systematically test them using the scientific method.

Question 10

sociocultural perspective

Answer 10

Vygotsky’s theory of development, which maintains that cognitive development is shaped by the sociocultural context in which it occurs and grows out of children’s social interactions with members of their culture.

Question 11

information-processing approach

Answer 11

An approach to cognition that emphasizes the fundamental mental processes involved in attention, perception, memory, and decision making

Question 11

cognition

Answer 11

The activity of knowing and the processes through which knowledge is acquired (for example, attending, perceiving, remembering, and thinking).

Question 12

clinical method

Answer 12

An unstandardized interviewing procedure used by Piaget in which a child’s response to each successive question (or problem) determines what the investigator will ask next.

Question 13

Piaget’s definition of intelligence

Answer 13

Intelligence is a basic life function that helps an organism adapt to its environment.

Question 14

Schemes

Answer 14

Are cognitive structures—organized patterns of action or thought that people construct to interpret their experiences

Question 15

As children develop more sophisticated schemes , or cognitive structures…

(2)

Answer 15

1. they become increasingly able to adapt to their environments
2. Because they gain new schemes as they develop, children of different ages will respond differently to the same objects and events.

Question 16

Piaget took an interactionist position on the nature–nurture issue:

Answer 16

Children actively create knowledge by building schemes from their experiences (nurture), using two inborn (nature) intellectual functions, which he called organization and adaptation

Question 17

organization

(2)

Answer 17

1. children systematically combine existing schemes into new and more complex ones.
2. Thus, their minds are not cluttered with an endless number of independent facts; they contain instead logically ordered and interrelated actions and ideas.

Question 18

Adaptation

Answer 18

1. the process of adjusting to the demands of environment
2. It occurs through two complementary processes, assimilation and accommodation.

Question 19

Assimilation

Answer 19

is the process by which we interpret new experiences in terms of existing schemes or cognitive structures.

Question 20

Accommodation

Answer 20

is the process of modifying existing schemes to better fit new experiences

Question 21

equilibration

Answer 21

In Piaget’s theory, the process of seeking a state of mental stability in which our thoughts (schemes) are consistent with the information we receive from the external world.

Question 22

4 Common criticisms of Piaget’s theory

Answer 22

1. Underestimating young minds.
2. Wrongly claiming that broad stages of development exist.
3. Wrongly claiming that broad stages of development exist.
4. Giving limited attention to social influences on cognitive development.

Question 23

zone of proximal development

Answer 23

Vygotsky’s term for the difference between what a learner can accomplish independently and what a learner can accomplish with the guidance and encouragement of a more skilled partner.

Question 24

guided participation

Answer 24

A process in which children learn by actively participating in culturally relevant activities with the aid and support of their parents and other knowledgeable individuals.

Question 25

scaffolding

Answer 25

Jerome Bruner’s term for providing structure to a less skilled learner to encourage advancement

Question 26

dynamic

Answer 26

In Fischer’s dynamic skill framework, the idea that human performance changes in response to changes in context.

Question 27

Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Framework

Answer 27

Behavior is not something that a person ‘has’; it emerges from interactions between person and context

Question 28

skill (2)

Answer 28

1. In Fischer’s dynamic skill framework, a person’s ability to perform a particular task in a specific context.
2. a skill is both task-specific and context-specific.

Question 29

The “zone” represents

Answer 29

the opportunity for growth that exists between a person’s optimal ability and their actual performance on a given task in a particular context, that is, their current skill level.

Question 30

developmental range (3)

Answer 30

1. In Fischer’s dynamic skill framework, the concept that people’s abilities vary depending on the context, from optimal levels in highly supportive contexts to lower levels in unsupportive situations.
2. Most of the time, though, we perform below our optimal level because the support structure needed to perform optimally is not in place.
3. Thus, high levels of support can lead to larger jumps in skill acquisition, whereas low levels of support can result in slow linear acquisition of skills.

Question 31

object permanence

Answer 31

The understanding that objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible or otherwise detectable to the senses; fully mastered by the end of infancy.

Question 32

A-not-B error

Answer 32

The tendency of 8- to 12-month-old infants to search for a hidden object in the place they last found it (A) rather than in its new hiding place (B)

Question 33

symbolic capacity

Answer 33

The capacity to use symbols such as words, images, or actions to represent or stand for objects and experiences; representational thought.

Question 34

primary circular reactions

Answer 34

During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s repetition of interacting acts centered on his or her own body (for example, repeatedly kicking).

Question 35

secondary circular reactions

Answer 35

During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s repetition of interesting actions on objects (for example, repeatedly shaking a rattle to make a noise).

Question 36

coordination of secondary schemes

Answer 36

During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s combining of actions to solve problems, using one scheme as a means to an end, as in batting aside a barrier in order to grasp a toy.

Question 37

tertiary circular reactions

Answer 37

During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s experimenting with actions to find new ways to solve problems or produce interesting effects.

Question 38

perceptual salience

(2)

Answer 38

1. Phenomenon in which the most obvious features of an object or situation have disproportionate influence on the perceptions and thoughts of young children.
2. Understanding is driven by how things look rather than derived from logical reasoning.

Question 39

conservation

Answer 39

The recognition that certain properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered in some superficial way.

Question 40

decentration

Answer 40

The ability to focus on two or more dimensions of a problem at one time.

Question 41

centration

Answer 41

the tendency to center attention on a single aspect of the problem

Question 42

Irreversible thought

Answer 42

cannot mentally undo an action

Question 43

Reversibility of thought

Answer 43

can mentally reverse or undo an action

Question 44

Static thought

Answer 44

fail to understand transformations or processes of change from one state to another

Question 45

Transformational thought

Answer 45

can understand the process of change from one state to another

Question 46

Logical reasoning

Answer 46

Children acquire a set of internal operations that can be applied to a variety of problems.

Question 47

Transductive reasoning

Answer 47

Children combine unrelated facts, often leading them to draw faulty cause–effect conclusions simply because two events occur close together in time or space.

Question 48

Inductive reasoning.

Answer 48

Children draw cause–effect conclusions logically, based on factual information presented to them

Question 49

Egocentrism

Answer 49

Children have difficulty seeing things from other perspectives and assume that what is in their mind is also what others are thinking.

Question 50

Less egocentrism.

Answer 50

children understand that other people may have thoughts different from their own.

Question 51

Single classification

Answer 51

Children classify objects by a single dimension at one time.

Question 52

Multiple classification.

Answer 52

Children can classify objects by multiple dimensions and can grasp class inclusion.

Question 53

reversibility

Answer 53

the process of mentally undoing or reversing an action.

Question 54

class inclusion

Answer 54

The logical understanding that parts or subclasses are included in the whole class and that the whole is therefore greater than any of its parts.

Question 55

seriation

Answer 55

A logical operation that allows a person to mentally order a set of stimuli along a quantifiable dimension such as height or weight.

Question 56

transitivity

Answer 56

The ability to recognize the necessary or logical relations among elements in a serial order (for example, that if A is taller than B, and B is taller than C, then A must be taller than C).

Question 57

hypothetical-deductive reasoning

Answer 57

A form of problem solving in which a person starts with general or abstract ideas and deduces or traces their specific implications; “if–then” thinking.

Question 58

decontextualize

Answer 58

To separate the demands of a task at hand from prior beliefs and knowledge.

Question 59

postformal thought

Answer 59

Proposed stages of cognitive development that lie beyond formal operations.

Question 60

relativistic thinking

Answer 60

A form of postformal operational thought in which it is understood that there are multiple ways of viewing a problem and that the solutions people arrive at will depend on their starting assumptions and perspective.

Question 61

dialectical thinking

Answer 61

An advanced form of thought that involves detecting paradoxes and inconsistencies among ideas and trying to reconcile them.

Question 62

deferred imitation

Answer 62

The ability to imitate a novel act after a delay.

Question 63

four major hypotheses about why learning and memory improve

Answer 63

1. Changes in basic capacities
2. Changes in memory strategies
3. Increased knowledge of memory.
4. Increased knowledge of the world

Question 64

scripts or general event representations (GERs)

Answer 64

A mental representation of a typical sequence of actions related to an event that is created in memory and that then guides future behaviors in similar settings.

Question 65

rule assessment approach

Answer 65

Siegler’s approach to studying the development of problem solving that determines what information about a problem children take in and what rules they then formulate to account for this information.

Question 66

overlapping waves theory

Answer 66

Siegler’s view that the development of problem-solving skills is not a matter of moving from one problem-solving approach to a better one with age but of knowing and using a variety of strategies at each age, becoming increasingly selective with experience about which strategies to use in particular situations, and adding new strategies to one’s collection.

Question 67

4 factors that may influence autobiographical memories:

Answer 67

personal significance, distinctiveness, emotional intensity, and life phase of the event

Question 68

life script

Answer 68

The story a person constructs about his or her life story and tells over and over again.