Module 44 - Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development

Question 1

Cognition

Answer 1

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Question 2

Schema

Answer 2

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

For example, a schema of a job could be having a boss, working from 8-6, and getting paid an hourly wage. Then, when you encounter a job, you might expect it to be something like your schema.

Question 3

Assimilate

Answer 3

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Question 4

Accomodate

Answer 4

Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

Question 5

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 5

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Question 6

Object permanence

Answer 6

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Question 7

Preoperational stage

Answer 7

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2-6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic (in this stage, children don’t understand conservation and are egocentric)

Question 8

Conservation

Answer 8

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 forms of objects

Question 9

Egocentric

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Theory of mind

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Concrete operational stage

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Formal operational stage

Answer 12

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 13

Scaffold

Answer 13

A framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking

Question 14

Zone of proximal development

Answer 14

Something a child can do with help, which is neither too easy or difficult

Question 15

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Answer 15

A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors