Physical & Cognitive Development Flashcards
What is maturation?
Biologically based changes that follow an orderly sequence, each step setting the stage for the next step according to an age related timetable.
What is a critical period?
Periods of special sensitivity to specific types of learning and sensory stimulation that shape the capacity for future development.
What is a sensitive period?
Times that are more important to subsequent development than others.
What is the ongoing debate regarding development?
Whether or not it occurs in critical periods or sensitive periods and whether or not it occurs in stages.
What is a stage?
Relatively discrete steps through which everyone progresses in the same sequence as opposed ti a steady and gradual change.
What occurs in brain development withing the first two years?
The formation of major synapses in auditory, visual and language areas.
What needs to occur for neural connections to survive?
They require stimulation: Those that are not stimulated are pruned.
What is Myleanation?
The coating of neural fibers with insulating fatty sheath that improves efficiency of message transfer.
What can change refer to?
The acquisition or the loss of a behavior or function.
What are the ways change can occur?
- Continuous: The gradual alteration of behavior
- Discontinuous: Refers to stages of growth that are qualitatively different and that are usually ordered in a fixed sequence.
What are the three types of design used in research of development?
- Cross-sectional: Compares groups of different ages at a time.
- Longitudinal: compares same group at multiple time points.
- Sequential: Combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal.
What are the three periods of prenatal development?
- Germinal period: The fertilized egg (zygote) enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division
- Embryonic period: The developing human organism (embryo) from 2 weeks through 2nd month.
- Foetal period: The developing human organism (foetus) from 9 weeks after conception to birth.
What is a teratogen?
An environmental agent that harm the embryo.
What are four types of teratogen?
- AOD
- Chemicals
- Radiation
- Virus
In development, what is a reflex?
Innate motor responses elicited by critical stimuli and are adaptive.
Name two reflexes,
- Rooting reflex: a touch on the cheek induces the infant to move its mouth toward the source of the touch.
- Sucking reflex: Tactile stimulation of the mouth produces rhythmic sucking.
what is puberty?
The stage when individuals become physically capable of reproduction.
What is associated with early maturing males?
- Positive body image
2. Satisfaction with physical self.
What is associated with early maturing females?
- Negative body image
2. more dissatisfied than on time or late maturers with physical self.
Whats is menopause?.
Cessation of the menstrual cycle.
What is ageism?
Predjudice against old people: Can lead to employment discrimination.
What two methods do researchers use to study infant perception and cognition?
- Orienting reflex: The tendency to pay greater attention to novel stimuli than familiar.
- Sucking reflex: Sucking rate increases with novel stimuli and decreases with familiar stimuli.
Describe the visual and auditory capabilities of infants.
- Auditory capabilities are well developed even from birth.
2. Visual perception is poor at birth though improves to 20/100 by 6 months.
What is intermodal processing?
The ability to associate sensations of an object from different senses or to match their own actions to behaviors they observed visually.
What is infantile amnesia?
Lack of explicit memory for events before the age of three or four years.
According to Piaget, what does cognition refer to?
Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating.
What did Piaget argue children posses?
Schema’s
What is a schema?
An organized pattern of thought or behavior: They are the basis of knowledge.
What are the two ways Schema;s operate in children?
- Assimilation: Taking in new information and incorporating it into existing schemas
- Accommodation: Adjusting current schema to meet new information.
What are Piaget’s stages of development?
- Sensorimotor: 0-2 thought and action is identical. Infant explores through senses.
- Preoperational: 2-7 Symbolic thought develops. Object permanence.
- Concrete operational: 7-12 The child is able to perform reversible mental operations on representations of objects.
- Formal operational: 12+ Logic can be applied abstractly. Hypothetical thinking.
What is object permanence?
The realization that an object continues to exist even if it cannot be seen.
What is egocentrism?
A cognitive view in which the child understands the world to have only their view. (difficulty in understanding the views of others).
What is conservation?
Understanding that the basic properties of an object are constant even if the object changes shape.
What are the main criticism’s of Piaget’s theory?
- Focus on rational thinking
- Strict stage approach
- Underestimated the capabilities of infants and preschool children.
- Rarely considered the roles of culture in cognitive development.
Describe Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development.
Emphasized the role of social interaction as a motivation for cognitive gains and learning.
What is the zone of proximal development?
Stretches from sole performance to collaborative cooperation.
What does the information processing approach to cognitive development focus on?
- Processing speed: Mental quickness increases as children age.
- Automatisation: The ability to perform some tasks automatically.
- Knowledge base: Children gain knowledge with experience
- Cognitive strategies: More sophisticated ones are developed.
- Metacognition: Thinking about thinking.
What do Neo-Piagetian Theories aim to achieve?
They combine Piagetian and information-processing theories.
What is psychomotor slowing?
Older people require more time to process information.
How does memory change in the elderly?
- Short term memory: relatively unchanged.
- Working memory: difficulties in complex tasks
- Long term memory: Storage unchanged but retrieval becomes more difficult.
In what ways do fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence change with age?
- Crystallized intelligence increases
2. Fluid intelligence decreases
