Quiz 6: Cognitive Development

Question 1

Ten-month-old Daniel is participating in a laboratory study. First, two displays of colored
squares show up simultaneously on side-by-side video monitors. They appear briefly,
disappear, then reappear repeatedly; each time they reappear, one square in one of the
displays has changed its color. Daniel looks longer at the display that has changed since the
last time it appeared. This procedure is testing Daniel’s. . .

Answer 1

short-term memory.

Question 2

Studies on infant gaze following have found that..

Answer 2

by 14 months of age, infants begin to understand the role of the eyes in attending to the environment.
(nfants learn to become very attentive to human gaze and appear to have a good understanding of the meaning of anothers gaze by 14 months of age)

Question 3

According to Piaget, mental representation contributes to all of the following abilities except…

Answer 3

repeating actions to achieve specific outcomes.
(Representation is using mental processes in a symbolic way to “represent” things in the world. Repeated actions do not necessarily involve this type of internal mental processes.)

Question 4

Infants’ long-term memory ability increases when parts of the hippocampus mature, typically…

Answer 4

around 12 months.
(The hippocampus continues to increase in volume, synaptic connections, and functionality with marked improvements occuring around one year of age.)

Question 5

Which of the following orders shows the progression of types of object play over the first three years of life?

Answer 5

exploratory play, functional play, functional-relational play, fine motor play
(Be sure to review Table 7.1 for the sequencing of play behaviors)

Question 6

The type of play in which infants bring together and manipulate objects that are not related to each other, such as a piece of silky fabric and a plastic measuring cup, is known as…

Answer 6

relational play

Relational play is play that brings together unrelated objects to create new play activities (see Table 7.1

Question 7

When infants encounter new objects and use actions that they have previously used to interact with other similar objects, Piaget’s theory says that they are using…

Answer 7

schemes

Piaget called the ability to apply past actions to interact with new but similar objects schemes

Question 8

Whereas Piaget viewed cognitive development as the result of the child’s own exploratory
actions, Vygotsky believed that cognitive abilities develop..

Answer 8

in sociocultural contexts and through social interaction
(Vygotsky focused on the role of culture and social interactions with respect to children’s cogntive development, emphasising the role of language to convey these contexts.)

Question 9

Which of the following has been shown to be moderately successful as a predictor of later intelligence?

Answer 9

being a “short looker” in a test of habituation.
(A short looker, is indicative of an infant who appears to process stimuli quickly, suggesting potentially quicker mental speed.)

Question 10

Infant memory is enhanced if…

Answer 10

enabling relations are present.
(Enabling relations, or “logically or practically necessary order among the steps in a sequence” (p. 219) enhance memory in infants over arbitrary relations.)