Structure and Process

Question 1

Piaget: What is a scheme?

Answer 1

-aka a schema -the action of categorizing in a particular fashion -an experience (can be both physical or mental actions) is assimilated into a scheme, and the scheme is modified through accommodation -schemes organize our thinking into categories to help us determine which kinds of actions to take in response to environmental characteristics -schemes are hierarchical in that each stage builds on the schemes that were constructed in earlier stages

Question 2

Piaget: Organization

Answer 2

-an inborn mental process that causes people to derive generalizable schemes from specific experiences -ex. an infant handles a spherical play ball, then handles a glass decorative ball the same way

Question 3

Piaget: Figurative Schemes

Answer 3

-mental representations of the basic properties of objects in the world -ex. dogs characteristics = wet noses and fur, typical behaviors = barking, tail wagging

Question 4

Piaget: operative Schemes

Answer 4

-Mental representations of the logical connections among objects in the world ex. collies are dogs, dogs are mammals, mammals are animals, etc.

Question 5

Piaget: Adaptation

Answer 5

-The process through which schemes change

Question 6

Piaget: Assimilation

Answer 6

-part of adaptation process that involves absorbing new experiences or information into existing schemes -experience is modified to fit preexisting schemes -active process -ex. when baby handles glass ball like rubber ball, she assimilated ball to “handling” scheme

Question 7

Piaget: Accommodation

Answer 7

-part of adaptation process where a person modifies existing schemes as a result of new experiences or creates new schemes when old ones no longer handle the data -ex. baby adjusts ball handling scheme to take into account the different surface

Question 8

Piaget: Equilibration

Answer 8

-part of adaptation process where there is a periodic restructuring of schemes to create a balance b/w assimilation and accommodation -ex. a scientist has a theory, when he learns new info he assimilated new info into existing theory, if the info doesn’t fit perfectly he accommodates / modifies info so it will assimilate info that didn’t previously fit

Question 9

Piaget: Operation(s)

Answer 9

-a complex, internal, abstract scheme -first seen at age 6 -generally mental actions, like adding or subtracting

Question 10

Piaget: Sensorimotor stage

Answer 10

-1st major stage of cognitive development -birth - 24 months -child uses sensory and motor skills to act on environment -do not learn from television bc they don’t understand the symbolic nature and media, but sensory characteristics encourage infants to keep watching bc video appeals to senses

Question 11

Piaget: Preoperational stage

Answer 11

-2nd major stage of cognitive development -24 months - 6 yrs -child uses sensory an motor skills to act on environment -able to use mental symbols to represent objects to themselves internally -children are still egocentric, rigid in thinking, and still captured by appearances

Question 12

Piaget: Concrete operations stage

Answer 12

-3rd stage of cognitive development -6 yrs - 12 -children begin to think logically, develop new mental tools like reversibility

Question 13

Piaget: Formal operations stage

Answer 13

-4th and final stage of cognitive development -adolescence -child can manipulate and organize ideas pr hypothetical situations and objects

Question 14

Piaget: What are the 4 causes of cognitive development?

Answer 14

The sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational period Equilibration interacts with: -Social Transmission: information the child gets from other people -Experience: child has own opportunities to act on the world and observe the results of their actions -Maturation: the process of development in which an individual matures or reaches full functionality all work to produce changes in children’s thinking

Question 15

Piaget and Infancy: Primary circular reactions

Answer 15

-describes a baby’s simple repetitive actions in substage 2 of the sensorimotor stage, organized around the baby’s own body; the baby repeats some action in order to have some desired outcome occur again -ex. putting thumb back in mouth for the good feeling of thumb sucking

Question 16

Piaget and Infancy: Secondary circular reactions

Answer 16

-repetitive actions in substage 3 of sensorimotor period, oriented around external objects; the infant repeats some action in order to have some outside event recur, such as hitting a mobile repeatedly so that it moves

Question 17

Piaget and Infancy: Object permanence

Answer 17

-the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they aren’t in direct sight

Question 18

Piaget and Infancy: Tertiary circular reactions

Answer 18

-deliberate experimentation w/ variations of previous actions, characteristic of substage 5 of the sensorimotor period

Question 19

What was the study completed by Rovee-Collier and colleague Cuevas? What did it show?

Answer 19

-showed babies have good memory, habituation and dishabituation are present at birth -tied string to babies foot and mobile to see if they would kick at different rates for the mobile to move (secondary circular reaction)

Question 20

Piaget and Infancy: Imitation

Answer 20

-ability to imitate increases over months -deferred imitation is when a child (18 months) can imitate an action when the model is no longer visible

Question 21

Piaget and Preschool: Egocentrism

Answer 21

-child is not being selfish, but they think/assume that everyone sees the world as they do -ex. mountain view video -however, research shows they are less egocentric than we thought

Question 22

Piaget and Preschool: Conservation

Answer 22

-the understanding that the quantity or amount of a substance remains the same even when there are external changes in its shape or arrangement -ex. diff cup video

Question 23

Piaget and Preschool: Centration

Answer 23

-young child tends to think of the world in terms of one variable at a time -ex. roll out play dough, has more clay bc it is longer

Question 24

Piaget and Preschool: Decentration

Answer 24

-thinking takes multiple variables into account -ex. roll out play dough, but still has same amount of clay even though it is longer

Question 25

Piaget and Preschool: False Belief Principle

Answer 25

-understanding that another person might have a false belief and the ability to determine what info might cause this false belief -ex. they know pumice is a rock bc they touched it, but another child who hasn’t touched the rock might think its a sponge bc they didn’t feel it -emergence of this principle in a child shows that they are gaining a “representational theory of mind” –potentially universal?

Question 26

Piaget and Preschool: Theory of mind

Answer 26

-ideas that collectively explain other peoples beliefs, desires, and behaviors -potentially universal? -influenced by general cognitive and language development, and engaging in pretend play with others

Question 27

Piaget and Preschool: Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory

Answer 27

-emphasizes the role of social factors on cognitive development -solutions to problems are socially generated and learned -proximal development (the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help) and scaffolding (the support given during the learning process which is tailored to the needs of the student to get to a deeper level of learning)

Question 28

Piaget and Preschool: Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory PERIODS

Answer 28

-primitive stage - infant possesses mental processes that are similar to lower animals -naive psychology stage - use language to communicate but does not understand symbolic character -egocentric speech stage - language is a guide to solving problems -ingrowth stage - uses the skills he has acquired to perform logical tasks internally

Question 29

Piaget and the School-Aged Child: Reversibility

Answer 29

-critical part of the concrete operations period -understanding that actions and mental operations can’t be reversed -ex. clay can be rolled back into a ball

Question 30

Piaget and the School-Aged Child: Class inclusion

Answer 30

-the principle that subordinate classes of objects are included in superordinate classes -ex. bananas are in the “fruit” class, fruits are in the “food” class, etc.

Question 31

Piaget and the School-Aged Child: Inductive Logic

Answer 31

-reasoning from own experience to a general principle -ex. when you move a toy to a group of toys, it has one more than before (adding always makes more of something)

Question 32

Piaget and the School-Aged Child: Deductive Logic

Answer 32

-starting with a general principle and then predicting some outcome or observation -ex. having to imagine something you have not experienced

Question 33

Piaget and the School-Aged Child: Horizontal decalage

Answer 33

-term for school-aged children’s tendency to be able to solve some kinds of concrete operational problems earlier than others -ex. a child can use logical sense to solve a math problem, but not apply this logic to where a toy was left

Question 34

Piaget and the School-Aged Child: Siegler’s Wave theory

Answer 34

-an individual may use a variety of rules on the same type of problem in different attempts on the same day -at any given age, children will resort to a multitude ways of thinking. Instead of a step-like or linear progression, development can be best described as a series of overlapping waves. Each wave represents the frequency of a strategy’s use over time. Since children resort to numerous strategies at any point in their development, the model is characterised by many overlapping waves

Question 35

Piaget and Adolescence: hypothetic-deductive reasoning

Answer 35

-term for the form of reasoning that is part of formal operational thought and involves not just deductive logic but also the ability to consider hypotheses and hypothetical possibilities -only at adolescence can people start to understand and use the basic principles of logic

Question 36

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: Automaticity

Answer 36

-the ability to recall information from long-term memory without effort

Question 37

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: Memory Strategies

Answer 37

-ways of manipulating information that increase the chances that it will be remembered -ex. rehearsal, clustering (organizing), training (associations)

Question 38

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: Production deficiency

Answer 38

-a pattern where an individual can use some mental strategy if reminded to do so but fails to use the strategy spontaneously

Question 39

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: Utilization deficiency

Answer 39

-children often spontaneously use a strategy but have no memory benefit from it, a child understands that using a strategy is a good thing to do but doesn’t fully understand how to go about using it

Question 40

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: Metamemory

Answer 40

-knowledge about one’s own memory processes -select appropriate memory strategies

Question 41

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: Metacognition

Answer 41

-knowledge about one’s own thinking processes, knowing what one knows and what one learns -critical for learning to read skillfully

Question 42

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: executive processes

Answer 42

-cognitive skills that allow a person to devise and carry out alternative strategies for remembering and solving problems

Question 43

Piaget and Info-Processing Skills: Response Inhibition

Answer 43

-the ability to control responses to stimuli -carefully mentally working through a problem and thinking about the impact of the response before answering

Question 44

Piaget and Adolescence: Egocentrism

Answer 44

-adolescent egocentrism prevents teens from being able to realistically assess potential risks -teens perform for an imaginary audience of peers -become excessively focused and critical of themselves