theories of cognitive development

Question 1

behaviorism

Answer 1

development is controlled by environmental conditions— rewards and punishments
- behavior that is rewarded will increase, and vice versa

Question 2

the active child

Answer 2

children shape their own development, preferences to attend to certain things (people over objects; caregivers over others)

• motivated to learn
  - little experimenters e.g. dropping food
  - practice language in absence of people
  - engage in pretend play
• actively seek our their own environment
  - friends they play with, activities they engage in, places they go, books they read

Question 3

mechanisms of developmental change

Answer 3

• effortful attention
• modeling
• something biological

Question 4

diff theories of development

Answer 4

1. piaget’s theory
2. social theories (e.g., social learning, socio-cultural)
3. info processing theory
4. core-knowledge theory

Question 5

Piaget’s stages of development

Answer 5

1. sensorimotor (birth to 2 years)
2. preoperational (2-7 years)
3. concrete operational (7-12 years)
4. formal operational (12 and beyond)

Question 6

Piaget’s formal operational stage

Answer 6

• children can think about abstraction and hypotheticals
  
  • can perform systematic experiments to draw conclusion about the world

Question 7

Piaget’s conrete operational stage

Answer 7

• children reason logically about concrete objects and events
  
  • difficulty thinking in purely abstract terms and in combining information systematically

Question 8

Piaget’s pre-operational stage

Answer 8

development of language and symbolic thinking, but children are not yet able to perform logical operations.

Question 9

Piaget’s sensorimotor stage

Answer 9

• basic motor systems, sensory/perceptual systems, learning mechanisms of assimilation accommodation and equilibrium

Question 10

Piaget’s constructivist theory building

Answer 10

• assimilation: process by which children translate info into a form they can understand
• accommodation: process by which children revise current knowledge structures in response to new experiences
• equilibration: process by which children balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding

Question 11

Piaget’s strength vs. weaknesses

Answer 11

Strengths
- good overview of children’s thinking at different points
- appealing due to its breadth
- fascinating observations

Weaknessess
- stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent that it is
- made it seem that kids are always consistent
- children are more cognitively competent that Piaget recognized
- understates contribution of the social world
- didn’t consider the influence that other people may have in shaping a child’s world
- vague about cognitive processes/ mechanisms that produce cognitive growth
- e.g. states there are changes going on in the brain, but never actually states what is going on in the brain

Question 12

sociocultural theories

Answer 12

• adults and peers play instrumental role in facilitating learning
• other people play a role in who we end up being
• emphasized importance of play

Question 13

Bandura

Answer 13

observation and imitation of others are mechanisms of change in this theory
- children imitate specific forms of behaviors, but more abstract idea of being aggressive towards object

Question 14

Vygotsky

Answer 14

• cognitive development occurs in interpersonal contact
  - interaction with parents, siblings, teachers, and playmate
  
  • emphasized importance of play

Question 15

zone of proximal development

Answer 15

range between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal social support
- e.g. difference between having a bad vs a good teacher: range of performance will certainly be affected

Question 16

social scaffolding

Answer 16

more competent people provide temporary frameworks that lead children to higher-order thinking (used interchangeably with ‘guided participation’)

Question 17

joint attention

Answer 17

intentional focus on a common referent

Question 18

intersubjectivity

Answer 18

mutual understanding established during communication- a ‘meeting of the minds’

Question 19

social referencing

Answer 19

children look to social partners for guidance about how to respond to unfamiliar events

Question 20

core-knowledge theories

Answer 20

• Children have innate cognitive capabilities
• Focus on areas (such as understanding people and objects) that have been important throughout our evolutionary history
  - often endorse a modularity approach

Question 21

continuity

Answer 21

understanding that objects exist continuously over time and space, even when they are not directly perceived
- e.g., if a toy is partially hidden behind a screen, infants expect it to still be there when the screen is removed

Question 22

coherence

Answer 22

ability to perceive objects as coherent, stable, and enduring entities. Infants learn to recognize that objects have consistent properties and remain the same despite changes in perspective or partial occlusion

Question 23

contact

Answer 23

understanding of how objects interact with each other and their environment. Infants learn that objects do not pass through each other and that they can support or collide with one another in predictable ways

Question 24

sociocultural constraints

Answer 24

Social = parents, siblings, teachers, friends, peers, etc.

Physical = home, school, urban vs. rural neighborhood etc.

Economic = national wealth, societal wealth, family wealth

Cultural = language, values, traditions, attitudes/beliefs, laws,
political structure, technology, etc.

Historical = influences all these other factors, e.g. traditional
practices, policies, economy, technology etc

Question 25

information processing theories

Answer 25

children undergo continuous cognitive change
- view child as active problem solvers
- limited-capacity processing system

• Increasing efficient execution of basic processes
• Expanding memory capacity
• Acquisition of new strategies and knowledge

Question 26

information processing theory basic processes

Answer 26

• associating events with one another
• recognizing objects as familiar
• recalling facts and procedures
• generalizing from one instance to another
• encoding: process of representing memory information specific features of objects and events

Question 27

memory systems

Answer 27

sensory, working, and long-term memory

Question 28

sensory memory

Answer 28

refers to sights, sounds, and other sensations that are just entering the brain
- can hold moderate amount of info for a fraction of a second, its capacity is relatively constant over much of development

Question 29

working memory

Answer 29

workspace in which info from environment and relevant knowledge are brought together, attended to, and actively processed
- quite limited in both capacity and duration… capacity and speed of operation nonetheless increases greatly over childhood into adolescence

Question 30

long-term memory

Answer 30

refers to info retained on an enduring basis
- can retain unlimited amount of info indefinitely, and contents of long-term memory increase enormously over development

Question 31

how to improve efficiency of basic cognitive processes

Answer 31

• rehearsal: process of repeating info over and over to aid memory
  
  • selective attention: process of intentionally focusing on information thats most relevant to the current goal