Week 13: Cognitive Development

Question 1

Concepts

Answer 1

the mental representation of a category

Question 2

Basic level of categorization

Answer 2

the neutral, preferred category for a given object, at an intermediate level of specificity

Question 3

Psychological Essentialism

Answer 3

belief that members of a category have an unseen property that causes them to be in the category and to have the properties associated w it

Question 4

Category

Answer 4

a set of entities that are equivalent in some way; usually the items are similar to one another

Question 5

Exemplar

Answer 5

an example in memory that is labeled as being in a particular category

Question 6

Typicality

Answer 6

the difference in “goodness” of category members, ranging from the most typical (the prototype) to borderline members

Question 7

Chutes and Ladders

Answer 7

a numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge

Question 8

Concrete operations stage

Answer 8

piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning

Question 9

conservation problems

Answer 9

problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about

Question 10

Continuous development

Answer 10

ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps

Question 11

Death perception

Answer 11

the ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment

Question 12

Discontinuous development

Answer 12

development that does not occur in a gradual incremental manner

Question 12

Formal operations stage

Answer 12

Piagetian stage starting at age 12 years and continuing for the rest of life, in which adolescents may gain the reasoning powers of educated adults

Question 13

Information processing theories

Answer 13

theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time

Question 14

Nature

Answer 14

the genes that children bring w them to life and that influence all aspects of their development

Question 15

numerical magnitudes

Answer 15

the sizes of numbers

Question 16

nurture

Answer 16

the environments, starting w the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development

Question 17

Object permanence task

Answer 17

the Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act as if they do not know that it continues to exist

Question 18

Phomenic awareness

Answer 18

awareness of the component sounds within words

Question 19

Piaget’s theory

Answer 19

theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages

Question 20

Preoperational reasoning stage

Answer 20

period within Piagetian theory from age 2 to 7 years, in which children can represent objects through drawing and language but cannot solve logical reasoning problems, such as the conservation problems

Question 21

Qualitative changes

Answer 21

Large fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such as Piaget’s posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages

Question 22

Quantitative changes

Answer 22

gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth

Question 22

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 22

period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects

Question 23

Sociocultural theories

Answer 23

theory founded in large part by Lev Vygotsky that emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture influence children’s development

Question 24

Endophenotypes

Answer 24

a characteristic that reflects a genetic liability for disease and a more basic component of a complex clinical presentation; endophenotypes are less developmentally malleable than overt behaviour

Question 25

Event-related potentials (ERP)

Answer 25

measures the firing of groups of neurons in the cortex; as a person views or listens to specific types of info, neuronal activity creates small electrical currents that can be recorded from non-invasive sensors placed on the scalp; ERP provides excellent info about the timing of processing, clarifying brain activity at the millisecond pace at which it unfolds

Question 25

fMRI

Answer 25

entails the use of pwoerful magnets to measure the levels of oxygen within the brain that vary with changes in neural activity; that is as the neurons in specific brain reigions “work harder” when performing a specific task, they require more oxygen; fMRI provides excellent spatial info, pinpointing w millimeter accuracy, the brain regions most critical for different social processes