Week 13: Cognitive Development Flashcards
Concepts
the mental representation of a category
Basic level of categorization
the neutral, preferred category for a given object, at an intermediate level of specificity
Psychological Essentialism
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
Category
a set of entities that are equivalent in some way; usually the items are similar to one another
Exemplar
an example in memory that is labeled as being in a particular category
Typicality
the difference in “goodness” of category members, ranging from the most typical (the prototype) to borderline members
Chutes and Ladders
a numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge
Concrete operations stage
piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning
conservation problems
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
Continuous development
ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps
Death perception
the ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment
Discontinuous development
development that does not occur in a gradual incremental manner
Formal operations stage
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
Information processing theories
theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time
Nature
the genes that children bring w them to life and that influence all aspects of their development
numerical magnitudes
the sizes of numbers
nurture
the environments, starting w the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development
Object permanence task
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
Phomenic awareness
awareness of the component sounds within words
Piaget’s theory
theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages
Preoperational reasoning stage
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
Qualitative changes
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
Quantitative changes
gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth
Sensorimotor stage
period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects
Sociocultural theories
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
Endophenotypes
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
Event-related potentials (ERP)
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
fMRI
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
