Week 4 and extra from 5, Chapter 6 Flashcards
Who created the first comprehensive theory of cognitive development from infancy through adolescence?
Jean Piaget
What was Piaget interested in and what was a key discovery?
Mistakes kids make and their reasoning process; kids think differently, as compared to adults
What theory is the idea “children are little scientists” associated with?
Piaget’s
What are the 3 characteristics associated with Piaget’s theory?
Active vs. passive child, learning key lessons independently, intrinsically motivated to learn
What are schemas and what theory are they associated with?
Mental structures of the mind; Piaget’s
What part of Piaget’s theory does this refer to: new experiences are readily incorporated into existing theories
Assimilation
What part of Piaget’s theory does this refer to: existing theories are modified based on experiences
Accommodation
What are the 4 key properties of Piaget’s theory?
Qualitative change (step-wise progression), broad applications across contexts and topics, brief transitions, invariant sequence (stages different lengths, never skipped)
What are the 4 stages and their age group of Piaget’s theory?
Sensorimotor (0-2 years), preoperational (2-7 years), concrete operational (7-11 years), formal operational (11+ years)
What are the first 3 substages of sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)?
0-1 months - basic reflexes; 1-4 months - primary circular reactions (discovers something pleasant, continues action - thumb sucking); 4-8 months - secondary circular reactions (discovers objects and their sounds, sights, etc)
What are the last 3 substages of sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)?
8-12 months - intentional behavior; 12-18 months - tertiary circular behaviors (discovers old actions on new objects and their outcomes - smacking toy elicits sounds); 18-24 months - using symbols (gestures)
What is this phenomenon called; behavior seen previously is reproduced - what is a class discussed example?
Deferred imitation; whacking head on light up box
What is this phenomenon called; objects continue to exist even when they are hidden - when does this start and when is it fully developed?
Object permanence; 8 months, 18 months
What is this phenomenon called; happens because infants cannot tell objects and action apart
A not B error
What is this phenomenon called; tendency to perceive the world solely from one’s own point of view - what stage is this associated with?
Egocentrism; preoperational
What is this phenomenon called; crediting inanimate objects with life and lifelike properties (as a result of attributing own thoughts/feelings to others) - what stage is this associated with?
Animism; preoperational
What phenomenon is this; tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event - what stage is this associated with?
Centration; preoperational
T or F: By the end of the preoperational stage, children are using full logic
F; only partially
What are the key characteristics that emerge after the sensorimotor stage (2)?
Object permanence, use of symbols
What is the start vs. finish of the sensorimotor stage?
Reflexes, symbols
What are the key characteristics of the preoperational stage (3)?
Egocentrism, animism, centration
What is the start vs. finish of the preoperational stage?
Symbols, logic-ish
T or F: In the concrete operational stage, children cannot reason logically and cannot solve conservation problem
F; they can for both
What is this phenomenon called; knowing that an object’s quality can be restored by reversing the change - what stage is this associated with?
Reversibility; concrete operational
What are the 4 mental operations associated with the concrete operational stage that thought is based on?
Reversibility, decentration, conservation, classification
T or F: Children in the concrete operational stage can think abstractly
F; can only think on the real and concrete
What are key characteristics of the concrete operational stage?
Conservation, reversibility, mental operations
What is the start vs. end of the concrete operational stage?
Logic; abstract thinking
What is this phenomenon called; ability to think about ideas, principles, and scenarios that aren’t physically present - what stage is this associated with?
Abstract and hypothetical thinking; formal operational
T or F: Children start forming hypotheses and thinking systematically all possible outcomes of a situation in the formal operational stage
T
What is the difference between deductive vs. inductive reasoning?
Theory-experiment-evidence (top-down); data-pattern-conclusion (bottom-up)
What are the key characteristics of the formal operational stage?
Abstract thinking, hypotheses, deductive & inductive reasoning
What are the 3 key contributions of Piaget’s theory?
Study of cognitive development, new constructivist view of children (active vs. passive child), fascinating discoveries
What are 5 weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?
Stage model depicts thinking as more consistent than it is and doesn’t consider variability, underestimated cognitive competence in infants and young children and overestimates adolescence, vague about the cognitive processes, understates environmental influences, ethics
What is equilibration?
Process where when disequilibrium occurs, children recognize their theories to return to a state of equilibrium
What is constructivism?
View that children are active participants in own development who systematically construct more sophisticated understandings of worlds
What is this phenomenon called; refers to mutual, shared understandings among participants in an activity
Intersubjectivity
What occurs in guided participation?
Cognitive growth results from children’s involvement in structured activities with others who are more skilled them them
What is this phenomenon called; difference between what a kid can do with assistance and what they can do alone
Zone of proximal development
What is scaffolding?
Refers to a teaching style that matches the amount of assistance to the learner’s needs (more when needed; less when needed)
What is the difference between private and inner speech?
Comments not directed to others meant to help regulate own behavior; thought
What theory is this; human cognition consists of mental hardware and software
Information processing theory
What kind of memory is this; information held briefly in raw unanalyzed form (no longer than a few seconds)
Sensory memory
What kind of memory is this; site of ongoing cognitive activity
Working memory
What kind of memory is this; limitless, permanent storehouse of knowledge of the world
Long-term memory
What is the central executive responsible for?
Coordinates all activities, refers to the executive network of attention and resembles a computer’s operating system
T or F; Executive functioning improves with age
T
What are automatic processes?
Cognitive activities that require virtually no effort
What are the 4 types of developmental changes in information processing?
Better strategies (i.e., remembering how a word is spelled instead of sounding out), more effective executive functioning (adapting to demands), increased automatic processing, increased speed of processing
What theory is this; information processing theories that view the mind as a system of networks of processors
Connectionist theory
What is a pro of connectionist theories?
Can explain issues in children’s language (over regularization - incorrect grammatical functions such as goed instead of went)
What theory is this; proposes distinctive domains of knowledge, some of which are acquired early
Core knowledge
What theory is this; cognitive development a sociocultural enterprise, uses scaffolding to acquire knowledge, use of private speech
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
What are the 3 ways infants form categories?
Clues come from features and their organization (sippy cup = cylinder and spout), function (2 objects that look different but do the same are in same category), earliest categories formed on basic level when category members look the same or have similar functions (roses, tulips both flowers)
What are teleological explanation for development?
Children believe living things and parts of living exist for a reason (fish have smooth skin so they don’t cut other fish)
What is essentialism?
All living things have an essence that can’t be seen that gives living things its identity (birds and birdness distinguish them from dogs and dogness)
What is this phenomenon; in typically developing children, around 4 years see change in children’s understanding of centrality of beliefs in a person’s thinking about the world
Fundamental change
What were Vygotsky’s 2 key questions?
How do children acquire higher cognitive functions during development and how do social and cultural patterns shape developmental trajectories
What theory is this idea associated with; children are social beings and apprentices - learning from those around them
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
What is intersubjectivity?
Mutual, shared understanding among participants in an activity
T or F: Piaget’s theory encourages discovery based learning and Vygotsky’s emphasizes guided learning
T
What is the emphasis information processing theories?
Problem solving and memory
What is considered hardware and software in information processing theories?
Sensory, working, long term memory, and central executive; task specific
What are the characteristics of sensory memory (2) and how do you move information to the next stage?
Large capacity, brief; encoding
What are the characteristics of working memory (2) and how do you more information to the next stage?
Limited capacity, rehearsal important; encoding
What are the characteristics of long term memory (3) and what is the process of moving information back into the previous stage?
Unlimited capacity, permanent, access and retrieval important; retrieval
T or F: Contents of long term memory increase enormously over development
T
What does the central executive do (2)?
Directs all activity, monitors all activity (decides what information we pay attention to)
What are the characteristics of processing speed (3)?
Basic processes, increases greatly throughout childhood, result of biological maturation and experience
What are the characteristics of mental strategies (3)?
New ones emerge between 5-8 years old, rehearsal, focusing on relevant info to current goal
What are the characteristics of executive functioning (2)?
Inhibitory processes (preventing info irrelevant to task from entering working memory), better executive functioning (inhibition + cognitive flexibility + planning)
T or F: Information processing theories support discontinuous change
F; continuous
What is statistical learning?
Detecting regularities in input data, allowing it to predict and generalize information without explicit rules
What are 4 critiques regarding information processing theories?
Lack of comprehensive theory, aspects of cognition that are not linear and logical ignored, over reliance on lab based experiments, ignores cultural and social influences
What are 3 areas that children rapidly acquire language and knowledge of according to core knowledge theories?
Physical objects (naive physics), people (naive psychology), plants and animals (naive biology)
What are 4 critiques of core knowledge theories?
Overreliance on innate knowledge vs. experience and training, what determines “core knowledge,” measuring infant cognition relies on looking time paradigm (if something new or unexpected, look longer), underestimation of cultural influences
What is the “impossible event”?
Renee Balliargeon; the box not stopping due to a block in the way
How do children identify animate objects?
Motion
By age 3-4, what do naive theories of biology include?
Movement, growth, internal parts, inheritance, illness, and healing (if chair gets scratched, will it heal)
What age do children understand death?
5-7
Regarding naive psychology, when do children understand imitation, intention, and joint attention?
2
What theory is this; well organized understanding of how the mind works and influences the behavior
Theory of mind
What happens at age 2, 3, and 5 according to the theory of mind?
Other peoples desires and their actions but don’t understand beliefs, other people’s desires and beliefs and their actions but fail at false belief problems, excel at solving false belief problems
What kind of task is this; assess whether children understand that another person’s beliefs reflect that person’s experiences and influence their actions (even if those experiences have led the other person to a false belief)
False-belief task
What is the theory of mind module (TOMM)
Hypothesized specialized brain mechanism devoted to understanding other people
What theory is this; theory of mind emerges from interactions with other people
Mental states theory
