AP Psych: Mods 43 and 44

Infancy and Childhood - Mod 43: Physical Development / Mod 44: Cognitive Development

maturation

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

SIDS

sudden infant death syndrome -

after 1994 launch of U.S. Back to Sleep campaign, infants sleeping on their stomach dropped from 70 to 11 percent. SIDS fell by half

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

schema

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

assimilation

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schems

accommodation

adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

sensorimotor stage

piaget's theory - stage (from birth to nearly 2 years) when infants know the world through their sensory impression and motor activities

object permanence

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

preoperational stage

piaget's theory - stage (2 to 6/7 years) when a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

conservation

the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in forms of objeccts

Piaget believed this to be part of concrete operational reasoning

egocentrism

in piaget's theory - the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view

theory of mind

people's ideas about their own and others' mental states- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict

concrete operational stage

piaget's theory - stage of cognitive development (from 7 to 11 years) when children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events

formal operational stage

piaget's theory - stage of cognitive development (beginning about age 12) when people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

scaffold

a framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking

ex. giving children new words and mentoring in order for them to step to higher levels of thinking

autism spectrum disorder

ASD - a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors