Unit3.2Child Development Theories and Concepts

Gender Identity

Awareness that kids are boys or girls.

Gender Typing

Gender related roles.

Gender Constancy

Gender is fixed, an unchangeable characteristic.

Kinsey Scale

A tool used to describe sexual orientation.

Equilibration

The way individuals adapt their thinking and knowledge to new experiences.

Schema

Mental representation or model.

Assimilation

Incorporating new ideas into existing schemas.

Accommodation

The process of modifying or changing existing mental frameworks (schemata) to incorporate new information that doesn't fit within those frameworks.

Sensorimotor Stage

Stage in the first two years and uses reflexive reactions and circular reaction, which are repeated behaviors by which the infant manipulates the environment.

Object permanence

The idea that objects continue to exist even though they are out of view.

Preoperational Stage

Ages two to seven, and typically the language development stage.

Symbolic thinking

Ability to use words to substitute for objects.

Egocentrism

Seeing the world only from one's perspective.

Artificialism

Believing all things are human-made.

Animism

Believing that all things are living.

Concrete operational Stage

Ages seven to eleven, and this is when children develop the ability to perform a mental operation and then reverse their thinking back to a starting point.

Reversibility

This concept is when children can perform a mental operation and then reverse their thinking back to a starting point.

Conservation

The idea that the amount of a substance doesn't change just because of its arrangement.

Formal Operational Stage

The stage begins from about age 12 and represents that children can fully understand abstract and symbolic relationships.

Metacognition

The ability to recognize one's cognitive processes and adapt those processes if they are not successful.

Internalization

The absorption of information from environmental and social contexts.

Zone of proximal development

The range between the developed ability that a child displays and the potential ability that they are capable of.

Actual development level

The developed ability a child displays, which rarely lives up to its full potential due to environmental input.

Potential development level

The potential ability a child is capable of.

Scaffolding

A support system that allows a person to move across the zone of proximal development incrementally with environmental supports.

Fluid Intelligence

Ability to think in terms of abstract concepts and symbolic relationships, which decreases during our 20s to 80s.

Crystalized intelligence

Specific knowledge of facts and information, which increases during the 20s to 80s period.

Wisdom

Form of intelligence or insight into life situations and conditions that result in good judgments about difficult life problems.