CDE 2104: Exam 2 (Lang & Cog Dev)

Piaget’s constructivism

Individuals construct their understanding, learning is a constructive process with active learning

Piaget’s Preoperational stage

Children begin to represent the world with words, images, drawings. Cannot use logic and reasoning skills.

Symbolic Function Substage (2-4)

•Imaginative drawings

•Ability to mentally represent object not present

•Learning to engage in pretend play

•Thoughts limited by beliefs, animism, and egocentrism

Intuitive Thought Substage (4-7)

•Children ask “why” questions

•Overcoming limitations of conservation

animism

belief that inanimate/not alive things have feelings

egocentrism

inability to differentiate one’s own perspective, thoughts, or feelings from those of others

mountain task

conservation

when a child focuses on one aspect of feature at the expense of other relevant features of a situation

centration

when a child focuses on one aspect of a feature at the expense of other relevant features of a situation

social constructivist approach

construction of knowledge and understanding by actions and interactions

LEARNING precedes DEVELOPMENT

private speech

•speech directed to oneself in order to understand something or guide one’s behavior

•Seen most often in children between the ages of 4 and 6

executive functioning

improvements in a child’s ability to focus on relevant information and ignore distractions are due to advances in this

information processing theory

focuses on limitations and advances in attention, memory, strategies, problem-solving, and metacognition over the course of development

theory of mind

When a child is able to explain that another person may think differently about a situation

morphology

use of correct word endings and rules

“I goed to the park”

Pragmatics

social use of language

A child changes their tone and volume when talking to a teacher vs a friend

Syntax

sentence structure and word order

A child mixes up the order of words and says “Mommy is eating” as “Eating Mommy is.”

Phonology

sounds of language

Child struggles to pronounce the “th” sound and says “fink” instead of think

Semenatics

word meaning

A preschooler sees a big, colorful insect for the first time and excitedly says, “Look, a butterfly!” after just learning the word “butterfly” from a picture book

fast mapping

the ability to connect a new word with its referent after only limited exposure