Cognitive Development: Piaget and Vygotsky

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering theories of cognitive development, specifically focusing on Jean Piaget's stages of development and Lev Vygotsky's social development concepts.

Developmental Psychology

The branch of psychology that studies how humans change and develop across their entire lifespan, with substantial focus on childhood.

Cognition

Mental processes that involve thinking, such as reasoning, problem-solving, remembering, and applying stored memories to solve problems.

Sensorimotor Period

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development (from birth to approximately age two), where a child's experience is centered on sensing the world and taking physical actions before using language or symbols.

Object Permanence

The cognitive understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be seen or is no longer directly in front of the observer.

Preoperational Period

Piaget's second stage (around ages two to seven), characterized by the onset of symbolic thought, pretend play, and reliance on memory, but marked by an absence of logical operational thinking.

Conservation

The cognitive understanding that the amount, mass, or volume of a substance remains the same despite changes in its physical appearance, shape, or container.

Centration

The tendency of a child to focus on only one single aspect or feature of a problem while neglecting other relevant dimensions.

Irreversibility

The inability to mentally envision or retrace an action occurring backwards to restore the original state.

Egocentrism

A child's limited ability to comprehend another individual's perspective, leading them to assume others see, feel, and experience the world identically to themselves.

Concrete Operational Period

Piaget's third stage (spanning approximately kindergarten/first grade to sixth grade), where children develop logical operations and problem-solving abilities applied to tangible, real-world objects.

Hierarchical Classification

The ability to organize items into structured levels of categorical relationships, recognizing that subcategories belong within larger categories.

Formal Operational Period

Piaget's final cognitive stage (beginning around age 11), in which thinking becomes rules-based, abstract, and capable of processing hypothetical 'what if' scenarios.

Elementary Mental Functions

The four innate mental capacities Vygotsky identified that humans are born with: attention, sensation, perception, and memory.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's term for the space between what a learner can achieve independently and what is currently beyond their reach, representing what they can achieve with assistance.

More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

In Vygotsky's theory, any individual—such as a parent, mentor, teacher, or capable peer—who possesses greater competence in a task and provides guidance to the learner.

Internalization

The gradual developmental process outlined by Vygotsky through which external speech and social conversations become internalized as silent inner speech and thought.