DEVPSYCH #3

Semiotic Function

Ability to use symbols - language, pictures, signs or gestures - to represent actions or objects mentally, begins around age 2

Reversible Thinking

Ability to think backwards, mastered in concrete operational stage

Decentering

Focusing on more than one aspect at a time

Egocentric

Assuming that others experience the world the way they do

Collective Monologue

A conversation where children talk to themselves or each other without logical communication or meaningful exchange.

Identity

Principle that a person or object remains the same over time

Compensation

Principle that changes in one dimension can be an offset by changes in another

Classification

Grouping of objects into categories

Seriation

Arranging of objects in sequential order according to one aspect such as size, weight, or volume

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Children acquire their culture’s values, beliefs, and problem solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members in society.

Co-constructed process

A social process in which people interact and negotiate to create an understanding or to solve a problem.

Cultural Tools

The real tools and symbols systems that allow people in a society to communicate, think, solve problems, and create knowledge.

Private Speech

Children’s self-talk which guides their thinking and action. Eventually these verbalizations are internalized as silent inner speech.

Scaffolding

Support for learning and problem solving. The support could be clues, reminders, encouragement, breaking the problem down into steps, providing an example, or anything else that allows the students to grow in independence as a learner.

Assisted Learning

Providing strategic help in the initial stages of learning, gradually diminishing as students gain independence

Zone of Proximal Development

Range of tasks that are too difficult for children to master along but that can be learned with guidance and assistance.

Upper limit

Level of additional responsibility a child can accept with assistance of an able instructor

Lower Limit

Level of problem-solving reached on theses tasks by the child working alone.

Information-Processing Theory

Emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it.

Operant Conditioning

Consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior’s occurrence

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

Behavior, environment, and cognition are key factors in development. Observational learning

Ethological Theory

Stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology and is tied to evolution

Eclectic Theoretical Orientation

No single theory can explain all of development

Cohort Effects

Differences due to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation, but not to actual age

Mechanistic Model

Model that views development as a passive, predictable response to stimuli.

Organismic Model

Model that views development as internally initiated by an active organism, and as occurring in a sequence of qualitatively different stages

Id

Part of the personality that governs newborns, operating on the pleasure principle

Pleasure Principle

The drive to seek immediate satisfaction of needs and desires

Ego

Part of the personality that represents reason, operating on the reality principle

Reality Principle

Finding realistic ways to gratify the ID

Superego

Part of the personality containing the conscience, incorporating socially approved behavior into the child’s own value system

Crisis

Major psychological theme that is particularly important at that time and will remain an issue to some degree throughout the rest of life

Learning Perspective

View of development that holds that changes in behavior results from experience, or adaptation to the environment.

Behaviorism

Learning theory that emphasizes the predictable role of environment in causing observable behavior

Classical Conditioning

Learning based on association of a stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a response with another stimulus that does elicit the response.

Operant Conditioning

Learning based on reinforcement or punishment

Positive Reinforcement

Giving a reward, such as food, gold stars, or praise

Negative Reinforcement

Taking away something the individual does not like (an aversive event), such as the removal of a loud, raspy noise.

Extinguished

Term referring to the return of a behavior to its original, or baseline, level after removal of reinforcement

Social Learning Theory

Theory that behaviors are learned by observing and imitating models. Also called social cognitive theory

Observational Learning (Modeling)

Learning through watching the behavior of others

Self-efficacy

A confidence that a person has the characteristics needed to succeed.

Cognitive Perspective

View that thought processes are central to development

Organization

The tendency to create increasingly complex cognitive structures (schemes)

Schemes

Organized patterns of behavior that a person uses to think about and act in a situation

Adaptation

How children handle new information in light of what they already know

Assimilation

involves fitting new information into existing mental structures

Accommodation

Part of adaptation, changing one’s cognitive structures to include new information

Equilibration

The constant striving for a stable balance in the shift from assimilation to accommodation