Educational Psychology: Cognitive Development, Learning Theories, Intelligence, Creativity, and Critical Thinking

Vocabulary flashcards covering core terms and definitions across cognitive development, learning theories, intelligence testing, creativity dimensions, and critical thinking concepts.

Critical Thinking

The ability to analyze information objectively, evaluate evidence, identify biases or assumptions, make reasoned judgments, and solve problems logically.

Metacognition

The process of thinking about one's own thinking, which serves as a crucial component of critical thinking.

Argumentation

Formulating, presenting, and defending a position with evidence.

Reflective Judgment

The metacognitive process of thinking about thinking that enables high-level understanding and facilitates critical thinking.

Divergent Thinking

A reasoning process focused on generating multiple possibilities, ideas, or solutions to explore options.

Convergent Thinking

A reasoning process that brings together different thoughts or information to reach a single correct solution or decide what to do.

Fluency

In Torrance's dimensions of creativity, the total number of uses, responses, or ideas an individual identifies for an item or process.

Flexibility

In Torrance's dimensions of creativity, the number of distinct categories or areas covered across an individual's answers.

Elaboration

In Torrance's dimensions of creativity, the level of detail provided within an individual's responses.

Originality

In Torrance's dimensions of creativity, the degree of uncommonness or novelty in an individual's responses.

Curvilinear Relationship

A pattern where moderate levels of variables (such as environmental order, noise, student conformity, or emphasis on correct answers) best stimulate creative responding, whereas extremely low or high levels diminish it.

Self-Efficacy

An individual's system of beliefs regarding their capability to perform given tasks, strongly associated with motivation, intentionality, agency, effort, and resilience when facing challenges.

Observational Learning

Learning that occurs through observing others, requiring four essential processes: attention, retention, production, and motivation.

Self-Regulation

The process where individuals systematically activate, understand, manage, and sustain their own behaviors, actions, cognitions, and affects oriented toward goals.

IQ Tests

Standardized assessments that measure general achievement, such as memory of previously learned notions and analytical skills that facilitate problem-solving.

Achievement Tests

Standardized assessments that measure domain-specific achievement in specific content areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics.

Verbal IQ Subtests

Subtests including vocabulary, information, comprehension, and similarities that mirror school-related tasks and predict overall IQ and academic achievement better than nonverbal subtests.

Nonverbal IQ Subtests

Subtests including block design, perceptual reasoning, and processing speed that evaluate non-linguistic spatial and perceptual abilities.

Block Design

A timed subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children in which a child arranges red and white blocks to match a pattern shown in a booklet to assess spatial ability.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development (roughly ages 0–2) in which an infant interacts with the environment through sensory perceptions and motor actions, developing person and object permanence.

Object Permanence

A benchmark cognitive achievement during the sensorimotor stage representing the realization that objects exist even when they are out of sight or unperceived.

Preoperational Stage

Piaget's second stage (roughly ages 2–7) characterized by symbolic thinking, rapid language development, fantasy, egocentrism, and an absence of operational thought.

Egocentrism

A characteristic of the preoperational stage where a child cannot understand or adopt a viewpoint or perspective different from their own.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's third stage (roughly ages 7–11) in which a child demonstrates logical thinking restricted to tangible objects and events, marked by the onset of conservation and cognitive reversals.

Conservation

The perception and realization that physical quantities remain the same despite superficial changes in the appearance, shape, or spatial configuration of matter.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget's final cognitive stage (beginning around ages 11–12) involving the mental manipulation of abstract concepts, theoretical hypotheses, and counterfactual thinking.

Schemes

Cognitive representations involving singular dimensions, such as height or width in tangible objects or basic operations like addition or subtraction.

Operations

Higher-level cognitive structures that combine multiple schemes, such as combining width and height to evaluate the volume of a liquid container.

Assimilation

The cognitive adaptation process of interpreting and fitting new environmental information into pre-existing mental schemes.

Accommodation

The cognitive adaptation process of altering existing schemes or creating new ones when new information cannot fit into existing structures.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's concept describing the disparity between what a child can perform independently and what they can achieve with adult assistance or peer collaboration.

Scaffolding

An instructional technique closely associated with the ZPD where an adult or more skilled peer provides temporary assistance, which is gradually tapered off as the child gains mastery.