Dev Psyc Exam 2

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Children actively construct their own cognitive worlds

Schemes

Actions or mental representations that organize knowledge

Assimilation

Using eisting schemes to incorporate new information

Accommodation

Adjusting Schemes to fit new information and experiences

Organization

Grouping isolated behaviors and thoughts into a high-order, smoothly functioning cognitive system

Equilibration

Shifting from one stage of thought to the next

Sensorimotor Stage

Infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions (birth →2)

Simple Reflexes (Sensorimotor Stage)

Sensation and action coordinated through reflexive behaviors

infants begin to produce behaviors that resemble reflexes in the absence of the stimulus for the reflex

First Habits and primary circular reactions (Sensorimotor Stage)

primary circular reactions: a scheme based on an attempt to reproduce an event that occured by chance

Habits and circular reactions are stereotyped

Secondary Circular reactions (Sensorimotor Stage)

Infants become Object-Oriented

Secondary circular reactions: Actions are repeated because of their consequnces

Coordination of the Secondary Circular reactions (Sensorimotor Stage)

Infants must coordinate vision and touch

actions become outwardly directed

presence of intentionality

Tertiary circular reactions, novelty and curiousty (Sensorimotor Stage)

Tertiary circular reactions: an infant’s purposely explores new possibilities with objects, doing new things and exploring the results

Internalization of schemes (Sensorimotor Stage)

Infant develops the ability to use primitive symbols

Symbol: An internalized sensory image or word that represents an event

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be seen

A not B Error

When infants mistake a familiar hiding place rather than a new hiding place

core knowledge approach

infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems

Preoperational Stage (2-7)

Children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings

Form stable concepts and being to reason

Concentration

Focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others

Conservation

Awareness that altering the appearance of an object or substances does not change its basic properties

Concrete Operational (7-11)

Children can perform concrete operations and they can reason logically as long as reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples

Seriation

Ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension

Transitivity

Ability to logically combine relations to reach certain conclusions

Formal Operational Stage (11-15)

Individuals move beyond concrete experience and think in more abstract and logical ways

develop images of ideal circumstances

Adolescent Egocentrism

Heightened self-consciousness of adolescents

Imaginary Audience

Feeling one is the center of attention and sensing one is on stage

Personal Fable

Sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility

Vygotsky Theory of cognitive development

Children actively construct their knowledge and understanding

The Zone of proximal development

the range of tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but that can be learned with guidance and assistance from adults or more-skilled children

Scaffolding

Changing the level of support over the course of a teaching session

more skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance and assistance from adults or more-skilled children

Teaching Strategies

Use the ZPD

Use more-skilled peers as teachers

monitors and encourage private speech

place instruction in a meaningful context

Postformal Thought

Reflective, relativist, and contextual

provisional

realistic

recognized as being influenced by emotion

Fluid and crystalized intelligence

ability to reason abstractly

Accumulated information and verbal skills

Information Processing Approach

Analyzes how individuals encode information, manipulate it, monitor it, and create strategies for handling it

Mechanisms of Change

Encoding: information gets into memory

Automaticity: process information with little or no effort

Strategy Construction: creation of new procedures for processing information

Attention

The focusing of mental resources

Selective Attention

Focus on one aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant

Divided attention

Focus on more than one activity

Executive attention

Planning actions, gaining attention to goals, finding and fixing errors

Sustained attention

Maintaining attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time

Habituation

Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations

Dishabituation (after habituation)

Recovery of responsiveness after a change in stimulation

Joint attention

two or more individuals focus on the same object or event

Attention in childhood and adolescence

Child’s ability to pay attention significantly improves

advances in executive attention and sustained attention

Salient vs. Relevant Dimensions

Likely to pay attention to stimuli that stand out, even when those are not relevant to solving a problem/task

Planfulness

Use haphazard comparison strategies, not examining all details

Attention in adulthood

Attentional skills are often excellent in early adulthood

older adults may not be able to focus on relevant information

Memory

The retention of information over time

encoding

Getting information into memory

Storage

Retaining information over time

Retrieval

Taking information out of storage

Schema Theory

People mold memories to fit information that already exists in their minds

Schemes

Mental frameworks that organize concepts and information

Memory in Infancy

Most young infants conscious memories are short lived

show a limited type of memory

Implicit Memory

Memory without conscious recollection

Explicit memory

Conscious memory of facts and experiences

Infants don’t show this until 6 months

Infantile Amnesia

Most adults can remember little if any from first 3 years of life

Long Term Memory

Relatively permanent and unlimited

Short term memry

Retention of information for up to 30 seconds without the rehearsal of information

increases during childhood

working memory

Individuals manipulate and assemble information when making decision, problem solving, and comprehending information

Autobiographical memory

Significant events and experiences

Elaboration

Engaging in more extensive processing of information

Implicit memory

Memory of skills and routine procedures proformed automatically

Explicit Memory

The conscious memory of facts and experiences

Episodic Memory

Retention of information about the where and when of life’s happenngs

Semantic memory

Knowledge about the world

Source memory

The ability to remember where one learned something

Prospective memory

Remembering to do something in the future

Thinking

Manipulating and transforming information in memory

Executive function

A number of higher level cognitie processes linked to the development of the brains prefrontal cortex

Executive function in adolescents and emerging adults

Improvement in executive control may be the most important cognitive change in adolescence

Cool Executive Function

Psychological processes involving conscious control driven by logical thinking and critical analysis

Hot Executive function

Psychological processes driven by emotions, especially emotion regulation

Peaks at 14-15 then declines

Cognitive flexibility

being aware that options and alternatives are available and adapting to them

Critical Thinking

Thinking reflectively and productively and evaluating evidence

Expertise

Extensive, highly organized knowledge and understanding of particular domain

Metacognition

Thinking about thinking, or knowing about knowing

Metamemory

Knowledge about memory

Theory of the mind

Awareness of one’s own mental processes and the mental processes of others

from 18 months - 3 years, children understand

• Perceptions

• emotions

• desires

Intelligence

The ability to solve problems and adapt and learn from experiences

The Binet Test- general intelligence

Alfred Binet stressed that the core of intelligence consists of complex cognitive processes

Sternberg’s Triarchic theory of intelligence

1. analytical intelligence

2. Creative Intelligence

3. Practical Intelligence

Gardeners Theory of multiple intelligences

Verbal

mathematical

spatial

bodily-kinesthetic

musical

interpersonal

intrapersonal

naturalist

Existentialists ? maybe

Salovey/Mater’s Theory of emotional intelligence

Emphasises interpersonal, intrapersonal, and practical

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to perceive and express emotion accurately and adaptively, understand emotion, and manage emotions in oneself and others

Flynn Effect

A worldwide increase in IQ scores over a relatively short amount of time, probably due to greater access to information/education

Infant Intelligence tests

bayley-III Scales

Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence

Crystallized Intelligence

An individuals accumulated information and verbal skills

Fluid intelligence

The ability to reason abstractly

Wisdom

Expert knowledge about practice aspects of life that permits excellent judgement about important matters

Intellectual Disability

A condition of limited mental ability in which an individual has:

Low IQ

difficulty adapting to demands of everyday life

Organic Intellectual disability

Genetic disorder or lower level of intelligence due to brain damage

Cultural-Familial intellectual disability

Cases with no evidence of organic brain damage

Giftedness

Those who have high IQ or superior talent of some kind

Creativity

The ability to think about something in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique, good solutions to problems

Language

Form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed

Infinite generativity

the ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules

Phonology

The sound system of language

Morphology

The units of meaning involved in word formation

Syntax

The ways in which words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences

Semantics

The meanings of words