3.4 Cognitive Development Across the Lifespan

Cognition

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Schemas

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Assimilation

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Accommodation

(1) in sensation and perception, the process by which the eye’s lens changes shape to focus images of near or far objects on the retina; (2) in developmental psychology, adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information

Sensorimotor stage

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) at which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Object Permanence

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Preoperational stage

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) at which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

COnservation

The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects

Egocentric

In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view

Concrete Operational Stage

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7 to 11 years of age) at which children can perform the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete (actual, physical) events

Formal operational

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) at which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

Paiget’s Stages of Cognitive Development (table)

Sensorimother typical age range

Birth to nearly 2 years

Sensorimotor description

Experiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping)

Sensorimotor key milestones

Object permanence and stranger anxiety

Preoperational age range

About 2 to 6-7 years

Preoperational description

Representing things with words and images; using intuitive rather than logical reasoning

Preoperational

Pretend play and egocentricism

Concrete operational age range

About 7-11 years

Concrete operational description

Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations

Concrete operational key milestones

Conservation and mathematical transformations

Formal operational age range

About 12 through adulthood

Formal operational description

Reasoning abstractly

Formal operational key milestones

Abstract logic and potential for mature moral reasoning

Theory of mind

People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states; about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict