Chapter 23 (Piaget = cognitive development)

stage theorists

those who argue that we undergo big psychological transformations at different ages, and in a set order. Piaget and Erikson were both this kind of theorist.

sensorimotor stage

Piaget's first cognitive developmental stage. It's age 0-2 years, when kids learn to perceive the world and control their bodies.

altricial

a developmental term for a species that begins life helpless and matures slowly. People are very altricial. Snakes and ducklings are not (they're highly precocial).

precocial

a developmental term for a species that begins life capable of a lot of self-care -- and usually matures quickly as well. Such animals are on a fast but rigid path to self-sufficiency.

object permanence

the awareness that objects still exist when we can no longer see them. Newborns don't seem to know this. Toddlers do.

basic object permanence paradigm (BOPP)

a technique for studying whether babies of different ages know that things still exist when hidden. It involves hiding an interesting object in an obvious way and seeing if a baby searches for it.

perseveration

a mistake that suggests that older infants don't completely understand object permanence. It is the reason why some tykes commit the A-not-B error.

A-not-B error

a mistake made by infants with an imperfect appreciation of object permanence. Hide a toy under one of two small blankets. The kid will lift the blanket. Repeat. The kid will lift again. Cover the toy with the other blanket. The kid who makes this error will look under the original blanket!

Piagetian paradigm

the broad approach Piaget used to study cognitive development: (1) identify a cognitive ability, (2) create a clear test of it, (3) compare the performance of younger and older kids on this test.

preoperational stage

the second of Piaget's four stages of cognitive development (ages 2-6 years). Kids of this age can only perform the most basic forms of abstract thinking. They can only do limited operations.

egocentrism

"self-centeredness," the inability to see the world from the vantage point of others. We become less this way as we progress though Piaget's stages.

three mountains task

a measure of egocentrism. Kids see a table-top model of three mountains. They're then asked to describe what someone else would see if seated in a chair different than their own.

concrete operational stage

Piaget's third cognitive stage (ages 6-11). At this age, kids can perform pretty complex mental operations but only if what they have to manipulate mentally is right in front of them.

conservation

something kids understand in Piaget's concrete operations stage. This is the awareness that objects often change their shape or appearance without changing their mass or amount. Example: Split a ball of clay into two pieces and it does NOT contain more clay.

seriation

ranking a set of objects on any of several physical or psychological dimensions. For example, rank a bunch of toy animals for their height, their weight, and then their running speed. Kids in Piaget's third stage are good at this. Younger kids are not.

formal operational stage

Piaget's fourth and final stage of cognitive development. It begins in puberty, and it means there is no longer a biological limit to how complex and scientific our abstract thought can be.

transitive inferences

something people can only do well in Piaget's final stage of cognitive development. It means drawing conclusions about the serial positions (rankings) of things based on purely abstract information.

ACID

an acronym for remembering the essential features of being a formal (adult, stage 4) operational thinker in Piaget's theory. It stands for abstraction, creativity, induction, and deduction.

abstraction

in Piaget's model, the ability to use symbols to represent and manipulate things. The ability to use a map, to do math, and to read music are examples. See the ACID rule about Piaget's model.

creativity

the ability to think in novel ways, to put things together, or pull them apart, in ways that have not been done before. See the ACID rule about Piaget's model.

induction

reasoning from the specific (specific cases) to the general (a broad rule). Finches have feathers, emus have feathers, and albatrosses have feathers. All birds seem to have feathers. See the ACID rule about Piaget's model.

deduction

reasoning from a general rule to make a specific prediction. All mammals nurse their young. Moles are mammals. Thus, moles nurse their young. See the ACID rule about Piaget's model.

pragmatism

recognizing that logic alone cannot provide solutions to some of life's tricky problems. Critics of Piaget's stage theory of cognitive development note that this is a skill that is only honed post adolescence.

scaffolding

what adults often do for kids to make difficult tasks achievable, by making them a bit easier than usual, by offering clues, etc. This facilitates learning and development.