Cognitive,Language, and intellectual development

Identity Foreclosure

Marcia's identity status where a commitment is made without exploring alternatives (often adopting parents' beliefs).

Identity Moratorium

Marcia's identity status where an individual is actively exploring identity options but has not yet committed.

Identity Achievement

Marcia's identity status where an individual has thoroughly explored options and made self-directed commitments.

Jean Piaget

Developmental psychologist known for proposing the four discrete stages of cognitive development in children.

Schemas

Mental frameworks or concepts that organize and interpret information.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget's first stage (0-2 years) where infants learn about the world through senses and motor actions.

Object Permanence

The awareness that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.

Preoperational Stage

Piaget's second stage (2-7 years) marked by symbolic thought, language growth, but lack of logical reasoning.

Pretend Play

Play in which children use objects or actions to symbolically represent real-life situations or ideas.

Parallel Play

Play in which children play side-by-side without actively interacting or influencing one another.

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects possess lifelike qualities and feelings.

Egocentrism

The preoperational child's difficulty in seeing a situation from another person's perspective.

Theory of Mind

People's ideas about their own and others' mental states—feelings, perceptions, and thoughts.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's third stage (7-11 years) where children gain the mental capacity to think logically about concrete events.

Conservation

The principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain equal despite changes in physical appearance.

Reversibility

The ability to mentally reverse a sequence of steps or operations to return to a starting point.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget's final stage (12+ years) marked by abstract, hypothetical, and systematic thinking.

Lev Vygotsky

Sociocultural developmental psychologist who emphasized the role of culture and social interaction in cognitive growth.

Scaffolding

Temporary guidance and support provided by a skilled mentor to help a learner master a task.

Zone of Proximal Development

The gap between what a child can achieve independently versus what they can achieve with guidance.

Crystallized Intelligence

Accumulated knowledge, vocabulary, and verbal skills that tend to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to reason speedily and abstractly, which tends to decrease during late adulthood.

Dementia

A progressive neurocognitive decline in memory, thinking, and social abilities severe enough to interfere with daily life.

Language

Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Critical Period

An essential timeframe early in life during which exposure to language is required for normal development.

Phonemes

The smallest distinctive sound units in a language.

Morphemes

The smallest language units that carry meaning (e.g., prefixes, roots, suffixes).

Semantics

The set of rules used to derive meaning from language expressions, words, and sentences.

Grammar

The system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

Syntax

The specific rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

Cooing

Early infant vocalizations around 2 months consisting of pleasant vowel sounds.

Babbling Stage

Stage of language starting around 4-6 months where infants spontaneously utter speech sounds unrelated to household language.

One-Word Stage

Stage from about age 1 to 2 where a child speaks mostly in single words.

Two-Word Stage

Stage beginning around age 2 where a child speaks in two-word statements.