PSYC 223 - Cognitive Development: The Piagetian and Vygotskian Approaches

Cognitive Development

Making sense of how infants understand the world

• higher-order mental processes used to understand and adapt to the world

• thinkin, reasoning, learning, problem-solving

Assimilation

Incorporation of new information into existing cognitive schemas

• Piaget

Accommodation

Modification of existing cognitive schemas or creation of new ones in response to new information that doesn’t fit into current understanding

• Piaget

Equilibrium Principle (Equilibration)

Piaget’s belief that the mind tries to reach and maintain a state of balance in understanding. Piaget’s terms for the biological process of self-regulation that propels the cognitive system to higher forms of equilibrium

Object Permanence

The knowledge that objects continue to exist even when not in view

A-not-B Error

The error of infants to look for objects in the place where they were first seen, not where they are now

Progressive Decentering

A gradual decline of egocentrism

Symbolic Function

The ability to use one thing as a symbol to represent something else

Deferred Imitation

The imitation of a model observed some time in the past

Symbolic Play

A form of play in which the child uses something to represent something different

Egocentrism

The child’s failure to take the perspective of their listener, and thinking that the listener already knows everything they know

Centration

A child’s tendency to focus on only one aspect of a problem at a time

Class Inclusion

The knowledge that a subclass cannot be larger than the superordinate class that includes it

Seriation

The ability to order stimuli along some quantitative dimension, such as length

Transitivity

The ability to combine relations logically to deduce necessary conclusions

Operations

Piaget’s term for the various forms of mental action by which older children solve problems and reason logically

Decentration

The ability to simultaneously keep in mind multiple aspects of a situation

Reversibility

A property of operational structures that allows the cognitive system to correct or reverse potential failures and thus arrive at an adaptive, non-distorted understanding of the world

Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning

A problem-solving method that involves creating and testing hypotheses and drawing logical conclusions from the results

Theory of Mind

Children’s understanding of the mental world - what they think about phenomena such as thought, belief, desire, and intention

False Belief

The realization that people can hold beliefs that are not true

The Sociocultural Approach

The approach that individuals inherit their environments as much as they inherit their genes

• environments organized by culture

• individual growth and development are the result of the integration of biological and cultural systems

• individual development can only be understood in social and cultural/historical context

Zone of Proximal Development

The distance between what a child can achieve on their own and what the child can achieve with guidance

Scaffolding

A teaching method where the adult adjusts the level of help they give to the child, encouraging them to do things by themselves

Invariants

Aspects of the world that remain the same even though other aspects have changed

Qualitative Identity

The knowledge that the qualitative nature of something is not changed by a change in its appearance

Egocentric Speech

The tendency for preoperational children to assume that listeners know everything that they know, revealing difficulty with perspective talking

Dual Representation

The realization that an object can be represented in two ways simultaneously

Equilibrium

A characteristic of a cognitive system in which assimilation and accommodation are in balance, thus permitting adaptive, non-distorted responses to the world

Concept

A mental grouping of different items into a single category on the basis of some unifying similarity or set of similarities

Aminism

Piaget’s term for the young child’s tendency to attribute properties of life to non-living things

Appearance-Reality Distinction

Distinction between how objects appear and what they really are

• ability to judge both appearance and reality correctly when the two diverge

Guided Participation

The process by which young children become competent by participating in everyday, purposeful activities under the guidance of more experienced partners

Ontogenetic Development

Development across the years of an individual’s life

Microgenetic Development

Moment-to-moment learning of individuals as they work on specific problems

Phylogenetic Development

Development of the species

Cultural/Historical Development

Development that occurs over decades and centuries and leaves a legacy of tools and artifacts, value systems, institutions, and practices

Solitary Pretense

Pretend play engaged in a child playing alone

Sociodramatic Play

Play in which two or more people enact a variety of related roles