PSY 364 Exam 2 Study Guide

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards for PSY 364 Exam 2 covering symbolic representation, Piagetian theory, information processing, executive functions, memory strategies, and cognitive development paradigms.

Dual representation

The ability to mentally represent an object simultaneously as both a concrete physical entity in its own right and as a symbol pointing to or representing something else.

Scale error

A developmental mistake where a young child attempts to perform an action on a miniature object that is impossible due to the drastic discrepancy in physical size, such as trying to sit in a dollhouse chair.

Appearance/reality distinction

The cognitive capacity to distinguish between what an object or situation superficially looks like and what it actually or fundamentally is.

Functional invariants

Processes in Piaget's theory—specifically organization and adaptation—that operate continuously and unchangingly across all developmental stages to construct cognitive structures.

Assimilation

The Piagetian process of incorporating new external information and experiences into existing cognitive structures or schemas without modifying the existing schemas.

Accommodation

The Piagetian process of altering existing schemas or creating new cognitive structures when new environmental information does not fit existing ones.

Disequilibrium

A state of cognitive conflict or imbalance occurring when new experiences cannot be reconciled with existing schemas, serving as the primary impetus for cognitive growth.

Goldilocks effect

The tendency of infants to allocate greater visual or auditory attention to events that are moderately predictable, actively avoiding information that is either too predictable or too complex.

Object permanence

The understanding that physical objects and people continue to exist even when they cannot be directly seen, heard, or touched.

A-not-B error

A perseverative search error where infants aged 8 to 12 months search for a hidden object at its original hiding location (A), where it was previously found, even after watching it be moved to a second location (B).

Egocentrism

The preoperational tendency to perceive, understand, and interpret the world exclusively from one's own perspective, accompanied by an inability to adopt another person's point of view.

Conservation

The realization that basic physical properties of an object or substance (such as volume, mass, or number) remain identical despite perceptual alterations in appearance or arrangement.

Centration

The cognitive limitation characteristic of the preoperational stage in which a child focuses on only one striking feature of a situation while ignoring other relevant dimensions.

Decentration

The cognitive capacity, developed during the concrete operational stage, to attend to and integrate multiple dimensions or features of a problem simultaneously.

Transitive inference

The concrete operational ability to mentally deduce an unstated relationship between two items by comparing each to an intermediate third item (e.g., recognizing that if A > B and B > C, then A > C).

Hypotheticodeductive reasoning

A formal operational problem-solving ability in which an individual formulates a general hypothesis, deduces specific testable deductions, and systematically tests them against evidence.

Reflective abstraction

The process described by Piaget in which thinking reflects upon its own operations and actions, extracting higher-order rules to generate more sophisticated cognitive structures.

Imaginary audience

An adolescent egocentric belief that one is the center of attention and that others are as constantly focused on one's appearance and behavior as oneself is.

Personal fable

An adolescent egocentric belief characterized by feelings of invulnerability, omnipotence, and a conviction that one's personal feelings and experiences are entirely unique and incomprehensible to others.

Sociodramatic play

A advanced form of pretend play where children cooperate with peers to adopt complementary roles, establish shared rules, and enact coordinated dramatic scenarios.

Animism/anthromorphism

The tendency, common in early cognitive development, to attribute human characteristics, intentionality, life, or mental states to inanimate objects or non-human animals.

Counterfactual reasoning

The cognitive capacity to conceptualize hypothetical alternatives to past or present reality by mentally simulating "what if" or "if only" scenarios.

Source monitoring

The metacognitive process of identifying the origin or context of a memory, belief, or piece of information (such as distinguishing whether an event was directly experienced, imagined, or told by someone else).

Central executive

The supervisory component of working memory responsible for focusing and switching attention, coordinating subsidiary systems, and regulating deliberate cognitive processing.

Phonological/articulatory loop

The subcomponent of working memory specialized for temporarily holding and silently rehearsing verbal and auditory information.

Visuospatial sketch pad

The subcomponent of working memory dedicated to temporarily maintaining and manipulating visual images and spatial coordinates.

Production deficiency

The failure of a child to spontaneously produce or implement a beneficial memory strategy, even though they possess the cognitive ability to execute it effectively when instructed to do so.

Utilization deficiency

The spontaneous generation and execution of an appropriate cognitive strategy that does not yet produce a performance benefit, often due to high executive processing demands during initial use.

Adaptive strategy choice model

Robert Siegler's overlapping-waves framework proposing that children possess a repertoire of cognitive strategies simultaneously, gradually shifting toward more efficient strategies through task experience and evaluation.

Min strategy

An arithmetic addition strategy in which a child begins counting from the larger of the two addends and counts up by the value of the smaller addend.

Sum strategy

An early arithmetic strategy where a child calculates a total by counting each unit of both addends sequentially from the number one.

Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm

An experimental procedure used to induce false memories by presenting lists of words related to an unstated thematic target (critical lure), which participants subsequently falsely recall or recognize with high confidence.

Metacognition

An individual's conscious knowledge, awareness, and monitoring of their own cognitive processes, coupled with the ability to regulate and adapt those processes.

Conjugate-reinforcement procedure

An infant memory paradigm (such as mobile kicking) where an infant's operant behavior is directly coupled to an immediate reward, allowing researchers to measure memory retention over time via baseline and extinction rates.

Deferred imitation

The ability to reproduce a sequence of novel actions or behaviors after a significant delay, serving as early evidence of explicit, declarative memory in preverbal infants.

Infantile amnesia

The inability of adults and older children to consciously recall autobiographical episodic memories from early childhood, typically prior to the ages of 3 to 4 years.

Script

A generalized cognitive schema representing the typical chronological order of actions, roles, and occurrences expected within a familiar, repeated situation (e.g., attending a birthday party).

Prospective memory

The cognitive capability to remember to execute a planned action or intention at a specific future moment or upon encountering a designated situational cue.

Lost in the mall study

Elizabeth Loftus's landmark study demonstrating that suggestive interview techniques, guided imagery, and misleading post-event information can successfully implant entirely fabricated childhood episodic memories in adults.

Clive Wearing

A well-known clinical case of a British musician who developed profound, concurrent anterograde and retrograde amnesia following herpes encephalitis, leaving him with a working memory window of only seconds, while preserving intact procedural musical skills.

Wikipedia model of memory

The modern concept of human memory as a reconstructive, malleable system that can be edited, updated, or rewritten during recall, contrasting with the classical view of memory as an indelible video recording.