Cognitive Development & Language: Piaget, Vygotsky, and Speech Stages

Jean Piaget

He created the four cognitive development stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational)

Schema

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

the process of absorbing new information into an existing schema.

Accommodation

the process of adjusting old schemas or developing new ones to incorporate new information.

Object permanence

the understanding that objects and people continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. Develops in the sensorimotor stage.

Egocentrism

the inability to consider another person's point of view. Ex. thinking daddy wants a toy truck for his birthday because that is what you would like. Found in the preoperational stage.

Reversibility

is the idea that actions, thoughts, or things can be reversed, or returned to their original state. It's a key concept that children develop in early childhood.

Conservation

the understanding that two equal quantities remain equal even though their form or appearance is rearranged. Ex. understanding that your sandwich is the same size if it is cut into halves or quarters.

Theory of mind

is the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.) to oneself and others and to understand others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one's own.

Abstract Thinking

involves the ability to understand and think about complex concepts that, while real, are not tied to concrete experiences, objects, people, or situations.

Hypothetical Thinking

involves imagining possibilities and exploring their consequences through a process of mental simulation.

Lev Vgotsky

believed that children learn according to their own schedule.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Gap (difference) between what a child can do w/o help & what he can do only w/support (scaffolding).

Scaffolding

(supporting or coaching students as they work toward more complex tasks), children can develop higher-level cognitive abilities.

Crystallized intelligence

accumulated intelligence over time and ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience - Increases with time.

Dementia

thinking, memory, and behavior begin to deteriorate.

Language

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

Phoneme

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

Morpheme

in a language, the smallest unit that carried meaning; may be a word or part of a word.

Grammar

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

Syntax

determines the rules for combining or arranging words into grammatically sensible sentences.

Semantics

set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences.

Babbling Stage

beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

One-Word Stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1-2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

Telegraphic Speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - 'go car' - using mostly nouns and verbs.

Overgeneralization

using grammar rules without proper use and exceptions.