Cognitive Development and Social Behavior

Flashcards covering key concepts from lectures on cognitive development, Piaget's stages, language acquisition, social influence, attitudes, and animal cognition.

What concept are children in Piaget's preoperational stage unable to understand?

The concept of conservation.

What brain region do adults primarily use for rational thinking?

Prefrontal cortex.

What brain region do younger individuals rely on more for emotional responses?

Amygdala.

What term describes the process where unused neural connections die off during early development?

Neural pruning.

What cues of depth do babies learn after crawling experience, around 9 months old?

Monocular and binocular cues.

What is preferential looking?

A method to perform cognitive tests on infants by observing their preference for novel or interesting stimuli.

What are other methods besides preferential looking used to perform cognitive tests on infants?

Sucking rate, gaze duration, and head turning.

What are examples of how children in the preoperational stage use symbols in play?

A box as a rocket ship, or poker chips as cookies in a pretend bakery.

In Piaget's concrete operational stage, what type of thinking emerges regarding events

Logical thinking about concrete events.

What type of reasoning is required for the formal operational stage?

Hypothetical and deductive reasoning, and abstract thought.

What term describes the unconscious inferences made about the world?

Educated guesses.

What is the critical period for language acquisition?

Roughly birth to age 12.

What characteristics define infant-directed speech?

Simpler sentences, more common words, higher pitch, and more variable prosody.

What is the Streisand effect?

When an attempt to hide information results in further publicizing it.

What is inductive reasoning?

Observing specific trends or patterns and generalizing.

What is deductive reasoning?

Starting with general world information and applying logic to reach a specific conclusion.

At what age does athletic performance typically peak?

20s and 30s.

What happens to nearly all cognition as we age?

Cognition peaks early in life and then steadily declines until death.

What is dementia?

A general term for a severe decline in mental ability that interferes with daily life.

What is Alzheimer's disease?

A type of dementia in which plaque and tangled proteins cause neurons to die.

What abilities decline with age?

Inductive reasoning and spatial awareness.

What type of intelligence declines with age?

Fluid intelligence.

What type of intelligence increases with age?

Crystallized intelligence.

According to studies, what can occur when elderly individuals stop driving?

Increased rates of depression, social isolation, and cognitive decline.

What is social influence?

The ways in which people are affected by the real or imagined presence of others.

What is obedience?

When behavior is influenced due to the commands of an authority figure.

What is conformity?

Changing one’s behavior to fit in with a group.

What is deindividuation?

Losing one's sense of responsibility and self when in a group.

What is social loafing?

A person exerting less effort in a group when combining efforts with others to attain a goal.

What is the bystander effect?

Individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present.

What are the three components of an attitude?

Affect, behavior, and cognition.

What is cognitive dissonance?

Mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds contradictory beliefs.

What is prejudice?

Evaluating a person or group based solely on their group membership.

What is discrimination?

Unjustified behavior based solely on someone’s group membership.

What are stereotypes?

Thoughts/beliefs that associate groups of people with traits; generalizations based on exposure and experience.

What is cancel culture?

A modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles.

What term describes projecting human qualities onto animals?

Anthropomorphism

What is animal cognition focused on instead of animal intelligence?

Animals evolved to respond to certain unique challenges they faced in their unique evolutionary histories.

What is the Clever Hans effect?

Non-humans relies on posture, voice intonation, et cetera, when responding to a human’s question.