Cognitive Development Content Refresher

dual-coding theory

both verbal association and visual images are used to process and store information

piaget's stages of cognitive development

Sensorimotor

Preoperational

Concrete operational

Formal operational

sensorimotor stage

0 to 2, learn to manipulate environment in order to meet needs, stage ends with development of object permanence (beginning of representational thought)

preoperational stage

2 to 7

symbolic thinking - ability to pretend

egocentism - inability to imagine what another person may think or feel

centration - tendency to focus on only one aspect of a phenomenon (ex. same quantity of pizza on two plates, but one is cut in two, child will take the one with two)

concrete operational stage

7-11 years, children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events, loss of egocentrism

formal operational stage

11 years and older. Adolescents think about thinking. They use mental operations to consider unseen hypotheses and solve abstract problems, hypothetical reasoning

fluid intelligence

solving new or novel problems, possibly using creative methods

crystallized intelligence

solving problems using acquired knowledge

functional fixedness

the inability to consider how to use an object in a nontraditional manner

deductive (top-down) reasoning

starts from a set of general rules and draws conclusions from the information given (must be true)

inductive (bottom-up) reasoning

seeks to create a theory via generalizations

heuristics

simplified principles used to make decision

availability heuristic

making a decision based on the answer that most easily comes to mind

representativeness heuristic

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

base rate fallacy

using prototypical or stereotypical factors while ignoring actual numerical information

disconfirmation principle

evidence obtained from testing demonstrated that the solution does not work

confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

hindsight bias

the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it

belief perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

recognition-primed decision model

A decision-making model in which experience and recognition of similar situations one has already experienced play a large role in decision-making and actions; also one of the explanations for the experience of intuition

equation for IQ

mental age/chronological age x 100