3.4 Cognitive Development Across the Lifespan

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Schema

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

assimilation

adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information

accomodation

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) at which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

sensorimotor stage

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

object permanence

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 to 7 years of ago) at which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

preoperational stage

the principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects

conservation

In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view

egocentrism

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7 to 11 years of age) at which children can perform the mental opertations that enable them to thinik logically about concrete (actual, physical) events

Concrete operational stage

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) at which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

formal operational stage

in Vygotsky’s theory, a framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking

scaffold

people’s ideas about their own and other’s mental stages—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict

theory of mind

our agreed upon systems of spoken, written, or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

language

In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

phoneme

in a language, the smallest unit tat carried meaning, may be a word or a part of a work (such as a prefix)

morpheme

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language’s set of rules for derivigin meaning from sounds, and snytax is its set of rules for combining words into grmmatically sensible sentences

grammar

Humans’ innate predisposition to understand the principles and rules that govern grammar in all lanfguages

universal grammar (UG)

the stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language

babbling stage

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

one-word stage

the stage in speech development, beginning about age 2, during which a child speaks mosdtly in two-word sentences

two word stage

the early speech stage in which a child speaks like a teelegram—-”Go car”— using mostly nouns and verbs

telegraphic speech

impairment of language, usually cased by left himsphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impariing understanding)

Aphasia

a frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere, that helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech

Broca’s area

a brain area, usually in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression

Wernicke’s area

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determujines the way we think

linguistic determinism

the idea that language influences the way we think

linguistic relativism