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CH 7 Sigelman &Rider
Life-Span Human Development, 9th edition: Cognition
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| cognition | The activity of knowing and the processes through which knowledge is acquired (for example, attending, perceiving, remembering, and thinking). |
| clinical method | An unstandardized interviewing procedure used by Piaget in which a child’s response to each successive question (or problem) determines what the investigator will ask next. |
| scheme (or schema; plural: schemes or schemata) | A cognitive structure or organized pattern of action or thought used to deal with experiences. |
| organization | In Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, a person’s inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemes into more coherent and complex systems or bodies of knowledge; as a memory strategy, a technique that involves grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful clusters. |
| adaptation | In Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, a person’s inborn tendency to adjust to the demands of the environment, consisting of the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation. |
| assimilation | Piaget’s term for the process by which children interpret new experiences in terms of their existing schemata. Contrast with accommodation. |
| accommodation | In Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, the process of modifying existing schemes to incorporate or adapt to new experiences. Contrast with assimilation. In vision, a change in the shape of the eye’s lens to bring objects at differing distances into focus. |
| equilibration | In Piaget’s theory, the process of seeking a state of mental stability in which our thoughts (schemes) are consistent with the information we receive from the external world. |
| neuroconstructivism theory | Approach that explains the construction of new knowledge by the child in terms of changes in neural structures in response to experience. |
| reaction time | The interval between the presentation of a stimulus and a response to it. |
| zone of proximal development | Vygotsky’s term for the difference between what a learner can accomplish independently and what a learner can accomplish with the guidance and encouragement of a more skilled partner. |
| guided participation | A process in which children learn by actively participating in culturally relevant activities with the aid and support of their parents and other knowledgeable individuals. |
| scaffolding | Jerome Bruner’s term for providing structure to a less skilled learner to encourage advancement. Vygotsky's theory features this concept. |
| private speech | Nonsocial speech, or speech for the self, commonly used by preschoolers to guide their activities and believed by Vygotsky to be the forerunner of inner speech, or silent thinking in words. |
| dynamic | In Fischer’s dynamic skill framework, the idea that human performance changes in response to changes in context. |
| skill | In Fischer’s dynamic skill framework, a person’s ability to perform a particular task in a specific context. |
| developmental range | In Fischer’s dynamic skill framework, the concept that people’s abilities vary depending on the context, from optimal levels in highly supportive contexts to lower levels in unsupportive situations. |
| object permanence | The understanding that objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible or otherwise detectable to the senses; fully mastered by the end of infancy. |
| A-not-B error | The tendency of 8- to 12-month-old infants to search for a hidden object in the place they last found it (A) rather than in its new hiding place (B). |
| symbolic capacity | The capacity to use symbols such as words, images, or actions to represent or stand for objects and experiences; representational thought. |
| primary circular reaction | During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s repetition of interacting acts centered on his or her own body (for example, repeatedly kicking). |
| secondary circular reaction | During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s repetition of interesting actions on objects (for example, repeatedly shaking a rattle to make a noise). |
| coordination of secondary schemes | During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s combining of actions to solve problems, using one scheme as a means to an end, as in batting aside a barrier in order to grasp a toy. |
| tertiary circular reaction | During Piaget’s sensorimotor period, the infant’s experimenting with actions to find new ways to solve problems or produce interesting effects. |
| imaginary companion | A play companion invented by a child in the preoperational stage who has developed the capacity for symbolic thought. |
| perceptual salience | Phenomenon in which the most obvious features of an object or situation have disproportionate influence on the perceptions and thoughts of young children. |
| conservation | The recognition that certain properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered in some superficial way. |
| decentration | The ability to focus on two or more dimensions of a problem at one time. |
| centration | In Piaget’s theory, the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a problem when two or more aspects are relevant. |
| reversibility | In Piaget’s theory, the ability to reverse or negate an action by mentally performing the opposite action. |
| transformational thought | In Piaget’s theory, the ability to conceptualize transformations, or processes of change from one state to another, which appears in the stage of concrete operations. Contrast with static thought. |
| static thought | In Piaget’s theory, the thought characteristic of the preoperational period that is fixed on end states rather than on the changes that transform one state into another. Contrast with transformational thought. |
| egocentrism | The tendency to view the world from the person’s own perspective and fail to recognize that others may have different points of view. |
| class inclusion | The logical understanding that parts or subclasses are included in the whole class and that the whole is therefore greater than any of its parts. |
| seriation | A logical operation that allows a person to mentally order a set of stimuli along a quantifiable dimension such as height or weight. |
| transitivity | The ability to recognize the necessary or logical relations among elements in a serial order (for example, that if A is taller than B, and B is taller than C, then A must be taller than C). |
| hypothetical-deductive reasoning | A form of problem solving in which a person starts with general or abstract ideas and deduces or traces their specific implications; “if–then” thinking. |
| decontextualize | To separate the demands of a task at hand from prior beliefs and knowledge. |
| adolescent egocentrism | A characteristic of adolescent thought that involves difficulty differentiating between the person’s own thoughts and feelings and those of other people; evident in the personal fable and imaginary audience phenomena. |
| imaginary audience | A form of adolescent egocentrism that involves confusing one’s own thoughts with the thoughts of a hypothesized audience for behavior and concluding that others share these preoccupations. |
| personal fable | A form of adolescent egocentrism that involves thinking that oneself and one’s thoughts and feelings are unique or special. |
| postformal thought | Proposed stages of cognitive development that lie beyond formal operations. |
| relativistic thinking | A form of postformal operational thought in which it is understood that there are multiple ways of viewing a problem and that the solutions people arrive at will depend on their starting assumptions and perspective. |
| dialectical thinking | An advanced form of thought that involves detecting paradoxes and inconsistencies among ideas and trying to reconcile them. |
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