Child Psychology Exam 2 Study Guide Chapter 6 Cognitive Development 1 Know the key terms introduced in the beginning of the chapter e g the difference between assimilation and accommodation a Cognition Inner processes products of the mind that lead to knowing It includes all mental activity e g attending remembering symbolizing categorizing planning reasoning problem solving creating and fantasizing organized ways of making sense of experience building schemes through direct interaction with the environment Assimilation Accommodation Use current schemes to interpret world New schemes to interpret world b Schemes c Adaptation d Equilibration disequilibrium accommodate more movement between equilibrium assimilate more and 2 Sensorimotor stage know the key terms you don t need to know the specifics of the sensorimotor substages e g as listed in Table 6 1 and the lecture text Know the follow up research section but concentrate on key terms as well as the experiments I went over in class You don t need to know the milestones table Don t worry about the evaluation of preoperational stage section a First stage in Piaget s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development b Birth 2 years c Build schemes or think with their eyes ears hands etc d Can t yet carry out many activities mentally Instead they do circular reactions Circular reactions involve scrambling into a new experience caused by a baby s own motor activity The reaction is circular because as the infant tries to repeat the even again a sensorimotor response that originally occurred accidentally strengthens into a new scheme Circular reactions start out in the infants own body but then turns outward onto the manipulation of objects e Intentional behavior 8 12 months Object Permanence even when out of sight Understanding that objects continue to exist Retrieve hidden objects Incomplete at first A not B search error Still search for it at the first hiding place Awareness not complete f Violation of Expectation Method Tests the understanding of object permanence When infants were shown an expected event they did not stare at the even as long as they did when the event was unexpected They would habituate to the expected event but recover to the unexpected event Infants were maybe surprised Maybe aware of aspect of the physical world g Mental Representation 18mons 2yrs Mental representation begin at about 18 months Mental Representations Internal mental depictions of information Images objects people places Concepts categories Can manipulate with mind Allows Deferred imitation Make believe play h Development of Categorization Categorization helps infants make sense of experience More manageable Reduces amount of new information constantly encountered Habituation and recovery research 6 12 month olds organize objects into meaningful categories i E g food items furniture birds ii 6 months perceptual iii 6 months conceptual When infants were shown multiple pictures belonging to the same category they would become habituated When shown a picture that does not belong they would recover and stare longer 3 Preoperational stage know the key terms know the features of this stage including the limitations of cognitive thinking hallmarked by this stage e g egocentric thinking don t worry about the evaluation of preoperational stage section a The Preoperational Stage Mental Representation 2 to 7 years Big increase in mental representation or symbolic activity Most obvious change from sensorimotor Language most flexible means Characteristics what they can do Make believe play Imaginary friends Drawing From scribbles to actual pictures Dual representation Viewing a symbolic object as both an object in its own Language develops b Limitations of Preoperational Thought right and a symbol Piaget described preschool children in terms of what they cannot Operations mental representations of actions that obey rather than can understand Cannot perform mental operations Egocentrism and animistic thinking logical rules Egocentrism from one s own Failure to distinguish others symbolic viewpoints Cannot conserve Conservation Three mountains problem children didn t realize that the person sitting on the other side of the mountains saw a different picture Tendency to attribute thoughts feelings and Animistic emotions to inanimate objects Usually use motion as a cue to something being alive Certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same even when their outward appearance changes 2 glasses with the same amount of juice One is poured into a tall skinny glass Child doesn t understand that it is still the same amount Focusing on one aspect of a situation neglecting Centration other important features Irreversibility Can t mentally reverse steps Lack hierarchical classification Piaget s class inclusion problem Unable to understand that there are more flowers than blue flowers 4 Concrete Operational know key terms including the accomplishments what children can do and limitations of this stage a Concrete Operational Stage 7 to 11 years Major turning point in cognitive development More logical flexible organized b Concrete Operational Stage Achievements Conservation Decentration focusing on several aspects of a problem and relating them rather than centering on only one problem and then mentally reverse direction the ability to go through a series of steps in a Reversibility Classification Children can pass Piaget s class inclusion problem Children usually collect things at this point e g shells Ability to order items along a quantitative dimension Transitive inference seriate mentally spaces such as a neighborhood or school mental representations of familiar large scale c Limitations of Concrete Operational Thought Operations work best with concrete objects that they can perceive Problems with abstract ideas ones not apparent in the real stamps coins Seriation Spatial Reasoning Mental rotations Directions improved Cognitive maps directly world Continuum of Acquisition Gradual mastery Culture schooling 5 Formal operational know the two major features of this stage don t worry about the consequences of abstract thinking or follow up research sections a Formal Operational Stage 11 and Older Capacity for abstract systematic scientific thinking Hypothetico deductive reasoning When faced with a problem they start with a hypothesis or predication from which they deduce logical testable inferences Possibility reality Not as limited Pendulum problem pp 254 Propositional
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