PSY 230: Chapter 5
Unusually rapid weight gain _____ is a good predictor of later obesity.
during infancy and early childhood
What are the areas of basic cognitive changes that generally occur in five areas: (Information processing approach)
1. Attention 2. Memory 3. Processing speed 4. Organization of thinking 5. Metacognition
In the United States, children are labeled "obese" when their body mass index (BMI) is at or above the:
95th percentile for their age group in a 1960s national poll.
Boris looks at a bouquet of daisies and carnations, and knows that there are more flowers than daisies in the vase. Boris understands _____.
Class Inclusion
Generalizing from the discussion of Piaget, what is the best way to teach children math?
Illustrate mathematical principles through hands-on activities.
What is reversibility?
In Piaget's theory, the concrete operational child's knowledge that a specific change in the way a given substance looks can be reversed.
What is animism ?
In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's belief that inanimate objects are alive.
What is identity constancy ?
In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's inability to grasp that a person's core "self" stays the same despite changes in external appearance.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) was developed by which Psychologist ?
The Russian Psychologist Lev Vygotsky
What is decentering?
The ability to include multiple aspects of a problem to solve it or look at several dimensions of an object or substance
What is selective attention?
The ability to manage our awareness so we focus on what we need to know and filter out extraneous information
What is egocentricity? In what stage is it found?
The child views everything from his frame of reference, common in pre-operational thinking
Worldwide, the greatest threat to children's physical development is _____.
inadequate nutrition
Which is an example of a (1) gross motor talent and (2) a fine motor talent?
(1) climbing a tree; (2) forming letters
What is working memory?
According to the information-processing approach, the limited-capacity gateway system, containing all the material we can keep in awareness at a single time. The material in this system is either processed for more permanent storage or lost.
Around what age does the capacity for working memory dramatically increase ?
At around age 6 (elementary school), this capacity enlarges dramatically. This explains why the child has reached the concrete operations stage!
An 8 year old child who understands conservation tasks and the ability to reason about the world in a more logical and adult way, is most likely in what stage according to Piaget?
Concrete Operational thinking (ages 8 to 11)
When talking to her grandmother on the phone, 3 year old Tera points to her new toy to show grandma. This is an example of
Egocentrism
Working memory-bin space enlarges most dramatically during _____.
Elementary school
According to Piaget, at what stage has a child reached its pinnacle for hypothetical, scientific, and flexible thinking ?
Formal operations stage
Which part of the brain is responsible for thinking through and inhibiting actions?
Frontal Lobes
What concept demonstrates why children tear adults in a costume even when the person removes the mask?
Identity constancy
Which child has probably entered the stage of concrete operations?
Sobechi, who can follow the rules of a game
What is inner speech?
In Vygotsky's theory, the way in which human beings learn to regulate their behavior and master cognitive challenges, through silently repeating information or talking to themselves
What is an example of scaffolding from chapter 3?
Infant-directed speech which allows caregivers to penetrate a child's proximal zone for language and helps scaffold emerging speech
Explain the information processing approach to cognitive development
Information Processing is how individuals perceive, analyze, manipulate, use, and remember information. Unlike Piaget's theory, this approach proposes that cognitive development is ongoing and gradual, not organized into distinct stages. Much more quantitative!
The left hemisphere of the brain, which experiences rapid neural development from ages 3 to 6, is responsible for _________ among other behaviors
Language
Three-year-old Lola watches her mommy roll a ball of dough into a thin circle for a pie crust, and exclaims, "You made more dough!" Lola lacks an understanding of the conservation of _____.
Mass
The ability to inhibit impulses and start planning that begins in childhood is due to the development of
Neural connections
Overregulization
Occurs when grammatical rules are incorrectly generalized to irregular cases where they do not apply. Example: "I hitted the ball."
Why are older children superior learners ?
Older children understand that they need to rehearse information to remember it. And, older children understand how to selectively attend.
When a child says "I goed to the store yesterday" or "My foots are wet from the puddle" they are demonstrating
Over-regularizations
The ability to understand that your understanding of something might be different from another persons understanding is
Part of Theory of Mind (ToM)
What is the main objection to Piaget's research ?
Piaget's theory leaves out the impact of teaching in promoting cognitive growth.
According to Piaget, what stage would a child be in who engages in animism ?
Preoperational stage
A 2 year old child who lacks the ability to understand that not everyone sees things from the same perspective as him. What stage is the child in according to Piaget's stages?
Preoperational thinking (ages 2 to 7)
Piaget believes that a young child thinks completely different than an older child. This represents a
Qualitative change
Compared to Piaget's theory, the information processing approach to cognitive development is
Quantitative
Autobiographical memories are
Recollections of events and experiences that make up one's life history
Explain rehearsal as it relates to learning.
Rehearsal is a learning strategy in which people repeat information to embed it into their memory. This is the way we learn.
A teacher notices that four year old Victor is struggling to hold scissors and paper to cut a straight line so she shows him how to hold the scissors and helps him so it is easier to cut. This is an example of
Scaffolding
What is scaffolding according to Vygotsky?
Scaffolding is a process in which teachers model or demonstrate how to solve a problem, and then step back, offering support as needed. The theory is that when students are given the support they need while learning something new, they stand a better chance of using that knowledge independently.
For adults, what is the typical bin size of working memory ?
Seven chunks or bits of information.
What is centering ?
The preoperational child's tendency to fixate on the most visually striking feature and not take into account the other dimensions of the substance.
Phonemes are
The sound units that convey meaning in a given language ( the c sound of cat and b sound of bat)
Syntax
The system of grammatical rules in a particular language
What are conservation tasks?
These are Piagetian tasks that involve changing the shape of a substance to see whether children can go beyond the way that substance visually appears to understand that the amount is still the same.
What is an example of underextension ?
Thinking that the word cat only applies to their cat
True or False: during the concrete operational stage, children can reason about concrete objects, but they cannot think abstractly.
True; Abstract or scientific thinking is characteristic of the formal operations stage.
A preschool teacher seeing that a student can classify objects by color, then asks the child to classify the objects by color and size and helps them start. This is an example of
Vygotsky's Zone of proximal development (ZPD) via scaffolding
What, according to Vygotsky, is the Zone of Proximal Development?
ZPD is defined as the difference between what the child can do by himself and his level of "potential development" as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or peers.
What are executive functions?
any frontal lobe ability that allows us to inhibit our responses and to plan and direct our thinking
A child says, "The moon goes to sleep because I go to sleep." Which two types of preoperational thought does this statement illustrate?
egocentrism and animism
A coach is using scaffolding in teaching baseball if she:
helps a child hold a bat, then, after that step has been mastered, moves on to hitting the ball.
Semantics are
meaning of words or what a word stands for
Young children can run and jump well before they can follow the rules of games because the:
motor cortex develops before the frontal lobes.
The MAIN basic philosophical difference between Piaget and Vygotsky is that Piaget believed:
people learn through hands on experience; Vygotsky believed people only learn through being taught.
mean length of utterance (MLU)
the average number of morphemes per sentence
What is artificialism ?
the belief that humans make everything in nature
Overextension
the overly broad use of words, overgeneralizing their meaning
Morphemes are
the smallest unit of meaning in a particular language (boys contains two morphenes boy and a)
What is class inclusion?
the understanding that a general category can encompass several subordinate elements
What is metacognition?
thinking about thinking
The following example that BEST illustrates Piaget's concept of egocentrism is a child who:
thinks that other people automatically know everything that's in his head.
What is an example of overextension ?
using "cat" to label anything with four legs
Underextension
when children define words more narrowly than adults do
