PSYC101 CH4, 6, 9 Videos

identity operation

Nothing is added or taken away.

According to Chomsky, the part of language that is most likely to be biological is:

Grammar. Chomsky theorized that the part of language that is most likely to be biological is grammar.

Preoperational children tend to fail this conservation of liquid task because they focus on the height of the water in the two glasses and ignore the width of the glasses.

True. Preoperational children lack the decentration that allows them to take both the height and the width into consideration thereby passing this task.

Piaget's stages of cognitive development

1. sensorimotor 2. preoperational 3. concrete operational 4. formal operational

According to the video clips, Chomsky suggests that even young children are able to invert interpretations. How does this support his view that language acquisition is more heavily steeped in a nature perspective?

At a young age, children demonstrate the ability to invert interpretations of heard speech without necessarily having heard evidence that verifies these interpretations. This implies an innate mechanism by which such inversions and interpretations are processed.

The fact that young infants can discriminate among speech sounds of languages they have never heard before indicates what about the nature-nurture dimension of this aspect of language development? What is the presumed benefit of this early ability?

Being independent of experience, infants' early ability to discriminate among speech sounds they have never heard must be innate. This ability enables infants to learn any language they are regularly exposed to.

Piaget believed that school-age children have more knowledge than preschool children but that they both reason in pretty much the same way.

False. According to Piaget, the transition from early childhood to middle childhood involves the development of mental operations that lead older children to reason in qualitatively different ways than younger children do.

In Bandura's experiment, both groups of children were equally likely to make aggressive remarks toward the doll.

False. This statement is false. The children in the experimental group who had viewed the model behaving aggressively were more likely to display both verbal and physical aggression toward the doll.

centration

Focusing on one dimension of the problem and ignoring the other dimensions.

Which of the following is the best definition of the science of human development?

Human development is the study of how people change over time. The science of human development seeks to understand how and why people of all ages, circumstances, and cultures change or remain the same over time.

Play the video to watch seven-year-old Zoli discuss his reasoning on the conservation task. Which operation does he rely on in explaining the problem?

Identity operation. Zoli uses the identity operation to explain his reasoning.

Can you think of any common "real-life" situations in which an understanding of conservation would allow a concrete operational child to react differently than a preoperational child? Provide several examples in the space below.

Older children who understand conservation would be less likely to be distracted by changes in the appearance of an object. Some typical examples: (1) Older children realize that breaking a cookie in half does not increase the amount of cookie available to eat; (2) Older children realize that pouring a bad-tasting liquid medicine into a wider glass does not decrease the amount that they need to drink; (3) Older children realize that spreading pieces of candy over a larger area does not increase the amount of candy.

Which of the following is NOT one of the principles that B. F. Skinner theorized to be involved in language acquisition?

Pressure from peers and parents B. F. Skinner did not discuss pressure from peers and parents. He theorized that conditioning was critical to the formation of language skills in young children.

decentrational problems

Taking more aspects of the situation into account when solving a problem.

reciprocity operation

The liquid in the narrow glass is higher but it is also thinner.

Accommodation

The process by which people adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences.

Assimilation

The process by which people translate incoming information into a form that fits the concepts they already understand.

In Bandura's experiment, the control group had exactly the same experiences as the experimental group except that the children in the control group did not observe the model hitting the Bobo doll and making aggressive remarks toward it.

True. This statement is true. If the two groups differed in any other ways, we could not be sure that the differences in aggressive behavior were caused by viewing the model.

When the children in Bandura's experimental group were left alone with the doll, they were more likely to hit the doll than were the children in the control group.

True. This statement is true. The children in the experimental group who had viewed the model behaving aggressively were more likely to hit the doll and engage in other forms of aggression.

Bandura's experiment showed that children will not only imitate the model's specific aggressive behaviors but will also invent novel aggressive actions in their own spontaneous play.

True. This statement is true. This was a surprising finding because it demonstrated that children can learn specific actions through observation without being directly rewarded for those actions.

To deal with the distortions of personal opinions and biases, those who study child and adolescent development rely on the scientific method.

True. To deal with the distortions of personal opinions and biases, those who study child and adolescent development rely on the scientific method to gain an understanding of the hypotheses that they are testing.

In the context of Piaget's conservation of liquid task, "conservation" means conserving or retaining the equivalence between the two quantities of water even when the appearance of the water changes.

True. To demonstrate that the child understands conservation, the researcher must first establish the equivalence of the two amounts of liquid before making any transformations in the liquid's appearance.

conservation

Understanding that a transformation in appearance does not necessarily change the amount.

reversibility operation

Undoing the transformation would show that both the amounts are equal.

Can you think of any common "real-life" situations in which observational learning occurs? Provide several examples in the space below.

Your examples should specify situations in which a model (preferably an attractive or high-status model) demonstrates a particular behavior, and another person imitates the model. Common examples might include:1.) an athletic aerobics instructor leads a class in an exercise routine;2.) a teen accompanies her parents to an expensive restaurant and watches others to see which fork or spoon to use for each course;3.) a young boy practices wrestling moves that he learned by watching professional wrestlers on television.