Schemes
Organized patterns of functioning, that adapt and change with mental development.
First related to physical, and moves to thought during development. Similar to computers, direct and determine how data, such as events, are dealt with.
Initially limited to the reflexes, such as sucking. Infants modify these early ones quickly, through assimilation and accommodation, in response to their exploration of the environment. Become more advanced.
Mental Representation
Internal image of a past event or object. Can imagine where objects might be that they cannot see.
Deferred Imitation
A person who is no longer present is imitated later, children are able to pretend that they are driving a car, feeding a doll, or cooking dinner long after they have witnessed such scenes played out in reality.
Preoperational Stage
Piaget.
Ages Two to Seven. Use of symbolic thinking grows, mental reasoning emerges, and use of concepts increases.
Child sees keys as a symbol of a car ride.
Use mental symbol, a word, or object to represent something. A toy car is a representation of the real thing.
Operations
Organized, formal, and logical mental processes.
Symbolic Function
The ability to use a mental symbol, a word, or an object to stand for or represent something that is not physically present. Might understand that a small toy car is representative of the real thing. No need to get behind the wheel of an actual car to understand its basic purpose and use.
Centration
A key element, and limitation of thinking in the preoperational period.
Process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus, typically superficial elements, and ignoring others.
Focus on appearance rather than what the reality might be. What you see is what you think.
Long line of buttons spaced out and short line with more buttons. Which has more? Will choose the longer line with fewer buttons.
Conservation
The knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement of physical appearance of objects.
Learning that appearances are deceiving.
Cannot follow the sequence of transformations that accompanies changes in appearance of a situation.
Transformation
The process in which one state is changed into another.
Dropped pencil passes through a series of successive stages until it reaches a horizontal resting spot.
Children in the preoperational period are unable to envision or recall the successive transformations that the pencil followed.
Egocentric Thought
Thinking that does not take into account the viewpoints of others.
Preschoolers do not understand that others have different perspectives.
Takes two forms—lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical perspective.
Failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs.
Frowning Four-Year-Old unaware that his face can be seen by others. Might hide face with pillow, assuming that others cannot see them.
Intuitive Thought
Preschoolers' use of primitive reasoning and their avid acquisition of world knowledge.
From about age four through seven, curiosity blossoms. Children ask "Why" questions about nearly everything.
Leads them to believe that they know answers to all kinds of questions, with little or no logical basis. Prepares them for more sophisticated reasoning.
Understand that pushing harder on the pedals makes bicycle move faster, or pressing a button on a remote makes the TV change. Become aware of identity.
Concrete Operational Stage (Ages 7 to 12)
Piaget.
Characterized by the active, and appropriate use of logic. Don't judge solely by appearance.
Confront a conservation problem such as whether the amount of liquid from one container to another of a different shape is the same.
Formal Operational Stage (Ages 12 to 15)
Piaget.
Can consider problems in abstract rather than concrete terms using logic. Test understanding by experiments and observing results.
Use propositional thought. (All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal). Abilities emerge gradually through physical maturation and environment.
At 15 adolescences settle into this stage.
Propositional Thought
Reasoning that uses abstract logic in the absence of concrete examples.
How Schemes Grow
Assimilation and Accommodation. Assimilation consisting of fitting stimuli or events into existing patterns of thought. And Accommodation consists of expanding existing patterns of thought to fit stimuli or events.
Piaget Criticism
Neglecting any consideration of development beyond the end of adolescence.
Piaget's Theory
Argued that infants acquire knowledge directly through motor behavior, organizing their world into mental structures called schemes and subsequently either assimilating experiences into their current level of understanding or accommodating their ways of thinking to include the new experience.
Based on a stage approach to development in which children pass through a series of stages in a fixed order from birth through adolescence: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational.
Sensorimotor stage from birth to about two years involves a gradual progression through simple reflexes, single coordinated activities, interest in the outside world, purposeful combinations of activities, manipulation of actions to produce desired outcomes and symbolic thought.
Preoperational stage develop symbolic function, a change in their thinking that is the foundation of another cognitive advance, but they are hampered by a tendency toward egocentric thought.
Middle childhood are in the concrete operational stage characterized by the application of logical processes to concrete problems and by decentering, the ability to take multiple aspects of a situation into account.
Formal Operational Stage, adolescents begin to think abstractly, use logic, and perform systematic experiments to answer questions.
Sensorimotor Period
Simple reflexes at first determine behavior, then the infant's earliest habits become circular reactions, which eventually become goal-oriented problem-solving activities. Infants deliberately vary their actions as if conducting experiments, and begin to produce mental representations of events or objects.
Preoperational Period
Preschool years, characterized by children's use of symbolic thinking, reasoning, and concepts increases. Limitations including centration, a failure to conserve, and incomplete understanding of transformation and egocentrism.
Concrete Operational Period
Early adolescence, characterized by the active and appropriate use of logic. Limited to concrete reality and unable to deal with abstract or hypothetical questions.
Formal Operational Period
Later adolescence as people develop the ability to think abstractly.
Stages of Piaget's Development
Sensorimotor Stage, Preoperational Stage, Concrete Operational Stage, Formal Operational Stage.
Problems Opposing Piaget's Theory:
Timing of Master of Object Permanence
Child hasn't learned skills necessary for searching for rattle, not because she doesn't understand the rattle still exists. Memory deficits also possible.
Problems Opposing Piaget's Theory:
Children's Understanding of Numbers
Children as young as three can easily tell the difference between rows of two and three toy animals, regardless of the animals' spacing. Older children are able to identify which of the two numbers is larger and show rudimentary understanding of addiction and subtraction. Gelman concluded that children have an innate ability to count, akin to the ability to use language.
Problems Opposing Piaget's Theory:
Conservation Issues
Some evidence suggests that cognitive skills emerge on a different timetable for children in non-Western cultures than for children living in Europe and the United States. Infants raised in the Ivory Coast of Africa reach the various substages at an earlier age than infants reared in France.
Labouvie-Vief Theory
Suggests that the nature of thinking changes during early adulthood.
Thinking based on formal operations is insufficient to meet demands placed on young adults.
Require thought that transcends logic to include practical experience, moral judgments, and values.
Postformal Thought
Thinking that goes beyond Piaget's formal operations. Rather than being based on purely logical processes, with absolutely right and wrong answers to problems, it acknowledges that adult predicaments must sometimes be solved in relativistic terms.
Dialectical Thinking
An interest in and appreciation for argument, counterargument, and debate.
Accepts that issues are not always clear-cut and that answers to questions must sometimes be negotiated. Shift back and forth between an abstract, ideal solution and real-world constraints that might prevent implementation of that solution.
Understand that just as there can be multiple causes of a situation, there can be multiple solutions.
Perry Approach to Postformal Thinking
Developmental growth of early adulthood involves mastering new ways of understanding the world.
Found that students entering college tended to use dualistic thinking. Encountered new ideas. Understood that it is possible to hold multiple views.
Realize that their own thinking had validity if their position was well thought out and rational.
Argued that different societies, cultures, and individuals could have different standards and values, and all of them could be equally valid.
Dualistic Thinking
Something was either right or wrong; people were either good or bad; others were either for them or against them.
Schaie's Stages of Cognitive Development
Taking up where Piaget left off, suggests that adults' thinking follows a set pattern of stages.
Focuses on the ways in which information is used during adulthood, rather than on changes in the acquisition and understanding of new information.
Suggests that before adulthood, the main cognitive developmental task is acquisition of information.
Enters the acquisitive stage. Information gathered before we grow up for future use.
Young adults are in the achieving stage where they apply their intelligence to attain long-term goals.
In the responsible stage, middle-aged adults are mainly concerned with protecting and nourishing their spouses, families, and careers.
The executive stage become more concerned about the larger world.
The reintegrative stage in late adulthood focuses on tasks that have personal meaning.
Acquisitive Stage
According to Schaie, the first stage of cognitive development encompassing all of childhood and adolescence in which the main developmental task is to acquire information.
Achieving Stage
According to Schaie, the second stage, reached by young adults in which intelligence is applied to specific situations involving the attainment of long-term goals, regarding careers, family, and societal contributions.
Responsible Stage
According to Schaie, the third stage where the major concerns of middle-aged adults relate to their personal situations, including protecting and nourishing their spouses, families, and careers.
Executive Stage
According to Schaie, the fourth stage in middle adulthood when people take a broader perspective than earlier, including concerns about the world.
Reintegrative Stage
According to Schaie, the fifth stage of late-adulthood during which the focus is on tasks that have personal meaning.
Vygotsky
Saw children as apprentices, learning cognitive strategies and other skills from adult and peer mentors who not only present new ways of doing things, but also provide assistance, instruction, and motivation.
Focused on the child's social and cultural world as the source of cognitive development. Children gradually grow intellectually and begin to function based on adult and peer assistance.
Contends that culture and society establish the institutions, such as preschools and play groups, which promote development and cognitive growth.
Societal expectations about gender play a role in how children come to understand the world. Saw cognitive apprentices learning from master teachers the skills valued in the child's culture.
Proposed that children's cognitive abilities increase through exposure to information that is new enough to be intriguing, but not too difficult to contend with called the Zone of Proximal Development.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
The level at which a child can almost, but not fully, perform a task independently, but can do so with the assistance of someone more competent.
If one child receives aid, he or she may improve substantially more than the other. The greater the improvement that comes with help, the larger this is.
Scaffolding
The support for learning and problem solving that encourages independence and growth. The assistance or structuring provided by others.
Helps children solve specific problems, and also aids in the development of their overall cognitive abilities. In education, it involves first of all helping children think about and frame a task. In addiction a teacher or parent is likely to provide clues to task completion that fit the child's level of development.
Vygotsky Theory
Proposed that the nature and progress of children's cognitive development are dependent on the children's social and cultural context. Culture and society determine how people engage in thought and set the agenda for education and the cognitive abilities.
Concepts for the zone of proximal development and scaffolding. Suggests that children should have the opportunity to experiment and participate with peers.
Influenced educational practices in the United States and other nations. Practice of cooperative learning and technique of reciprocal teaching. Influential figure in the study of cognitive development and education.
Vygotsky Criticism
Lack precision, difficult to test. Never address some of the major topics in cognitive development, such as attention, memory, and dealt only slightly with intelligence.
Information Processing Approach
Approaches to cognitive development that seek to identify the ways that individuals take in, use, and store information. Encoding, Storage, Retrieval.
Information Processing Approach
Cognitive growth is characterized by increasing sophistication, similar to the way a computer becomes more sophisticated as the programmer modifies it and as the capacity of the computer's memory and its computational sophistication increase.
Focus on the types of mental programs that people use when they seek to solve problems.
Piaget
Theorist
Universal Milestones in cognitive development.
Vygotsky
Theorist
The contribution of the social world to thinking.
The Foundations of Information Processing
Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval.
Encoding
The process by which information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory.
Storage
Maintenance of material saved in memory.
Retrieval
Process by which material in memory storage is located, brought into awareness, and used.
Answering a Question
This depends on whether one has been exposed to the information and whether it has been encoded in a meaningful way.
Whether the information has been adequately saved. Retrieved from memory if all these things are done correctly.
Encoding, Storage, Retrieval
____ is a computer's keyboard, through which one inputs information.
____ is the hard drive, where information is stored.
____ is a computer's screen, where information is displayed.
Only when all three processes are operating, can information be processed.
Automatization
The degree to which an activity requires attention. Processes that require relatively little attention.
Controlled
Processes that require relatively large amounts of attention.
Automatic Processes
Processes that help with initial encounters with the world.
Prime us to process information in certain ways. Such as children being able to know how many times they have encountered people, differentiating familiar from unfamiliar.
Benefit of permitting more efficient information processing, allowing children to concentrate.
Sometimes backfire. Such as a child who thinks cat is a dog because it matches the assimilated scheme for one.
Cognitive Architecture
The basic, enduring structures and features of information processing that are relatively constant over the course of development.
Determines the specific steps through which material is processed as it travels through the human mind.
Constant over development, but speed and capacity grow.
Three-System Approach
The oldest and most influential of the approaches to information processes. Consists of a sensory store, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
Largely erroneous and abstract. Describe distinct components or functions of memory as opposed to actual physical locations.
Atkinson and Shiffrin
Theorists
Three system model. Several steps in overall process that permit a person to encode, store, and retain information.
Three-System Model
Information processing involves the sensory store, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
Sensory store is where information is momentarily stored without meaning.
Short-term memory receives selected information from the sensory store and beings processing it, adding meaning.
Sufficiently processed information then is passed to long-term memory, where it is stored on a relatively permanent basis for later retrieval.
Three-System Model
Assumes that both the size and the processing system and the type of processing it engages in develop over time. Holds that development involves quantitative changes in cognitive processes, rather than qualitative changes in the nature of thinking, as Piaget assumes.
Sensory Store
The initial, momentary store of information, lasting only an instant.
Memories are simply a cognitive representation of some stimulus, unfiltered and unevaluated. Raw representations of the stimulus, are not analyzed of their meaning. Unless the information is processed and passed to the next stage, it is lost forever.
Still highly accurate, creates almost identical replica of every stimulus to which it is exposed. Snapshots of the world maintained and preserved only if they are transferred to the next way station.
Short-Term Memory
The limited-capacity memory component in which selected input from the memory store is worked.
Thoughtful, deliberate information processing first takes place, giving meaning to the raw, nonmeaningful information from the sensory store.
Begins the process of storing information in terms of meaning. Lasts from 15 - 25 seconds.
Hold up to seven items or "chunks" of information, with variations of plus or minus two chunks. Increases with age. Remember numbers better than letters.
15 - 25 Seconds
The Length the Short-Term Memory Lasts.
Chunk
A meaningful group of stimuli that can be stored as a unit in short-term memory. Might be a letter or number, a word, or even a well-known maxim ("two's company, three's a crowd").
Relates less to physical size than to meaningfulness.
Rehearsal
The repetition of information that has entered short-term memory. Memory is kept alive and is not lost. Permits the transfer of material into long-term memory.
Working Memory
Short-Term memory. A set of memory stores that actively manipulate and rehearse information. The way in which we process information in working memory is determined by a central executive.
Central Executive
Controls the functioning of short-term memory, coordinating the processing of material, determining problem-solving strategies, directing attention, and selecting strategies for remembering in short-term memory.
Long-Term Memory
The memory component in which information is stored on a relatively permanent basis. Information arriving in is filed and cataloged, can be retrieved when needed. Repository that is nearly limitless in capacity.
Retrieval
Process of locating and bringing information stored in memory into awareness. Recall information through retrieval cues.
Retrieval Cues
Stimuli that permit people to recall information. Guide people to the location of a specific memory. May take the form of a word, an image, a smell, or a sound. Memory comes to mind when triggered.
Declarative Memory
Memory for factual information such as names, dates, and facts. Remember information about 'things'.
Procedural Memories
Memories relating to skills and habits, such as how to ice skate or ride a bike. Remember information about 'how to do things'.
Attention
Information processing involving the ability to strategically choose among and sort out different stimuli in the environment. First step in information processing. Must attend to a stimulus, if unaware that material cannot be processed.
Attention-Getting Stimuli
Physical Characteristics.
Attention-Holding Stimuli
Meaningfulness that sustains attention.
Attention
Ability to tune into certain stimuli, while tuning out of others. When children become increasingly aware of their sensory and memory limitations, and they develop strategies for responding to stimuli of interest.
Planning
The ability to allocate attentional resources on the basis of goals that one wishes to achieve. Develops effectively throughout the course of childhood and adolescence.
Infantile Amnesia
The lack of memory for experiences occurring prior to three years of age.
Infantile Amnesia
Language may be a key contributor. Unable to remember because they can't describe it in vocabulary.
Autobiographical Memory
Memory of particular events from one's life, doesn't achieve much accuracy until after three years of age.
Autobiographical Memories
Particularly vivid or meaningful. May not last into later life. Affected by cultural factors. May fade and not be wholly accurate. If it conflicts with standards such as not remembering emotional problems as children.
Robbie Case
Neo-Piagetian Theorist who blended information processing and Piagetian approaches.
Suggested that cognitive development proceeds because of increases in working memory capabilities. The number of chunks of information that can be held in working memory increases throughout childhood, suggesting an increase in its capacity.
Operating Efficiency Hypothesis
People are able to remember material better with age because they process information more quickly and use more effective, suitable strategies. Memory improvements are NOT due to increases in the size of working memory.
Less effort is needed to process information and more cognitive resources are available to store information.
Control Strategies
Conscious, intentionally used tactics to improve cognitive processing. Such as studying, rehearsal and repetition.
Keyword Strategy
One word is paired with another that sounds like it. Form a mental image of the two words interacting.
Scripts
General representations in memory of a sequence or series of events. Driving to school every day, unless something happens, it's just another ride, nothing is remembered minus the general event.
Metamemory
Understanding and knowledge that children and adults have about memory and the processes that underlie it.
The fact that people forget is almost universally realized by the age of six. Many children deny that they ever for anything.
Help know how much time is needed to study material in order to remember it accurately. Knowledge of how memory operates that leads to improvements in memory.
Memory Loss
Long-term memory, which declines with age for some people.
Appears that the reason for the decline is not fading or a complete loss of memory, but rather that with age, people register and store information less efficiently.
Age makes people less efficient in retrieving information that is stored in memory. May become more difficult to locate or isolate.
Qualitative
Piaget's Assumption about Development ____ Change. Piaget sees cognitive growth occurring in fairly sudden spurts.
Quantitative
Information Processing's Assumption about Development ____ Change. Information processing sees more gradual, step-by-step growth.
Mnemonics
Formal strategies for organizing material in ways that make it more likely to be remembered.
Get Organized (Notes, key hooks).
Pay Attention (At time of desired memory, pay close attention).
Use the encoding specificity phenomenon (Taking a test in the room where you studied).
Visualize (Making mental images of ideas).
Rehearse (Practice and study).
Questioning Children
Should be done as soon as possible. Unreliable. No foolproof way to test accurate recollection. Case-by-case basis, and judges must ensure they are questioned in a low-key, nonthreatening manner by impartial questioners.
Loftus and Palmer
Theorists
Video with cards crashing, participants asked how fast they were going when they smashed vs. contacted. Noted two completely different speeds based on vocabulary.
Code-Based Approach to Reading
Reading that should be taught presenting the basic skills that underlie reading.
Emphasize the components of reading, such as the sounds of letters and their combinations, phonics, and how letters and sounds are combined to make words.
Suggest that reading consists of processing the individual components of words, combining them into words, and then using the words to derive the meaning of written sentences and passages.
The superior option of the two approaches.
Whole-Language Approach to Reading
Reading is viewed as a natural process, similar to the acquisition of oral language.
Children should learn to read through exposure to complete writing, sentences, stories, poems, lists, charts, and other examples of actual uses of writing.
Instead of being taught to sound out words, children are encouraged to make guesses about the meaning of words based on the context in which they appear.
Children come to learn whole words and phrases at a time, gradually becoming proficient readers.
Critical Thinking
Thinking that makes use of cognitive skills and strategies that increase the likelihood of solving problems, forming inferences, and making decisions appropriately and successfully.
It involves not jumping to conclusions on the basis of limited facts, but considering information, weighing the alternatives, and coming to a reasoned decision.
Scrutinize the assumptions that underlie their decisions, beliefs, and actions, and they pay attention to the contexts in which ideas are implemented.
Critical Thinking
1. Thinkers must identify and challenge the assumptions underlying a statement or contention.
2. They must check for factual accuracy and logical consistency among statements.
3. They need to take into account the context of a situation.
4. They need to imagine and explore alternatives.
Information Processing Approaches
Represent the dominant, most comprehensive, and ultimately the most accurate explanation of how children develop cognitively.
Cognitive development consists of gradual improvements in the ways people perceive, understand, and remember information.
With age and practice, preschoolers process information more efficiently and with greater sophistication, and they are able to handle increasingly complex problems.
Quantitative advances and not the qualitative changes suggested by Piaget. Reliance on well-defined processes that can be tested by research studies with relative precision.
Problems with Information Processing Approaches
Leaves out consideration some important factors that appear to influence cognitive development.
Theorists pay relatively little attention to social and cultural factors, a deficiency that Vygotsky's approach attempts to remedy.
"Lose the forest for the trees."
Pay so much attention to the detailed, individual sequence of processes that compose cognitive processing and development that they never adequately paint a whole, comprehensive picture of cognitive development, which Piaget did uniquely well.
Postformal Thought
Thinking that acknowledges that adult predicaments must sometimes be solved in relativistic terms.
Intellectual Superiority
According to Labouvie-Vief, the complexity of society requires specialization of thought. Therefore, thought is not necessarily based on only logic but also requires ____
Acquisitive Stage
According to developmental psychologist K. Warner Schaie, the first stage of cognitive development, encompassing all of childhood and adolescence, in which the main developmental task is to acquire information is called ____
Achievement
According to Schaie, what is the mission of young adulthood?
Receives aid from someone more competent in the task
The concept of the Zone of Proximal Development suggests that a child will improve more if he/she ____
Information Processing Approach
What is the term for the model that seeks to identify the way that individuals take in, use, and store information?
Encoding
When a person initially records information in a form usable to memory, this is called ____
He never heard it
Larry was daydreaming the day that his first grade teacher reviewed the math lesson that 5 + 5 = 10. Later, Larry was not able to recall this information, probably because ____
Sequential Memory
Memory is traditionally viewed in terms of three sequential components NOT including ____
Sensory Store
The initial, momentary storage of information that lasts only an instant, and is raw and meaningless, is called ____
Language
The systematic, meaningful arrangement of symbols, which provides the basis for communication.
Language
Closely relates to the way infants think and understand the world. Enables them to reflect on people and objects, and to convey their thoughts to others. Includes Phonology, Morphemes, and Semantics.
Phonology
The basic sounds of language that can be combined to produce words and sentences.
For instance the "a" in "mat" and the "a" in "mate" represent two different ones of these. Same letter with different sounds.
Morphemes
The smallest language unit that has meaning.
Some encompass complete words, while others add information necessary for interpretation a word, such as the endings "s" for plural or "ed" for past tense.
Semantics
The rules that govern the meaning of words and sentences.
Understand the distinction between "Ellie was hit by a car" (used to answer a question, such as why Ellie has not been to school) and "A car hit Ellie" (used to declare an emergency).
Linguistic Comprehension
The understanding of speech. Expands at a rate of 22 new words a month.
Linguistic Production
The use of language to communicate. Expands at a rate of 9 new words a month.
Prelinguistic Communication
Communication through sounds, facial expressions, gestures, imitation, and other nonlinguistic means.
Babbling
Makings speechlike but meaningless sounds, starts at the age of two or three months and continues until around the age of one year.
Repeat the same vowel sound over and over, changing the pitch from high to low. After the age of five months, the sounds begin to expand, reflecting the addition of consonants.
First Words
Generally spoken somewhere around the age of 10 to 14 months, but may occur as early as nine months.
Holophrases
One-word utterances that stand for a whole phrase, whose meaning depends on the particular context in which they are used.
18 Months
Age of the large expansion in vocabulary accompanied by the linking together of individual words into sentences that convey a single thought.
Telegraphic Speech
Speech in which words not critical to the message are left out.
Underextension
Using words too restrictively. Occurs when language novices think that a word refers to a specific instance of a concept, instead of to all examples of the concept.
Overextension
Words are used too broadly, overgeneralizing their meaning.
Referential Style
Language is used primarily to label objects.
Expressive Style
Language is used mainly to express feelings and needs about oneself and others.
Syntax
The combining of words and phrases to form sentences.
Fast Mapping
The process in which new words are associated with their meaning after only a brief encounter.
Grammar
The system of rules that determine how our thoughts can be expressed.
Pragmatics
The aspect of language relating to communicating effectively and appropriately with others.
Permits children to understand the basics of conversation, turn taking, sticking to a topic, and what should and should not be said, according to the conventions of society. Learning to say "thank you" is learning this.
Private Speech
Spoken language that is not intended for others.
20 to 60 percent of what children say.
Some say it facilitates children's thinking and helps them control their behavior (Vygotsky). Allows children to solve problems and reflect upon difficulties they counter.
Social Speech
Speech directed toward another person and meant to be understood by that person. Surrounded around egocentric thought. Become frustrated when they cannot be understood.
Syntax
The rules that indicate how words and phrases can be combined to form sentences.
Intonation
Tone of voice.
Pragmatics
Rules governing the use of language to communicate in a social context. Concern children's ability to use appropriate and effective language in a given social setting.
Metalinguistic Awareness
An understanding of one's own use of language. Helps children achieve comprehension when information is fuzzy or incomplete.
Learning Theory Approach
Language acquisition follows the fundamental laws of reinforcement and conditioning.
A child who articulates the word "da" may be hugged and praised by her father, who jumps to the conclusion she is referring to him. This reaction reinforces the child, who is more likely to repeat the word.
Suggests that children learn to speak by being rewarded for making sounds that approximate speech, through the process of shaping, language becomes more and more similar to adult speech.
Problems with Learning Theory Approach
Doesn't explain how children acquire the rules of language as readily as they do. Reinforced even when they make errors. Falls short in explaining satisfactorily how children learn to speak properly.
Noam Chomsky
Theorist.
The Natavist Approach
The Nativist Approach
Championed by Noam Chomsky.
Argues that there is a genetically determined, innate mechanism that directs the development of language. People are born with an innate capacity to use language, which emerges, more or less automatically, through maturation.
Have universal grammar and a neural system called language-acquisition device. Language is uniquely human, made possible by a genetic predisposition to both comprehend and produce words and sentences.
Problems with The Nativist Approach
Basic language in primates. Requires social experience even in humans.
Universal Grammar
A similar underlying structure shared by all the world's languages.
Language-Acquisition Device (LAD)
A neural system of the brain that permits the understanding of language structure and provides a set of strategies and techniques for learning the particular characteristics of the language in which the child is exposed.
Interactionalist Perspective
Suggests that language development is produced through a combination of genetically determined predispositions and environmental circumstances that help teach language.
Accepts that innate factors shape the broad outlines of language development. Argue that the specific course of language development is determined by the language in which children are exposed and reinforcement they receive for using language in particular ways.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Theorist.
Linguistic-Relativity Hypothesis.
Argued that because example—Eskimos—have more words for snow, than that of English speakers because they are more involved in and around snow in their daily lives than others.
Linguistic-Relativity Hypothesis
Benjamin Lee Whorf.
States that language shapes and may even determine the way people of a particular culture perceive and understand the world.
Language provides categories that help children construct their perceptions of people and events in their surroundings. The notion that language shapes and produces thinking.
Interactionalist Approach
Argue that language development, though innate, is determined by social factors, such as children's linguistic environment and the reinforcement they receive from others.
Three Views about the Relationship between Language and Thought
Language shapes thought (the linguistic-relativity hypothesis), thought shapes language, and thought and language influence one another.
Infant-Directed Speech
A style of speech that characterizes much of the verbal communication directed toward infants.
Characterized by short, simple sentences. Pitch becomes higher and intonation is more varied. Repetition of words, and topics are restricted.
Sometimes includes amusing sounds, imitating prelinguistic speech. Similar in kind of telegraphic speech that infants use.
At the end of the first year, sentences become longer and more complex. Pitch is also used to focus on important words. Plays and important role in infants' acquisition of language.
Hart and Risley
Studied home environment. The rate at which language was addressed to children varied significantly according to the economic level of the family.
Greater affluence of the parents, the more they spoke to their children. Children in families that received welfare were exposed to 13 million fewer words.
Children in families that received welfare were apt to hear prohibitions ("no" or "stop") twice as frequently as affluent families. Perform less well.
May be because affluent parents have the luxury of spending more time with their children. Less household stress, fewer situations in which parents are exhausted.
Autobiographical Memory
What is the term for a memory of particular events from one's own life?
Preschool-aged children have difficulty remembering events unless they are particularly vivid or meaningful.
Considering the following, which is the most likely reason why preschool-aged children may not have entirely accurate autobiographical memories?
Phonics
Students who were tutored in ____ showed improved reading proficiency and increased activity in brain areas related to skilled reading.
Critical Thinking
____ is thinking that makes use of cognitive skills and strategies to increase the likelihood of solving problems, forming inferences, and making decisions appropriately and successfully.
Phonemes
What term refers to the basic sounds of language that can be combined to produce words and sentences?
Morpheme
What is the term for the smallest language unit that has meaning?
Semantics
What is the name for the rules that govern the meaning of words and sentences?
Private Speech
When young children are using speech that is spoken and directed to themselves, this is called ____
3 Years of Age
At approximately what age can a child follow the principles of grammar most of the time?
Gifted
Children who show evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, leadership, or specific academic fields are referred to as ____