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| A theory proposed by Esther Thelen that seeks to explain how infants assemble motor skills for perceiving and acting. |
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| A newborn's built-in reaction that occurs when the infant's cheek is stroked or the side of the mouth is touched. In response, the infant turns its head toward the side that was touched, in an apparent effort to find something to suck. |
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| A newborn's reaction of sucking an object placed in its mouth. The sucking reflex enables the infant to get nourishment before it has associated a nipple with food. |
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| A startle response that occurs in reaction to a sudden, intense noise or movement. When startled, the newborn arches its back, throws its head back, and flings out its arms and legs. Then the newborn rapidly closes its arms and legs to the center of the body. |
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| A reflex that occurs when something touches an infant's palms. The infant responds by grasping tightly. |
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| Motor skills that involve large-muscle activities, such as walking. |
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| Motor skills that involve finely tuned movements, such as any activity that requires finger dexterity. |
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| Reaction that occurs when information interacts with sensory receptors—the eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin. |
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| The interpretation of sensation. |
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| The view proposed by the Gibsons that people directly perceive information in the world around them. Perception brings people in contact with the environment in order to interact with it and adapt to it. |
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| Opportunities for interaction offered by objects that fit within our capabilities to perform activities. |
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| A method developed by Fantz to determine whether infants can distinguish one stimulus from another by measuring the length of time they attend to different stimuli. |
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| Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus. |
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| The recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation. |
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| Recognition that an object remains the same even though the retinal image of the object changes as you move toward or away from the object. |
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| Recognition that an object remains the same even though its orientation to us changes. |
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| The eye's ability to focus and maintain an image on the retina. |
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| A thickening of the lens of the eye that causes vision to become cloudy, opaque, and distorted. |
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| Damage to the optic nerve because of the pressure created by a buildup of fluid in the eye. |
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| A vision problem in the elderly that involves deterioration of the macula of the retina. |
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| The ability to integrate information about two or more sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing. |
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| In Piaget's theory, actions or mental representations that organize knowledge. |
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| Piagetian concept in which children use existing schemes to incorporate new information. |
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| Piagetian concept of adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences. |
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| Piagetian concept of grouping isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system. |
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| A mechanism that Piaget proposed to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next. |
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| The first of Piaget's stages, which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age, during which infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions. |
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| The Piagetian term for one of an infant's most important accomplishments: understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched. |
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| Also called error; this occurs when infants make the mistake of selecting the familiar hiding place (A) rather than the new hiding place (B) as they progress into substage 4 in Piaget's sensorimotor stage. |
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| States that infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems. Among these domain-specific knowledge systems are those involving space, number sense, object permanence, and language. |
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| The second Piagetian developmental stage, which lasts from about 2 to 7 years of age; children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings. |
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| Reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what before they had done only physically |
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Term
| symbolic function substage |
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Definition
| The first substage of preoperational thought, occurring roughly between the ages of 2 and 4. In this substage, the young child gains the ability to represent mentally an object that is not present. |
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| The inability to distinguish between one's own and someone else's perspective; an important feature of preoperational thought. |
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| A facet of preoperational thought—the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action. |
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| intuitive thought substage |
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Definition
| The second substage of preoperational thought, occurring between approximately 4 and 7 years of age. Children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions. |
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| The focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others |
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| The awareness that altering the appearance of an object or a substance does not change its basic properties. |
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Term
| concrete operational stage |
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Definition
| The third Piagetian stage, which lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age; children can perform concrete operations, and logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning as long as the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. |
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| The concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length). |
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| The ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions. Piaget argued that an understanding of transitivity is characteristic of concrete operational thought. |
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| The fourth and final Piagetian stage, which appears between the ages of 11 and 15; individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in more abstract and logical ways. |
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Term
| hypothetical-deductive reasoning |
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Definition
| Piaget's formal operational concept that adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses about ways to solve problems and can systematically deduce which is the best path to follow in solving the problem. |
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| The heightened self-consciousness of adolescents, which is reflected in adolescents' beliefs that others are as interested in them as they are in themselves, and in adolescents' sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. |
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| That aspect of adolescent egocentrism that involves feeling one is the center of attention and sensing that one is on stage. |
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| The part of adolescent egocentrism that involves an adolescent's sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. |
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| Developmentalists who have elaborated on Piaget's theory, emphasizing attention to children's strategies; information-processing speed; the task involved; and division of the problem into more precise, smaller steps. |
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Term
| zone of proximal development (ZPD) |
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Definition
| Vygotsky's term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with guidance and assistance from adults or more-skilled children. |
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Definition
| In cognitive development, a term Vygotsky used to describe the changing level of support over the course of a teaching session, with the more-skilled person adjusting guidance to fit the child's current performance level. |
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| social constructivist approach |
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Definition
| An emphasis on the social contexts of learning and construction of knowledge through social interaction. Vygotsky's theory reflects this approach. |
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| Thinking that is reflective, relativistic, and contextual; provisional; realistic; and influenced by emotions. |
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| The process by which information gets into memory. |
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| The ability to process information with little or no effort. |
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| Creation of new procedures for processing information. |
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| Cognition about cognition, or “knowing about knowing.” |
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| Focusing of mental resources. |
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| Focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant. |
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| Concentrating on more than one activity at the same time. |
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Definition
| The ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time. |
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| Cognitive process involving action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances. |
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| Focus by individuals on the same object or event; requires an ability to track another's behavior, one individual to direct another's attention, and reciprocal interaction. |
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| Retention of information over time. |
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| Theory stating that people mold memories to fit information that already exists in their minds. |
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| Mental frameworks that organize concepts and information. |
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| Memory without conscious recollection—memory of skills and routine procedures that are performed automatically. |
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Definition
| Conscious memory of facts and experiences |
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Definition
| A relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory. |
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Definition
| Retention of information for up to 15 to 30 seconds, without rehearsal of the information. Using rehearsal, individuals can keep the information in short-term memory longer. |
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Definition
| A mental “workbench” where individuals manipulate and assemble information when making decisions, solving problems, and comprehending written and spoken language. |
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Definition
| Engagement in more extensive processing of information, benefiting memory. |
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Definition
| Theory stating that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations: verbatim memory trace, and gist. In this theory, older children's better memory is attributed to the fuzzy traces created by extracting the gist of information. |
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Definition
| Retention of information about the where and when of life's happenings. |
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Definition
| A person's knowledge about the world, including fields of expertise, general academic knowledge, and “everyday knowledge” about meaning of words, names of famous individuals, important places, and common things. |
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Definition
| The ability to remember where something was learned. |
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| Remembering to do something in the future. |
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Definition
| Manipulating and transforming information in memory, in order to reason, reflect, think critically, evaluate ideas and solve problems, and make decisions. |
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| Cognitive groupings of similar objects, events, people, or ideas. |
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| An umbrella-like concept that encompasses a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain's prefrontal cortex. Executive functioning involves managing one's thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and to exercise self-control. |
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| Thinking reflectively and productively, and evaluating the evidence. |
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| Theory stating that decision making is influenced by two cognitive systems—one analytical and one experiential—that compete with each other. |
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| Having extensive, highly organized knowledge and understanding of a particular domain. |
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| thoughts about how one's own mental processes work and the mental processes of others. |
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