This theory views the child as an active constructor of knowledge.
What is Piaget’s constructivist theory?
Piaget described cognitive development from birth to age two as this stage.
What is the sensorimotor stage?
This stage is marked by symbolic thinking but limited logical reasoning.
What is the preoperational stage?
At birth, infants display this limited set of emotions.
What are distress, contentment, disgust, and interest?
This theorist described attachment as the primary task of infancy.
Who is John Bowlby?
These two complementary processes drive cognitive adaptation.
What are assimilation and accommodation?
This research method measures infants’ attention to novelty.
What is the habituation paradigm?
This limitation causes children to focus on one aspect of a situation at a time.
What is centration?
This concept refers to the ability to manage emotional arousal.
What is emotion regulation?
This attachment function allows the child to explore the environment confidently.
What is the secure base?
This critique of Piaget suggests development can occur at different rates across domains.
What is domain-specific development?
This cognitive achievement reflects understanding that objects exist when unseen.
What is object permanence?
This ability supports planning, inhibition, and flexible thinking.
What are executive functions?

This caregiving pattern best supports early emotion regulation development.
What is responsive, supportive caregiving?
This hormone plays a key role in bonding and caregiving behavior.
What is oxytocin?
This approach compares cognition to a computer system emphasizing processing efficiency.
What is the information-processing approach?
This form of memory appears later and is demonstrated through deferred imitation.
What is recall memory?
This cognitive shift allows children to consider more than one dimension at once.
What is decentration?
This experimental paradigm demonstrates infant distress when caregiver responsiveness stops.dr
What is the still-face paradigm?
This infant behavior reflects anxiety when separated from caregivers.
What is separation anxiety?
This theorist emphasized learning through social interaction and guided participation.
Who is Vygotsky?
This emerging ability reflects infants’ understanding that others have goals.
What is inferring others’ intentions (early theory of mind)?
From a counseling lens, executive function delays most directly affect this area.
What is self-regulation?
This developmental principle explains increasing emotional differentiation with age.
What is the orthogenetic principle?
From a counseling perspective, early attachment primarily shapes this later outcome.
What are internal working models of relationships?