Physical Changes
abilities required to control smaller movements of the hands and fingers, such as picking up small objects and tying one's shoes
fine motor skills
the understanding that some characteristics of objects (including volume, mass, and number) do not change despite changes in form or appearance when nothing is added or taken away; not a feature of the preoperational child
conservation
The ability to categorically link new words to real-world references
Fast mapping
The ability to manipulate and use information in a reasoning process
Fluid reasoning
the ability to attribute mental states- beliefs, intents, desires, knowledge- to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one's own
Theory of mind
abilities required to control the large movements of the arms, legs, and feet, or the whole body, such as running, jumping, climbing, and throwing; must be studied in a cultural context
gross motor skills
the second stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development, from about age 2 to 7, during which children acquire a mental storehouse of images and symbols, especially spoken and written words, but are unable to think logically
preoperational period
Children's understanding of the sound patterns of the languages they are acquiring
phonological awareness
Twin studies indicate that at least half of the variation in IQ scores is due to genetics. This is an example of a ....... explanation
Nature
Knowledge about how memory works and the ability to control and reflect on one's own memory function
Metamemory
A strong preference for using one hand over another that developed between 3 and 5 years old
Handedness
The young child's tendency to think of the world in terms of one variable at a time
Centration
Period when the grammatical features of children's speech become more similar to those of adult speech
Grammar explosion
The concept of the reaction range suggests that the upper and lower boundaries of a child's intelligence are established by ......, and the child's actual level of intelligence is determined by ....
Genes; environment
The ability to look at a problem or situation from another person's point of view and discern what kind of information would cause that person to believe something that isn't true.
False Belief Principle
the localization of a function to one of the hemispheres of the brain
lateralization
Children begin to take roles or play parts during play, such as playing house as "mummy" or "daddy"
Sociodramatic play
Receptive vocabulary
the words that are understood when heard
Scoring on an early childhood intelligence test is predictive of...
later school performance
Knowledge about how the mind thinks and the ability to control and reflect on one's own thought processes
Metacognition
Environments in which social influences and context contribute to obesity in individuals or populations
Obesogenic environments
What studies have challenged Piaget's description of egocentrism?
Studies of preschoolers' understanding of emotions
attachment of regular inflections to irregular words
Overregularization
providing learning opportunities, materials, hints, and clues when a child has difficulty with a task
scaffolding