Cat 1
a person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity
temperament
Noam Chomsky's concept of an innate, prewired mechanism in the brain that allows children to acquire language naturally
language acquisition device
In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view
egocentrism
a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind
autism
a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information
schema
one's accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age
crystallized intelligence
one's ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood
fluid intelligence
absorbing new information into existing cognitive schemas; fitting new information into the present system of knowledge
assimilation
modifying existing cognitive schemas in response to experiences and new information; changing your present system of knowledge
accommodation
moral development; presented boys moral dilemmas and studied their responses and reasoning processes in making moral decisions.
Lawrence Kohlberg
Infants are wary of exploring the environment and resist or avoid the mother when she attempts to offer comfort or consolation
insecure attachment
Infants use the mother as a home base from which to explore when all is well, but seek physical comfort and consolation from her if frightened or threatened
secure attachment
Studied child development in a social environment; thought that children learn best when teachers provide scaffolding (support) with challenging tasks
Lev Vygotsky
used the "Strange Situation" test to determine attachment styles between mothers and infants
Mary Ainsworth
The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects
Conservation
experimented with baby rhesus monkeys and presented them with cloth or wire "mothers;" showed that the monkeys became attached to the cloth mothers because of contact comfort
Harry Harlow
In Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities
sensorimotor stage
In Piaget's theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
preoperational stage
In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events
concrete operational stage
In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
formal operational stage