Cognitive Development
This theorist is known for the "Child as Scientist" view and his four stages of development.
Jean Piaget
These are the smallest units of meaningful sound in a language, such as /r/ and /l/.
Phonemes
This refers to the commonsense understanding of oneself and others, including desires and beliefs.
Naive Psychology
This type of intelligence refers to the ability to think on the spot and solve novel problems.
Fluid Intelligence
This theme addresses whether development occurs in small, incremental steps or through abrupt, qualitative shifts.
Continuity vs. Discontinuity
The process of translating new information into a form that a person can already understand.
Assimilation
This "test" proves children learn grammatical rules rather than just imitating sounds they hear.
The Wug Test
This "middle" tier of the category hierarchy is typically the first level children learn.
Basic Level
This widely used test for children 6+ years results in an overall score and four general ability scores.
WISC-V
These environmental agents, such as mercury or thalidomide, can cause damage during prenatal development.
Teratogens
In this Piagetian stage (ages 2–7), children show egocentrism and a lack of the conservation concept.
Preoperational
This linguistic period involves infants using a single word to represent an entire sentence.
Holophrastic
This is the tendency for children to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object.
Centration
This effect describes the consistent rise in average IQ scores observed over time.
Flynn Effect
This "rule" of growth explains why infants gain control of their heads and trunks before their arms and legs.
Cephalocaudal
This Vygotskian concept refers to the range between what a child can do alone vs. with social support.
Zone of Proximal Development
This is the sound system of a language and the rules for combining those sounds.
Phonology
These "detector" experiments show that children have big jumps in causal reasoning by age 2.
Blicket Detector
This theory by John Carroll places (g) at the top, general abilities in the middle, and specific processes at the bottom.
Three-Stratum Theory
This term refers to the process by which the brain’s "excess" neural connections are eliminated to increase efficiency.
Synaptic Pruning
This error occurs when an infant searches for a toy where it was last found, rather than where it was hidden.
A-not-B Error
This "procedure" uses headphones and rewards to show that infants can discriminate non-native phonemes
Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure
14% of 3-year-olds pass this type of task, while 85% of 5-year-olds pass.
False Belief
This cumulative measure demonstrated that a child’s IQ is better predicted by the total number of co-occurring stressors—such as maternal anxiety and large family size—than by any singular specific risk factor
Environmental Risk Scale
This biochemical process involves the "silencing" of gene expression via environmental factors, such as maternal care or stress.
DNA Methylation