1. Stages involve Discontinuous (qualitative) change Invariant sequence –Stages are never skipped

2. Sensorimotor Stage (birth-2 years) Newborns have reflexes (motor behavior) and basic perceptual abilities –Refine these innate responses (accommodation) during the first month of life

3. Gradually become capable of repeating satisfying behaviors that initially occurred by chance

4. First learn to repeat actions involving their own body –Ex: thumb sucking Then learn to repeat actions involving objects –Ex: shaking rattle

5. Object Permanence: Understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be perceived directly –Infants have some understanding of object permanence at around 8 months

6. –A-not-B error: Tendency to reach where objects have been found before, rather than where they were last hidden –Infants make this error until about 12 months of age

7. From 12 months on, infants increasingly engage in active exploration of objects and their functions

8. At end of sensorimotor stage, mental representations develop –Deferred Imitation: Imitation of a behavior after a period of delay Implies mental representation (memory)

9. Egocentrism: Tendency to focus on one’s own viewpoint and ignore others’ perspectives –Ex: 3 Mountains Task

11. Centration: Tendency to focus on one feature of an object or event to the neglect of other important features

12. Conservation: Understanding that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same even when their outward appearance changes

13. Preoperational children fail conservation tasks because of –Centration –A tendency to focus on static states rather than transformations

14. Concrete Operations (7-11) Understand conservation tasks –Can focus on multiple features of an object or event –Can consider transformations, not just static states

15. Limitations of Concrete Operations –Children’s logical thinking is limited to concrete information that can be perceived directly –Can’t reason about abstract or hypothetical ideas

16. Formal Operations (11 on) Ability to think abstractly or hypothetically –“What if... ?”

17. Can consider all possible outcomes of a situation (scientific reasoning) –Ex: pendulum problem

19. Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory: Underestimated role of social environment in cognitive development –Ex: Certain experiences (like formal schooling) may promote conservation and other abilities

20. Doesn’t explain HOW cognitive development occurs –Better description than explanation of children’s cognitive development

21. The stage model describes children’s thinking as being more consistent than it really is –Ex: Children can solve some conservation problems sooner than others

22. Infants and young children are more cognitively advanced than Piaget claimed –Ex: deferred imitation (and thus mental representation) is present earlier than Piaget thought

23. Violation of Expectancy Method –Habituate infants to a “possible physical event” –Present a “possible” and “impossible” event Measure infants’ looking time to each event –If infants look longer at “impossible” event, assumed they have an understanding of the concept (e.g., object permanence)

24. But violation-of-expectancy method is controversial: –Does longer looking time to an “impossible” event indicate full understanding of a concept (such as object permanence)? OR –Does it simply indicate preference for novelty?

25. Core Knowledge Theories –Some types of knowledge are innate or are learned very quickly Ex: objects follow continuous paths through space; two objects cannot occupy the same space –Infants/young children develop “naïve” theories in certain domains (areas) based on this knowledge Ex: theory of physics (knowledge of objects)

26. –Domains in which infants have “core knowledge” are adaptive for survival from an evolutionary perspective

27. Preoperational children appear to be less egocentric than Piaget claimed

28. Preoperational children appear to have some understanding of conservation

29. Information Processing Theories Cognitive development is continuous rather than discontinuous

30. Computer metaphor: –Computer’s ability to process information is limited by its Hardware (e.g., memory capacity, speed/efficiency of operations) Software (e.g., strategies, information available) –Individuals’ thinking is limited by Memory capacity Speed/efficiency of thought processes Availability of relevant strategies and knowledge

31. Development of Memory Short-term (working) memory: “Workspace” in which information is actively processed –Can hold and operate on between 1 and 10 items (words, numbers, etc.) for up to a minute

32. Long-term memory: Information retained on an enduring basis –Can hold an unlimited amount of information for unlimited periods of time

33. Both types of memory increase with age

34. Basic Processes –Simple, most frequently used mental activities Exs: recognizing familiar objects; generalizing from one event to another; encoding

35. –Encoding: Process of representing in memory information that draws attention or is considered important

37. With development, basic processes like encoding become more efficient

38. With development, speed of basic processes also increases

40. With development, children’s use of strategies to remember information and solve problems increases

41. –Several memory strategies emerge between 5 and 8 years Rehearsal: Repeating information over and over Selective attention: Intentionally focusing on information relevant to the current goal

42. When children first learn new strategies, their use of them is quite limited –Why? –Mental “cost” of using new strategies is high relative to well-learned (old) strategies Using new strategies may actually reduce memory performance initially

43. Utilization deficiency: Initial uses of strategies do not improve memory as much as later uses Increasing benefits of using new strategies (or reducing costs) increases children’s use of memory strategies –Paying children for successful memory performance (increases benefit) –Presenting material to which the strategy can be easily applied (decreases cost)

44. With development, children’s knowledge about everything increases –Greater knowledge increases children’s ability to remember new information because they can relate it to information they already know When children know more about a topic than adults, their memory for new information about the topic is often better than that of adults

45. –Scripts: A type of knowledge about how some type of everyday event usually goes Ex: eating at a restaurant; grocery shopping

46. –Autobiographical memory: Explicit memories of events that took place at specific times and places in the individual’s past Infants do not seem to form autobiographical memories until approximately 18 months

47. Why? –Younger infants appear to lack a sense of self Understanding that they are a discrete entity who acts on and is acted on by others –Self-recognition (rouge test) is associated with autobiographical memory –Children who “pass” the rouge test are more likely to remember past events several months later

48. Infantile Amnesia: –Inability of most adults to remember anything of their lives before the age of three years (and not much before age 5)