E. Mavis Hetherington,
University of Virginia
Ross D. Parke,
University of California
Mark Schmuckler,
University of Toronto at Scarborough
Below are this chapter's featured key terms. The textbook's full glossary is also available for online searching.
| accommodation | Modifying an existing way of responding to the environment to fit the characteristics of a new experience.
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| adaptation | The individual's tendency to adjust to environmental demands.
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| animistic thinking | The attribution of life to inanimate objects.
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| assimilation | Moulding a new experience to fit an existing way of responding to the environment.
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| centration | Centring one's attention on only one dimension or characteristic of an object or situation.
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| cognition | The mental activity through which human beings acquire and process knowledge.
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| concrete operations period | Period in which the child acquires such concepts as conservation and classification and can reason logically.
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| conservation | The notion that altering an object's or a substance's appearance does not change its basic attributes or properties.
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| coordination of secondary schemata | An infant's combination of different schemata to achieve a specific goal.
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| deferred imitation | Mimicry of an action some time after observing it; requires that the child have stored a mental image of the action.
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| egocentric speech | According to Vygotsky, a form of self-directed dialogue by which the child instructs herself in solving problems and formulating plans; as the child matures, becomes internalized, as inner speech.
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| egocentrism | The tendency to view the world from one's own perspective and to have difficulty seeing things from another's viewpoint.
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| elementary mental functions | Functions with which the child is endowed by nature, including attention, perception, and memory.
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| formal operations period | Period in which the child becomes capable of flexibility and abstract thought, complex reasoning, and hypothesis testing.
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| higher mental functions | Functions that rely on mediators that have become increasingly sophisticated through the child's interaction with his environment.
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| horizontal décalage | The notion that unevenness in children's cognitive achievements reflects the fact that understanding the conservation of different objects or substances requires differing levels of abstraction.
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| inner speech | Internalized egocentric speech that continues to direct and regulate intellectual function.
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| intuitive stage | The second substage of the preoperational period, during which the child begins to solve problems by means of specific mental operations but cannot yet explain how she arrives at the solutions.
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| inventing new means by mental combination | In this last stage of the sensorimotor period, children begin to combine schemata mentally, relying less on physical trial and error.
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| mediators | According to Vygotsky, psychological tools and signs like language, counting, mnemonic devices, algebraic symbols, art, and writing.
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| object permanence | The notion that objects and people continue to exist independent of our seeing or interacting with them.
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| operations | Schemes based on internal mental activities.
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| organization | The predisposition to combine simple mental structures into more complex systems.
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| preconceptual stage | The first substage of Piaget's preoperational period, during which the child's thought is characterized by animistic thinking and egocentricity.
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| preoperational period | In this period, the symbolic function promotes the learning of language; period is also marked by egocentricity and intuitive behaviour, in which the child can solve problems using mental operations but cannot explain how he does so.
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| primary circular reactions | Behaviours in which infants repeat and modify actions that focus on their own bodies and that are pleasurable and satisfying.
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| reflex activity | An infant's exercise of and growing proficiency in the use of innate reflexes.
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| reversibility | The notion that one can reverse or undo a given operation, either physically or mentally.
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| scaffolding | Based on Vygotsky's thought, an instructional process in which the teacher continually adjusts the amount and type of support he offers as the child continues to develop more sophisticated skills.
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| scheme | (Plural, schemes); a cognitive structure, or an organized group of interrelated memories, thoughts, and strategies that the child uses to try to understand a situation; a schema forms the basis for organizing actions to respond to the environment.
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| secondary circular reactions | Behaviours focused on objects outside the infant's own body that the infant repeatedly engages in because they are pleasurable.
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| sensorimotor period | Piaget's first stage of cognitive development, during which children move from purely reflexive behaviour to the beginnings of symbolic thought and goal-directed behaviours.
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| symbolic function | The ability to use symbols, such as images, words, and gestures, to represent objects and events in the world.
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| symbolic thought | The use of mental images to represent people, objects, and events.
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| tertiary circular reactions | Behaviours in which infants experiment with the properties of external objects and try to learn how objects respond to various actions.
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| zone of proximal development (ZPD) | According to Vygotsky, the difference between the developmental level a child has reached and the level she is potentially capable of reaching with the guidance or collaboration of a more skilled adult or peer.
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2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education