Exam 6: A: Theories of Cognitive Development

Cross-cultural studies have shown that scaffolding occurs only in industrialized nations.

Scaffolding matches the amount of assistance to the learner's needs.

Inhibitory processes prevent relevant information from entering working memory.

One of the weaknesses of Piaget's theory is that it overestimates cognitive competence in infants and young children and underestimates cognitive competence in adolescents.

Sensory memory holds information the longest of the three types of memory.

Baillargeon found that infants as young as four and a half months showed object permanence in that they consistently looked longer at an unrealistic event than a realistic one.

Core-knowledge theories propose distinctive domains of development, some of which are acquired early in life.

According to Piaget, adolescents and adults acquire more knowledge as they grow older, but their fundamental way of thinking remains unchanged.

According to core-knowledge theorists, some forms of knowledge, such as language, are so important for survival that specialized systems have evolved to simplify their learning.

Adults' theories of living things begin in infancy when babies first distinguish animate objects from inanimate objects.

Educational applications of Piaget's theory include facilitating rather than directing children's learning, sensitivity to children's readiness to learn, and emphasis on discovery learning.

Concrete operational thinking is identical to adult thinking in that children are able to think abstractly and hypothetically for the first time.

Comments that are not intended for others but are used by children to regulate their own behaviour are known as private speech.

Children's naïve theories of biology are composed of six elements: movement, growth, internal parts, inheritance, illness, and healing.

Smart children can skip one of Piaget's stages.

Infants are incapable of realizing that objects in mid-air should fall or that objects cannot move through other objects.

The first indication of purposeful, goal-directed behaviour occurs during infancy at around eight months of age.

According to Piaget, cognitive development occurs in eight stages.

Infants could reasonably be described as "accomplished naïve physicists."

Common symbols used by children in the preoperational stage include words, gestures, graphs, maps, and models.