Chapter 8

Key Terms

Accommodation: changes in an individual’s cognitive organisation designed to deal more effectively with the environment.

Assimilation: using an existing cognitive organisation to deal with a new environmental situation.

Equilibration: responding to cognitive conflicts by using the proceses of accommodation and assimilation to re-establish equilibrium.

Clinical method: an informal question-based approach used to assess children’s understanding of problems.

Centration: the tendency of young children to attend selectively to only certain aspects of a situation.

Conservation: the understanding that some properties of an object (e.g., quantity; number) are conserved or unchanged following physical transformation of that object.

Reversibility: the ability to undo mentally (reverse) some operation previously carried out (e.g., changing an object’s shape).

Egocentrism: a failure to distinguish between one’s own point of view and that of others.

Decentration: the ability to focus on several aspects of a problem at once and make coherent sense of them.

Group: the structure formed from the organisation of various related cognitive processes or operations.

Zone of proximal development: the gap between a child’s current or actual problem-solving ability and his/her potential when provided with suitable guidance.

Microgenetic method: an approach to studying changes in children’s cognitive strategies by means of short-term longitudinal studies.

Theory of mind: the understanding by children and adults that other people may have different beliefs, emotions, and intentions than their own.

Autism: a severe disorder involving very poor communication skills, deficient social and language development, and repetitive behaviour.

Central coherence: the ability to interpret information taking account of the context; the ability to “see the big picture”.

Weblinks

The Jean Piaget Society
http://www.piaget.org/

Piaget on Piaget: Jean Piaget discusses his ideas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1JWr4G8YLM

A video showing object permanence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue8y-JVhjS0&feature=related

A demonstration of lack of conservation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvg

A video showing a child doing the three mountains task
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinqFgsIbh0&feature=related

Lev Vygotsky: A video introducing his life, vocabulary, and concepts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BX2ynEqLL4

Examples of Vygotsky’s ideas in practice
http://webpages.charter.net/schmolze1/vygotsky/

A useful account of the microgenetic method
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-19/edition-3/microgenetic-method-time-change

A video about the “false belief” test and theory of mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLubgpY2_w

The National Autistic Society
http://www.autism.org.uk/

Eysenck, M.W. (2009). Cognition and development. In M.W. Eysenck (Ed.), A2 level psychology. Major topics in cognitive development are discussed in detail
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781848720091/