Cognition, Learning, and Intelligence

Piaget's term for adjusting exploratory actions in response to an object's novel characteristics

Spatial orientation that is based on external cues in the environment

Piaget's term for the tendency, first seen around 8 months of age, for infants to search for objects at locations from which they previously successfully retrieved objects, even thought they saw the object being hidden at a different location

Steps in a sequence that may be performed in any order because they are not logically or practically linked

Piaget's term for employing previously used actions to explore an object

A measure that is used to assess infant intelligence through motor, mental, and behavior rating scales

The ability to group aspects of the world according to shared attributes

Piaget's fourth substage of the sensorimotor period, in which infants perform two separate schemes in order to produce a desired outcome

The ability to remember and repeat an action that was observed earlier, in the absence of a model for those actions

Piaget's term for infants' tendency to understand the world through their own sensory and motor acts

Spatial orientation that is based on one's own body and physical actions

Verbal behavior that is directed toward oneself rather others, with the purpose of enhancing concentration and performance during an activity

A logically or practically necessary order between steps in a sequence

Recordings of brain activity from a network of electrodes placed on the scalp's surface

Conscious awareness of specific information, such as evernts and facts

Play commonly seen in the first year of life, consisting of repetition of motor movements

Play observed beginning at 12 to 18 months of age that reflects children's understanding of objects' intended uses

Play observed beginning at 12 to 18 months of age that involves bringing together related objects

Patterns of social interaction and structured activity during joint problem solving involving people with different levels of skills and knowledge

Unconscious learning, including conditioning and aspects of motor learning

The inability that most adults have to recall events that happened before they were about 3 years old

Shared perceptual exploration with another person

Information that is stored and available to be retrieved repeatedly over time

Piaget's sixth substage of the sensorimotor period, in which infants are able to think about their actions and select schemes in order to achieve a desired outcome

The ability to remember and think about ojects and events, even when those objects and events are not physically present

Piaget's term for infants' gradually developing understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are not in sensory or motor contact with them

Activity that is intrinsically motivated, focused on means rather than ends, different from purely exploratory behavior, nonliteral, and free from externally applied rules

Play that emerges after 12 months of age, in which children behave in a nonliteral way

Piaget's second substage of the sensorimotor period, in which sensory and motor schemes are activated by chance

The ability to remember a previously presented stimulus or event in the absence of ongoing perceptual support

The ability to remember a previously presented stimulus or event when it is presented at a later time

Piaget's first substage of the sensorimotor period, in which infants respond to the world with a limited set of preadapted behaviors

Play before the age 12 months that involves unrelated objects

Awareness of the relation between a space and a symbol for that space

The process through which more capable individuals structure tasks to boost less capable individuals' performance

Piaget's term for actions used to explore and interact with the physical environment

Piaget's third substage of the sensorimotor period, in which infants repeat schemes in order to achieve specific outcome

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development, from birth to 24 months of age

A limited storage system that holds information for only a few seconds of the information is not actively rehearsed

Settings in which children spend time, including home, child care, and school

Cooperative pretend play emerging between 2 and 3 years of age, in which children use verbal skills to coordinate their own actions with those of other children as part of a large play theme

Piaget's fifth substage of the sensorimotor period, in which infants try different schemes to discover the effects of those actions

A cognitive achievement that emerges around the age of 3 years, enabling children to understand others' feelings and beliefs

A procedure in which infants are shown possible and impossible events in order to test their understanding of physical phenomena and object properties

Vygotsky's term for the distance between a child's ability to solve a problem alone and how much better the child can solve the problem when guided or assisted by a more capable individual