PSYC 250 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Imaginary Audience, Social Constructivism, Developmental Psychology
16 Nov 2016
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Schemes: actions or mental representations that organize knowledge: behavioral schemes (physical activities) characterize infancy, mental schemes (cognitive activities) develop in childhood, to make sense of their world, children cognitively organize and adapt their experiences. Adaptation: involves adjusting to new environmental demands. Children do this through the process of: assimilation: incorporating new information into existing schemes, accommodation: adjusting schemes to fit new information and experience. Organization: the grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order system: continual refinement of this organization is an inherent part of development. Equilibrium/disequilibrium: a mechanism to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next: the shift occurs as children experience cognitive conflict of disequilibrium trying to understand the world. Four piagetian stages: a different way of understanding the world makes one stage more advanced than another. Piaget believed that there are four stages of cognitive development. Cognition is qualitatively different in one stage compared with another.
