AP®︎ Psychology: Topic 3.4 Flashcards

Continuous development involves gradual change, such as schema revision; discontinuous development involves qualitative shifts, such as Piaget’s stages

Children actively construct knowledge by forming and revising schemas and progress through four cognitive stages in a fixed order

A mental framework used to organize and interpret information

Interpreting new information through an existing schema without fundamentally changing the schema

Altering an existing schema or creating a new one when old schemas do not fit new information

Piaget’s birth-to-about-age-2 stage, when infants learn through sensory experience and physical action and develop object permanence

The understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be directly perceived

Piaget’s roughly ages-2-to-7 stage, marked by symbolic thought and pretend play but limited conservation, reversibility, and perspective-taking

The understanding that quantity remains unchanged when appearance or arrangement changes but nothing is added or removed

The ability to mentally undo or reverse an operation or transformation

Difficulty taking another person’s perceptual or cognitive perspective, rather than selfishness

Attributing life, intentions, feelings, or other humanlike mental qualities to inanimate objects

Understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, perceptions, and knowledge that may differ from one’s own or from reality

Piaget’s roughly ages-7-to-11 stage, when children reason logically about concrete information and master conservation and reversibility but struggle with abstraction

Piaget’s stage beginning around age 12, marked by abstract, hypothetical, and systematic reasoning, though not everyone consistently attains it

Cognitive development occurs through social interaction, guided participation, and culturally provided tools and practices

The range between what a learner can do independently and what the learner can accomplish with effective assistance

Temporary, adjustable support for a task within the learner’s ZPD that is gradually withdrawn as competence increases

Accumulated knowledge and the ability to use learned information and skills, which generally remains stable or improves through much of adulthood

The ability to reason flexibly, recognize novel patterns, and solve unfamiliar problems, which tends to decline with age

Substantial cognitive decline beyond typical aging that interferes with independent daily functioning