PS275 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Inductive Reasoning, Unit, Irreversible Process
Document Summary
Cognition: the activity of knowing, the mental processes by which humans acquire and use knowledge to solve problems, perceiving, learning, attending etc. Cognitive development: changes that occur in mental abilities over the course of life. Interactionist model: internal mental schemes and external environment stimulate intellectual growth. Genetic epistemology: experimental study of the origin of knowledge. Intelligence is the basic life function that enables an organism to adapt to its environment. Intelligence is a form of equalibrium, a balanced relationship between thought processes and environment. Cognitive disequlibria prompts children to make mental adjustments to enable them to cope. Happen through organization (inborn tendency to combine available schemes into coherent bodies of knowledge) and adaption (inborn tendency to adjust to demands of environment) Learn about environment through sensory and motor capabilities. Egocentrism, animism, irreversibility, decentration (ability to concentrate on more than one aspect of problem at same time) Incapable of conservation: knowing object does not change when appearance is superficially altered.
