Cognitive Development and Language Short Answer

Short Answer Questions 89) Define development and identify specific types of forms it can take. Then explain how maturation relates to development. Answer: Development refers to orderly and relatively long-term changes that take place over one's life span. Physical development involves bodily changes, personal development changes in personality, social development changes in the way one relates to others, and cognitive development changes in one's thinking. Maturation is the part of development that involves genetically-based changes that are not influenced by environmental factors. 90) Describe Piaget's theoretical views on cognitive development using and defining the following terms in your answer: organization, adaptation, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration. Answer: Humans inherit tendencies toward organization, arranging information into a coherent system, and adaptation, adjusting to the environment. The mental systems that are developed are called schemas. When existing schemas are used to interpret new information, assimilation takes place. When existing schemas are changed in response to new situations, accommodation takes place. We search for balance through the process of equilibration, making adjustments whenever dissonance or imbalance between our thinking and reality occurs. 91) Name and define the basic aspects of reasoning that must be mastered before a child is able to solve problems of conservation. Answer: Conservation is mastered through the processes of reversible thinking (performing an operation and then "undoing" it), decentering (being able to focus on more than one property of a stimulus at a time), identity (knowing that changes in an object's shape do not change its quantity), and compensation (a change in one aspect, e.g., height, produces a compensating change in another aspect, e.g., width). 92) Define Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and explain how it relates to the problem of matching cognitive stages with instructional strategies. Answer: The zone of proximal development is the point when a child can master a task if given appropriate help and support. It suggests that students should have to reach a bit to understand, with the necessary support of parents, teachers, and peers. Such support is called scaffolding. Vygotsky's ideas suggest that students should be guided by explanations, demonstrations, and cooperative learning within their zone of proximal development. Use of private speech should also be encouraged in order to help organize thinking. 93) Describe the steps or stages that children go through in the process of developing language. Include reference to the different ways that children use words and sentences in these stages. Answer: Children begin to communicate through gestures and inarticulate sounds, followed by imitating sounds that they hear. During the early stages of language development, adults rarely correct pronunciation and grammar. In order to encourage children's new understanding, adults will simplify their language to stay a bit more advanced than the children's current level of development. Moreover, adults will provide the kind of support, or scaffolding, that Vygotsky has recommended. This support may also create disequilibrium that also encourages development. According to some psychologists, children are born with special capacity for processing, understanding, and creating language. Reward and correction undoubtedly play important roles in correct language use, but children's own thinking is very important in putting together the parts of this very complicated system. By age 5 or 6, most children have mastered the basics of language, or syntax, and begin to develop metalinguistic awareness knowledge about rules and conventions of language, a process that continues throughout their lives.