Problem Solving & Cognitive Skills

• Problem solving involves finding solutions to difficulties.
• Goal-directed behavior refers to actions carried out with a specific objective in mind.
• The infant cloth experiment examines object permanence.
• Rules are guidelines that dictate how to act in a certain situation.
• Oddity problem tasks require identifying the item that differs from a set.
• Perseverative error involves repeating a response even when it's incorrect.
• Cognitive Complexity and Control (CCC) theory studies how individuals manage complex cognitive tasks.
• Planning is the process of creating a sequence of actions to achieve a desired outcome.
• Children's planning skills includes abilities such as being able to set goals and stick to them.
• Episodic future thinking involves imagining personal events that might occur in the future.
• Tower of Hanoi problem is used to assess problem-solving skills, particularly planning and inhibition.
• Cognitive artifacts are human-made objects that enhance cognitive abilities.
• Object exploration is the act of investigating objects to learn about their properties.
• Object-oriented play involves interacting with objects in a purposeful manner.
• Affordances are the potential uses of an object based on its properties.
• "Flexible cognitive set" refers to the ability to switch between different tasks or perspectives.
• Lure-retrieval task focuses on the ability to resist temptation and retrieve a desired object.
• Sex differences in tool use refers to differences in how effectively and how often the different sexes use tools.
• Social learning theory explains how behavior is influenced by observing and imitating others.
• Overimitation is when someone copies actions that aren't necessary to complete a task.
• Physical proximity refers to how close one is to a physical object, or person.
• Perceptual similarity refers to how alike different stimuli or objects are to one another based on perceived attributes.
• Design stance assumes that objects are created with a specific purpose.
• Functional fixedness limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
• Tool innovation refers to creating new tools to solve new problems.
• Reasoning involves using logic to draw conclusions from given information.
• Analogical reasoning involves using similarities between different situations to solve problems.
• Relational mapping is identifying relationships between concepts.
• Relational similarity is the degree to which relationships between items are alike.
• Knowledge base refers to the total body of information a person has on a subject.
• Base relation refers to the fundamental relationship between two things.
• Relational shift involves changing the focus from one relationship to another.
• Causal reasoning is the capacity to identify cause-and-effect connections between events.
• Causal maps are diagrams that show the relationships among cause and effect.
• Counterfactual reasoning involves evaluating and imagining possible alternatives to past events.
• Scientific discovery is the process of learning new things by observing and experimenting.
• Control of Variables Strategy (CVS) is a method for designing and conducting experiments.
• Parents' involvement in scientific discovery affects children’s engagement and learning.
• Museum study explores how children learn in informal settings like museums.
• Spatial cognition refers to how people acquire and use spatial information.
• Spatial orientation is the ability to maintain awareness of one's location.
• Dead reckoning is navigating without external cues, relying on memory.
• Maps are visual aids used to represent spatial relationships.
• Spatial visualization is the ability to mentally manipulate 2D and 3D objects.
• Mental rotation is the ability to mentally rotate objects in space.
• Water-level problem assesses understanding of spatial concepts like horizontality.
• Object and location memory refers to remembering where particular objects are located.
• Sex differences in spatial cognition involves looking at how the sexes perform in tests of spatial awareness.
• Language is a complex system of communication using words or symbols.
• Grammar is a set of rules that govern how language is used.
• Phonology is the study of speech sounds in a language.
• Cooing is an early stage of speech development involving vowel-like sounds.
• Babbling stage is when infants produce consonant-vowel sounds.
• Holophrases are single words used to convey complete thoughts.
• Telegraphic speech consists of short, simple sentences that lack grammatical detail.
• Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that distinguish meaning in a language.
• Perceptual narrowing is where the brain becomes more efficient at perceiving stimuli that are encountered often.
• Morphology is the study of word structure.
• Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language.
• Free morpheme can stand alone as a word.
• Bound morpheme must be attached to another morpheme.
• Overregularization involves applying grammatical rules too broadly.
• The "wug" test assesses children's ability to apply grammatical rules to novel words.
• Holophrases are early one-word utterances that convey complex meanings.
• Telegraphic speech is when children use short, efficient sentences composed of only enough words to convey the message .
• Syntax refers to to the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

Semantics

• Semantics is the study of meaning in language.
• Lexicon refers to the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge.
• Word spurt is a sudden increase in the rate at which a child learns words.
• Receptive vocabulary is the words a person can understand.
• Productive vocabulary is the words a person can produce.
• Fast mapping is the ability to learn a new word after minimal exposure.
• Acquisition of words is the process of learning the meaning of new words.
• Whole-object assumption means new words refer to entire objects rather than parts.
• Taxonomic assumption is the expectation that words refer to categories of things.
• Mutual exclusivity assumption is the assumption that each object has only one name.
• "Show me the “dax” study" demonstrates how children use context to learn new words.
• Syntactic boot-strapping is using grammatical structure to learn word meaning.
• Overextension is when a child uses a word too broadly.
• Underextension is when a child uses a word too narrowly.
• Pragmatics is the study of implied meanings and context in language.
• Collective monologues occur when children talk to each other without real interaction.
• Nativist theory of language development proposes that humans are biologically predisposed to learn language.
• Noam Chomsky is a linguist known for his theory of universal grammar.
• Surface structure is the literal arrangement of words in a sentence.
• Deep structure is the underlying meaning of a sentence.
• Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a hypothetical module of the human mind posited to account for children's innate predisposition for language acquisition.
• Universal grammar is the theory of the basic principles of grammar that all human languages have in common.
• Critical period is a specific time in development when language learning is easiest.
• Language learners are those who are in the process of acquiring a new language.
• Less-is-more hypothesis says that cognitive limitations facilitate language acquisition because they force learners to start with smaller chunks of language.
• Slow learning refers to acquiring new information or skills at a slower rate.
• Social-interactionist theory emphasizes the role of social interaction in language development.
• Jerome Bruner's theory highlights the importance of social and cultural context in learning.
• Shared attention is when the subject and another person are both focused on the same thing.
• Gesture-facilitation hypothesis suggests that gestures can aid in cognitive processing.
• Infant-direct speech is a style of speech used by adults when talking to infants.
• Private (egocentric) speech is self-talk used by children to guide their actions.
• Inner speech is internalized self-talk that guides thoughts and actions.
• Cognitive self-guidance system is an internal system that helps individuals regulate their behaviour through inner speech and problem-solving strategies.