TEST QUESTIONS WITH CORRECT ANSWERS
◉ Four Stages of Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development. Answer:
Piaget proposed that a child's intellect progresses through four stages:
1) Sensorimotor (0-2)
2) Preoperational (2-7)
3) Concrete operational (7-11)
4) Formal operational (11-adulthood)
◉ How does Piaget think kids learn?. Answer: Children learn through
active interaction and manipulation of the environment.
◉ What do Piaget's stages mean?. Answer: The stage the child is in
determines how they see the world. Piaget believed that all students pass
through the stages in order and cannot skip any stage.
◉ Schemes. Answer: Mental patterns that guide behavior; cognitive
structures that help children process and organize information to make
sense of the environment.
,◉ Assimilation. Answer: Understanding new experiences in terms of
existing schemes.
◉ Accommodation. Answer: Modifying existing schemes to fit new
situations in the environment.
◉ Adaptation. Answer: The process of adjusting schemes in response to
the environment through assimilation or accommodation. According to
Piaget, this is how learning occurs.
◉ Equilibration. Answer: The process of restoring balance between
present understanding and new experiences. According to Piaget,
learning depends on this process so it is important for teachers to
confront students with new experiences or data to advance their
cognitive development.
◉ Disequilibrium. Answer: An imbalance between what a child
understands and what the child encounters through new experiences.
◉ Sensorimotor Stage. Answer: The earliest stage (0-2) of cognitive
development during which infants learn about the environment by using
their senses and motor skills. Children develop object permanence and
progress from reflexive behavior to goal-directed behavior.
,◉ Object Permanence. Answer: The fact that objects are physically
stable and exist even when the objects are not in the child's physical
presence. This enables the child to start using symbols to represent
things in their minds so they can think about them.
◉ Preoperational Stage. Answer: The second stage (2-7) of cognitive
development in which children learn to represent things in their mind.
During this stage students develop the ability to use symbols to represent
objects in the world. Thinking remains egocentric and centered.
◉ Egocentric. Answer: Believing that everyone sees the world as you
do.
◉ Conservation. Answer: The concept that certain properties of an
object remain the same regardless of changes in other properties.
◉ Centration. Answer: Paying attention to only one aspect of an object
or situation; what is commonly called tunnel vision.
◉ Reversibility. Answer: The ability to perform a mental operation and
then reverse thinking to return to the starting point.
◉ Class Inclusion. Answer: The ability to think simultaneously about a
whole class of objects and about relationships among subordinate
classes; a framework for thinking.
, ◉ Concrete Operational Stage. Answer: The third stage (7-11) of
cognitive development in which children develop the capacity for logical
reasoning and understanding of conservation but can use skills only in
dealing with familiar situations. New abilities include operations that are
reversible. Thinking is decentered, allowing them to understand that
others may have different perceptions, and problem solving is less
restricted by egocentrism. Abstract thinking is not possible.
◉ Formal Operational. Answer: The fourth stage of cognitive
development (11-adulthood) in which abstract and symbolic thought is
possible. Problems can be solved through the use of experimentation and
critical thinking.
◉ Inferred Reality. Answer: The ability to understand stimuli in the
context of relevant information. Preschoolers see what they see with
little ability to infer the meaning behind what they see. Students in the
concrete operational stage respond to inferred reality and see things in
the context of other meanings.
◉ Seriation. Answer: Arranging objects in sequential order according to
one aspect. Seriation involves arranging things in a logical progression.
◉ Transivity. Answer: A skill learned during the concrete operational
stage in which children can mentally arrange and compare objects.