| cognition | The mental activity through which human beings acquire and process knowledge.
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| schema (Plural, schemata) | A cognitive structure, or an organized group of interrelated memories, thoughts, and strategies that the child uses to try to understand a situation; a schema forms the basis for organizing actions to respond to the environment.
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| operations | Schemata based on internal mental activities.
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| organization | The predisposition to combine simple mental structures into more complex systems.
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| adaptation | The individual's tendency to adjust to environmental demands.
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| assimilation | Molding a new experience to fit an existing way of responding to the environment.
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| accommodation | Modifying an existing way of responding to the environment to fit the characteristics of a new experience.
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| sensorimotor period | Piaget's first stage of cognitive development, during which children move from purely reflexive behavior to the beginnings of symbolic thought and goal-directed behaviors.
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| reflex activity | An infant's exercise of growing proficiency in the use of innate reflexes.
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| primary circular reactions | Behaviors in which infants repeat and modify actions focused on their own bodies that are pleasurable and satisfying.
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| secondary circular reactions | Behaviors focused on objects outside the infant's own body that the infant repeatedly engages in because they are pleasurable.
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| coordination of secondary schemata | An Infant's combination of different schemata to achieve a specific goal.
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| tertiary circular reactions | Behaviors in which infants experiments with the properties of external objects and try to learn how objects respond to various actions.
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| inventing new means by mental combination | In this last stage of the sensorimotor period, children begin to combine schemata mentally, thus relying less on physical trial and error.
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| symbolic thought | The use of mental images to represent people, objects, and events.
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| deferred imitation | Mimicry of an action some time after having observed it; requires that the child have stored a mental image of the action.
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| object permanence | The notion that objects and people continue to exist independent of our seeing or interacting with them.
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| preoperational period | In this period, the symbolic function promotes the learning of language; the period is also marked by egocentricity and intuitive behavior, in which the child can solve problems using mental operations but cannot explain how he did so.
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| symbolic function | The ability to use symbols, such as images, words, and gestures, to represent objects and events in the world.
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| preconceptual stage | The first substage of Piaget's preoperational period, during which the child's thought is characterized by animistic thinking and egocentricity.
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| animistic thought | The attribution of life to inanimate objects.
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| egocentrism | The tendency to view the world from one's own perspective and to have difficulty seeing things from another's viewpoint.
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| intuitive stage | The second substage of the preoperational period, during which the child begins to solve problems by means of specific mental operations but cannot explain how she arrives at the solutions.
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| conservation | The notion that altering an object's or a substance's appearance does not change its basic attributes or properties.
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| reversibility | The notion that one can reverse or undo a given operation, either physically or mentally.
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| centration | Centering one's attention on only one dimension or characteristic of an object or situation.
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| horizontal decalage | The notion that unevenness in children's cognitive achievements reflects the fact that understanding the conservation of different objects, substances, or qualities requires different levels of the capacity for abstraction.
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| concrete operations period | Period in which the child acquires such concepts as conservation and classification and can reason logically.
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| formal operations period | Period in which the child becomes capable of flexible and abstract thought, complex reasoning, and hypothesis testing.
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| mediators | According to Vygotsky, psychological tools and signs like language, counting, mnemonic devices, algebraic symbols, art and writing.
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| elementary mental functions | Functions with which the child is endowed by nature, including attention, perception, and memory.
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| higher mental functions | Functions that reply on mediators that have become increasingly sophisticated through the child's interaction with his environment.
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| zone of proximal development (ZPD) | According to Vygotsky, the difference between the developmental level a child has reached and the level she is potentially capable of reaching with the guidance or collaboration of a more skilled adult or peer.
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| scaffolding | Based on Vygotsky's thought, an instructional process in which the teacher continually adjusts the amount and type of support he offers as the child continues to develop more sophisticated skills.
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| egocentric speech | According to Vygotsky, a form of self-directed dialog by which the child instructs herself in solving problems and formulating plans; as the child matures, becomes internalized as inner speech.
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| inner speech | Internalized egocentric speech that continues to direct and regulate intellectual functioning.
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