Question 1

In Piaget and Inhelder's classic "three-mountain problems," where preoperational children are asked to identify the doll's perspective, they almost always choose the picture that corresponds to:

Accepted Answer

Preoperational children, according to Piaget, are egocentric and tend to choose their own point of view rather than considering the doll's perspective.

Question 2

According to Piaget, what is the principle goal of cognitive development?

Accepted Answer

The principle goal of cognitive development according to Piaget is to achieve objectivity, which involves understanding the world in a logical and systematic way, moving beyond egocentrism and centration.

Question 3

What is the cognitive ability to pull away from focusing on just one feature of an object in order to consider multiple features?

Accepted Answer

Decentration is the cognitive ability to pull away from focusing on just one feature of an object in order to consider multiple features.

Question 4

Preschoolers may sometimes appear to be illogical because:

Accepted Answer

Preschoolers' language skills are still developing, which can make it challenging for them to express their thoughts and understandings clearly, leading to perceptions of illogical thinking.

Question 5

According to Piaget, early childhood is a time of transition between:

Accepted Answer

Early childhood, according to Piaget, is a transition from the physical schemas of infancy (sensorimotor stage) to the ability to use mental operations (concrete operational stage) in middle childhood.

Question 6

According to Piaget, a child who has difficulty identifying a picture that corresponds to another's point of view of a model has limited:

Accepted Answer

Piaget's theory suggests that children in the preoperational stage (ages 2-7) have limited spatial perspective-taking abilities, meaning they struggle to understand viewpoints different from their own.

Question 7

According to Piaget, "egocentrism" referred to the characteristic ____________ thinking of young children.

Accepted Answer

Egocentrism in Piaget's theory refers to the inability of young children to differentiate between their own perspective and that of others, meaning their thinking is centered on themselves.

Question 8

As used by Piaget, "egocentrism" refers to:

Accepted Answer

Egocentrism, in Piaget's theory, refers to the tendency of young children to view the world solely from their own perspective, without recognizing that others may have different viewpoints.

Question 9

According to Piaget, the three most common errors in early childhood reasoning include all of the following EXCEPT:

Accepted Answer

Scale errors are not one of the three most common errors in early childhood reasoning according to Piaget. The common errors include egocentrism, confusion of appearance-reality, and precausal reasoning.

Question 10

According to Helen Borke, 3-year-old Jennifer is MORE likely to solve a perspective-taking problem correctly:

Accepted Answer

Familiar objects can help young children like Jennifer understand and solve perspective-taking problems better because they can relate to and recognize these objects more easily.

Question 11

Which of the following behaviors demonstrates that 3-year-old Jasmin is not as egocentric as Piaget would have predicted?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Which of the following behaviors demonstrates that...

Question 12

A father pours a glass of juice for his daughter, Iona. Iona wants more, so the father pours the juice from a short, fat glass into a tall, thin one. Iona is now happy to have gotten more. The daughter:

Accepted Answer

Iona focuses on the height of the juice in the glass, a single attribute, rather than understanding that the quantity remains the same.

Question 13

Young children's tendency to focus on only one feature of an object is called:

Accepted Answer

Centration is the term used to describe young children's tendency to focus on only one aspect or feature of an object or situation, often observed in Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development.

Question 14

Piaget used the term "preoperational" to describe children between the ages of 3 and 5 because they do not yet have the ability to:

Accepted Answer

Piaget's preoperational stage is characterized by the development of language and symbolic thinking, but children in this stage lack the ability to perform operations, which are reversible mental processes such as combining, separating, and transforming information.

Question 15

Piaget believed that children's inability to keep two aspects of a problem in mind was at the heart of all of the following characteristics of thinking in early childhood EXCEPT:

Accepted Answer

Piaget's concept of object permanence is related to infants' understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, which is not directly related to the cognitive limitations in early childhood thinking such as egocentrism, confusion of appearance and reality, or precausal reasoning.

Question 16

Which of the following is an example of the "centered" thinking of young children?

Accepted Answer

Young children often focus on one aspect of a situation, such as height, and ignore others, like width, which is an example of "centered" thinking.

Question 17

Piaget described thinking during early childhood as:

Accepted Answer

Piaget described early childhood thinking as "centered," meaning that children in this stage tend to focus on one aspect of a situation or object, often neglecting other important features.

Question 18

According to Piaget, the stage in which children cannot decenter their thinking or think through the consequences of an action is known as the:

Accepted Answer

In the preoperational stage, children are egocentric and struggle with decentering their thinking, meaning they have difficulty considering multiple aspects of a situation.

Question 19

An outcome of centration in children's thinking is that they:

Accepted Answer

Centration is a cognitive limitation in early childhood where children focus on one aspect of a situation, leading to biased reasoning.

Question 20

When compared to their performance on Piaget's classic "three-mountain-problem," children who were asked to reason about a more familiar farm scene:

Accepted Answer

Children performed better with the familiar farm scene because familiarity with the context helps them understand and take the perspective of others more easily than with the abstract three-mountain problem.

Quiz 8: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood