Chapter 9

• closely packed neurons in the cerebral cortex are called gray matter.
• White matter is made of glial cells, which provide support for neurons, and of myelinated axons, which transmit information across neurons.
• Blue areas correspond to specific parts of the cortex undergoing loss of gray matter at a given age.
• thinning occurs in the rear portion of the frontal and parietal cortex in the brain’s left hemisphere.
• Acute medical conditions - Illnesses that last a short time.
• Chronic medical conditions - Illnesses or impairments that persist for at least 3 months
• Asthma - A chronic respiratory disease characterized by sudden attacks of coughing, wheezing, and difficulty in breathing.
• Diabetes - One of the most common diseases of childhood. It is characterized by high levels of glucose in the blood as a result of defective insulin production, ineffective insulin action, or both.
• Concrete operations - Third stage of Piagetian cognitive development (approximately ages 7 to 12), during which children develop logical but not abstract thinking.
• Spatial Thinking - Danielle can use a map or model to help her search for a hidden object and can give someone else directions for finding the object
• Cause and Effect - Douglas knows which physical attributes of objects on each side of a balance scale will affect the result
• Categorization - Elena can sort objects into categories
• Seriation and transitive inference - Catherine can arrange a group of stick in order (shortest - longest) and can insert the size into its proper place
• Inductive and deductive reasoning - Dominic can solve both inductive and deductive problems
• Conservation - Felipe at age 7 knows that if a clay ball is rolled into a sausage, it still contains the same amount of clay
• Number and mathematics - Kevin can count in his head, can add by counting from the smaller number and can do simple story problems
• The first stage (approximately ages 2 to 7, corresponding with the preoperational stage). Young children are egocentric and tend to see things only from their point of view.
• The second stage (ages 7 or 8 to 10 or 11, corresponding with the stage of concrete operations) is characterized by increasing flexibility. Develop their own sense of justice based on fairness or equal treatment for all.
• Around age 11 or 12, when children may become capable of formal reasoning, the third stage of moral development arrives.
• Executive function - Conscious control of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or solve problems.
• Executive functioning accompanied by brain development, most notably in the prefrontal cortex
• Selective attention - the ability to deliberately direct one’s attention and shut out distractions
• selective attention is believed to be due to neurological maturation
• Working memory involves the short-term storage of information that is being actively processed, like a mental workspace.
• Metamemory - Understanding of processes of memory
• Mnemonic device - Strategy to aid memory.
• External memory - Aids Mnemonic strategies using something outside the person.
• Rehearsal - Mnemonic strategy to keep an item in working memory through conscious repetition.
• Organization - Mnemonic strategy of categorizing material to be remembered.
• Elaboration - Mnemonic strategy of making mental associations involving items to be remembered.
• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV) - Individual intelligence test for school age children, which yields verbal and performance scores as well as a combined score.
• Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT8) - Group intelligence test for kindergarten through 12th grade.
• Culture-free tests - Intelligence tests that, if they were possible to design, would have no culturally linked content.
• Culture-fair tests - Intelligence tests that deal with experiences common to various cultures, in an attempt to avoid cultural bias.
• Gardner’s theory that each person has several distinct forms of intelligence. (Theory of multiple intelligences)
• Linguistic - Ability to use and understand words and nuances of meaning
• Logical-mathematical - ability to manipulate numbers and solve logical problems
• Spatial - Ability to find one's way around in an environment and judge relationships between objects in space
• Musical - Ability to perceive and create patterns of pitch and rhythm
• Bodily-kinesthetic -ability to move with precision