Conceptual Development

Question 1

Concepts

Answer 1

General ideas or
understandings that can
be used to group together
objects, events, qualities,
or abstractions that are
similar in some way
 Crucial for helping
people make
sense of the world

Question 2

Fundamental Concepts to Develop

Answer 2

 Who or what?
 Categorize things that exist in the world (human
beings, living things, inanimate objects)
 Where?
 Space
 When?
 Time
 Why?
 Causality
 How many?
 Number

Question 3

Object Categorization

Answer 3

Dividing things into categories
apply to different things

Question 4

Categorization of Objects in
Infancy

Answer 4

Infants form categories of objects
in the first months of life
 A key element in infants’ thinking
is perceptual categorization, the
grouping together of objects that
have similar appearances
 Categorize objects along perceptual
dimensions, including color, size, and
movement
 Often categorizations are based on
parts of objects rather then on the
object as a whole

Question 5

Perspectives on Concepts

Answer 5

Nativists argue that innate understanding of
concepts plays a central role in development
 Empiricists argue that concepts arise from
basic learning mechanisms
Because early development is
so crucial, we will focus on
development in the first five years.
Because early development is
so crucial, we will focus on
development in the first five years

Question 6

Category Hierarchies-
Forming Categories beyond
Infancy

Answer 6

As children move beyond infancy, their ability
to categorize expands greatly
 Two of the most important trends:
 Increasing understanding
of category hierarchies
 Increasing understanding
of causal connections
 Both involve knowledge of
relations among
categories

Question 7

Category Hierarchies

Answer 7

 Often include three main levels
 The superordinate level (“general”)
 The basic level (“medium”)
 The subordinate level (“specific”)
 Children usually learn the basic level
category first
 objects at this level share many common
characteristics (unlike superordinate
level categories)
 Category members are relatively easy to discriminate
(unlike those in subordinate level categories)

Question 8

Causal Understanding and Categorization

Answer 8

Understanding causal relations – why
objects are the way they are – helps
children learn and remember new
categories.
 Hearing that “wugs”
are well prepared to
fight and “gillies” to flee
helped preschoolers
categorize novel
pictures like these as
“wugs” or “gillies.”

Question 9

Number - Stable Order

Answer 9

numbers are always recited in the same order

Question 10

Number - Cardinality

Answer 10

the total number of objects in a set correlates to the last number said.

Question 11

Number - order irrelevance

Answer 11

Objects can be counted left to right or right to left in any order

Question 12

Number - Abstractions

Answer 12

Any set of discrete objects or events can be counted

Question 13

Learning to Count

Answer 13

Some cultures don’t have words for numbers
Some languages/cultures have easier number systems to learn China v USA