Chapter 8 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: INFORMATION-PROCESSING PERSPECTIVES.

Chapter 8 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: INFORMATION-PROCESSING

PERSPECTIVES

INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORIES

• Analogy of the mind as a computer• Information flows through a limited-capacity

system of mental hardware and software– Hardware – brain and nervous system– Software – mental rules and strategies

INFORMATION FLOW AND THE MULTISTORE MODEL

• Multistore Model– Sensory store (sensory register)

• Detects and holds raw sensory input• Separate store for each sense• Large amounts of information• Very limited duration


– Short-term store (STS) / working memory• Limited information (5-9 pieces)• Several seconds• Lost if we do nothing with the info

– Long-term store (LTS)• Vast and relatively permanent

• Figure 8.1 A schematic model of the human information processing system. ADAPTED FROM ATKINSON & SHIFFRIN, 1968.


– Control processes or executive functions• Involved in planning and monitoring

what is attended to, and what is done with the information

• Metacognition – knowledge of one’s cognitive abilities and processes related to thinking

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY

• Development of the Short-Term Store– Assessed with memory span

• Recall in order of rapidly presented unrelated items

• Highly reliable age differences• May be based on knowledge base, not

capacity of STS.

• Figure 8.2 Children’s memory span for digits (digit span) shows regular increases with age. FROM DEMPSTER, 1981.

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY

– Assessed with span of apprehension • Number of items kept in mind at one

time, without mentally operating on them• Increases with age• Again related to knowledge base

• Figure 8.3 Knowledge base affects memory. Children who are chess “experts” recall more about locations of chess pieces than “novice” adults do. However, adults recall more about numbers than children do, a finding Chi attributes to adults’ greater familiarity with (or knowledge of) numbers. ADAPTED FROM CHI, 1978.

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFEERENCES IN INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY

• Changes in Processing Speed– Due to biological maturation

• Increased myelination of associative (thinking) areas of the brain

• Elimination of unnecessary synapses

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING

• The Development of Strategies– Deliberately implemented, goal-directed

operations used to aid task performance• Production and Utilization Deficiencies

–Fail to produce effective strategies when young

–Fail to benefit immediately from a newly trained strategy


• Multiple - and Variable – Strategy Use–Children have a variety of strategies

they choose from–Adaptive strategy choice model

»With experience, more sophisticated strategies are used

»Novel situations children fallback to easier strategies

• Figure 8.4 Seigler’s adaptive strategy choice model of development. Change in strategy use is seen as a series of overlapping waves, with different strategies being used more frequently at different ages. FROM ROBERT S. SIEGLER, 1996.


• Teaching strategies to school children– For reading comprehension

• Summarization• Mental imagery• Self-generation of questions• Question-answering strategies• Story grammar• Activating prior knowledge

• Table 8.1 General model of how to teach strategies. Source: Pressley, M. & Woloshyn, V. (1995). Cognitive strategy instruction that really improves children’s academic performance (second edition). Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.


• What Children Know about Thinking– Implicit cognition – thought without

awareness• An early developing ability that shows

little difference across age– Explicit cognition – thought with awareness

• Large age differences

• Figure 8.5 Incomplete drawings similar to these are used in studies of implicit memory. FROM E.S. GOLLIN, 1962.

BOX 8.1: FOCUS ON RESEARCHFUZZY-TRACE THEORY

• Fuzzy-Trace Theory – continuum of memory representations– Verbatim = literal

• More likely to forget–Young children use more often

– Fuzzy (gist) = content, but not detail• Easier to access, and use

–Older children use more often

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENTION

• Changes in Sustained Attention– Attention span increases dramatically

• Myelination of reticular formation in puberty

– Selective Attention: Ignoring Irrelevant Info• Also improves with age; less distraction

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION

• Memory Development in Infancy– Studied with

• Habituation/dishabituation• Conjugate-reinforcement procedure

–Remember context where previously reinforced, will repeat action

»Mobile task (2-6 months)»Train task (6-18 months)

• Figure 8.6 Maximum duration of retention from 2 to 18 months of age. Filled circles show retention on the mobile task, open circles show retention on the train task; 6-month-olds were trained and tested on both tasks. FROM ROVEE-COLLIER, 1999.


• Deferred imitation–Possible at 6 months–Performance increases with age–Duration of memory increases with

age–Based on brain development

»Early maturation of hippocampus»Slower development of prefrontal

cortex and temporal lobe

• Figure 8.7 Percentage of 13-, 16-, and 20-month-old infants displaying deferred imitation of three-step sequences as a function of length of delay. FROM BAUER, WENNER, DROPIK, & WEWERKA, 2000.


• The Development of Event and Autobiographical Memory– Origins of Event Memory

• Infants remember events• Demonstrate infantile amnesia


– Development of Scripted Memory• Scripts – schemes for recurring events

organized in terms of causal and temporal sequences

–Organizes world–Tend to remember info consistent

with scripts–Become more elaborate with age


– The Social Construction of Autobiographical Memories• Memory of personal experiences• Parents play a role in development,

through talking with children–Helps with organization into stories–What information is important


• Children as Eyewitnesses– Age Differences in Eyewitness Memory

• Typical developmental differences as in event memory

–Recall few precise details–Generally accurate, central to event–Prompting yields more correct and

incorrect facts


– How Suggestible are Child Witnesses?• Younger than 9-10 very susceptible to

memory distortions (suggestibility)• Come to believe events created by

suggestion• Must be plausible


– Implications for the Legal Testimony• Rare for children under 5 to testify• 6-10 often called as witnesses

–Must use nonleading questions–Limit number of times interviewed–Saying “I don’t know” is better than

guessing–Remaining friendly and patient

• Table 8.2 Sequence of phases for interviewing children, as recommended by the NICHID guidelines (adapted from Poole & Lamb, 1998, pp. 98-99)


• The Development of Memory Strategies– Rehearsal – based on repetition

• Older children use rehearsal more efficiently

–Active or cumulative – repeating several earlier items as they rehearse a successive word

• Younger children not able to form useful clusters (limited capacity)


– Organization• Grouping into related categories

–Young children can be trained– Retrieval Processes

• Free-recall – general prompt–Difficult for young children

• Cued recall – given specific cues–Easy for young children


– Metamemory and Memory Performance• Knowledge of memory and memory

processes–Increases from 4-12

»Mind stores interpretations, not copies of reality


– Knowledge Base and Memory Development• Age differences in recall memory

–Due to increases in knowledge base–Due to increases in strategies–The more one knows, the more one

can learn and remember

• Figure 8.8 Number of idea units remembered about a soccer story for high- and low-aptitude soccer experts and soccer novices. In this case, being an expert eliminated any effect of academic aptitude (IQ) on performance. ADAPTED FROM DATA PRESENTED IN SCHNEIDER, KORKEL, & WEINERT, 1989.


– Culture and Memory Strategies• Rehearsal and organization

–Industrialized societies• Recall of location or orally transmitted

stories–Non-western cultures

• Table 8.3 Four Major Contributors to the Development of Learning and Memory

ANALOGICAL REASONING

• Reasoning – Type of problem solving requiring one to

make an inference• Analogical Reasoning

– Applying knowledge about one set of elements to infer relations about different elements • Based on similarity relations


• Analogical Reasoning in Young Children– Relational primacy hypothesis

• Analogical reasoning is available in early infancy

–1 year olds if it is perceptual similarity–Relational similarity, more advanced,

apparent by 4 years

• Figure 8.9 The configuration of the three problems 1-year-olds solved to test their reasoning by analogy. FROM CHEN, SANCHEZ, & CAMPBELL, 1997.

• Figure 8.10 Example of problem used in Goswami & Brown. Children must select from set of pictures in bottom row (picture D through G) the one that best completes the visual analogy on the top row (the correct answer is D). FROM GOSWAMI & BROWN, 1990.


• The Role of Knowledge in Children’s Analogical Reasoning– Must understand the base relation

• Transitivity inferences – relations among at least 3 objects

–3 and 4 year olds capable, IF the basis for the analogy was familiar


• The Role of Metacognition in Children’s Analogical Thinking– Metacognition – knowing about analogical

reasoning is important• Teaching children the value of reasoning

by analogy increases use of this type of thinking

DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS

• Infants can use quantitative info• Toddlers have a rudimentary understanding

of ordinal relationships• Counting and Arithmetic Strategies

– 3-4 can count accurately– 4 ½ - 5 cardinality – last word in a

sequence is the number if items in a set– Sum strategy – counting both numbers– Min strategy – start from value of larger


• Development of Mental Arithmetic– Decomposition strategies

• Breaking problem into simpler problems– Fact retrieval

• Retrieved from long-term memory– Tends to follow the adaptive strategy

choice model


• Math Disabilities– Poor procedural skills– Deficits in retrieval from long-term memory– Smaller working-memory spans– Computation errors produce incorrect

answers• Can become part of long-term memory


• Cultural Influences on Math Performance– Math Competencies of Unschooled

Children• Problems embedded in real-life contexts

are solved correctly• Standard, out-of-context presentation

tend to be incorrect


– Cultural Variations in Arithmetic Among Schooled Children• Americans worse than East Asians

–Beginning in 1st grade; grows larger–Linguistic Supports

»Numbering system, fractions–Instructional Supports

»More practice, colored text for 1’s 10’s and 100’s

EVALUATING THE INFORMATION-PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE

• Reasonable description of how cognitive processes change with age and influence thinking

• Ignores evolutionary/neurological influences• Little attention to social/cultural influences• Not a comprehensive theory

– An analysis of parts• Underestimates richness/diversity of cognition

Chapter 8 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: INFORMATION-PROCESSING PERSPECTIVES.

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