Ch. 10: The growth of cognitive skills Flashcards
Attentional schema
A cognitive structure that is learned through experience in response to a particular set of stimuli in a specific kind of task. When embedded in such tasks, attentional schema form a framework for organizing information and responses to that information and
for recognizing particular patterns of information and filtering out irrelevant information.
Autobiographical memory
Explicit memories of specific experiences in one’s own life.
Cueing hypothesis
An explanation of infantile amnesia that is based on the idea that early
memories are present but not available unless linked to the right sorts of cues.
Declarative memory
Memory that can be described as “knowing that,” such as knowing a fact or that an event has occurred; sometimes used synonymously with explicit memory.
Encoding
The process of turning information into a mentally useful representational
format.
Episodic memory
Memory of specific events that one has experienced; a type of
declarative memory. Autobiographical memories are a kind of episodic memory.
Executive functioning
The collection of cognitive activities involved in goal- directed tasks and problem solving, including inhibitory control, error correction and shifting, and working memory.
Explicit memory
Memory for information that involves conscious recall.
Implicit memory
Memory for information or actions that occurs outside of conscious awareness.
Infantile amnesia
The inability to recall any memories prior to a certain age, usually around 2½ years of age.
Long-term memory
Memory that endures for extended periods of time. Information in long- term memory has often been processed, organized in terms of meaning, and stored for
later retrieval.
Memory format change hypothesis
An explanation of infantile amnesia that is based on
the idea that infants and very young children represent the world in a format that is radically
different from later formats and is therefore inaccessible at later ages.
Metacognition
Knowledge about the nature of one’s own mind and thoughts and those of others.
Metamemory
A form of metacognition involving knowledge about what memory is, how it
works, and what its limits are.
Neural change hypothesis
An explanation of infantile amnesia based on the idea that early memories do not become permanent because of intrinsic immaturities of the child’s brain that make it initially unable to store information for the long term.
