Ch. 9 - Cognitive Development: Information-Processing Perspectives and Connectionism Flashcards
What is the multistore model?
Information-processing model that depicts information as flowing through three processing units (or stores): the sensory store, the short-term store (STS), and the long-term store (LTS)
What is the sensory store (or sensory register)?
First information-processing store, in which stimuli are noticed and briefly available for further processing
What is the short-term store (STS)?
Second information-processing store, in which stimuli are retained for several seconds and operated upon (also called working memory)
What is the long-term store (LTS)?
Third information-processing store, in which information that has been examined and interpreted is permanently stored for future use
What are executive control processes?
The processes involved in regulating attention and determining what to do with the information just gathered or retrieved from long-term memory
What is metacognition?
Knowledge about cognition and about the regulation of cognitive activities
What is a knowledge base?
One’s existing information about a topic or content area
What is memory span?
Measure of the amount of information that can be held in the short-term store
What is the span of apprehension?
The number of items that people can keep in mind at any one time, or the amount of information that people can attend to at a single time without operating mentally to store this information
What are strategies?
Goal-directed and deliberately implemented mental operations used to facilitate task performance
What is production deficiency?
Failure to spontaneously generate and use known strategies that could improve learning and memory
What is utilization deficiency?
Failure to benefit from effective strategies that one has spontaneously produced; thought to occur in the early phases of strategy acquisition when executing the strategy requires much mental effort
What is the adaptive strategy choice model?
Siegler’s model to describe how strategies chance over time; the view that multiple strategies exist within a child’s cognitive repertoire at any one time, with these strategies competing with one another for use
What is implicit cognition?
Thought that occurs without awareness that one is thinking
What is explicit cognition?
Thinking and though processes of which we are consciously aware
What is the fuzzy-trace theory?
Theory proposed by Brainerd and Reyna that postulates that people encode experiences on a continuum from literal, verbatim traces to fuzzy, gistlike traces
What is gist?
Fuzzy representation of information that preserves the central content but few precise details
Patricia Miller and her colleagues have suggested a transitional period of strategy development during which children use a strategy although it does not facilitate their task performance. What is the term for this phenomenon?
a. mediation deficiency
b. utilization deficiency
c. production deficiency
d. limited capacity
b. utilization deficiency
Fuzzy-trace theory makes specific predictions about how gist processing and verbatim processing change with age. What does the theory predict?
a. Young children do not extract gist traces but process only verbatim traces. Older children and adults extract both types of traces.
b. Young children do not extract verbatim traces but process only gist traces. Older children and adults extract both types of traces.
c. Compared to older children, young children prefer to operate on the verbatim end of the trace continuum; older children and adults prefer to operate on the gist end of the trace continuum.
d. Compared to older children, young children prefer to operate on the gist end of the trace continuum; older children and adults prefer to operate on the verbatim end of the trace continuum.
c. Compared to older children, young children prefer to operate on the verbatim end of the trace continuum; older children and adults prefer to operate on the gist end of the trace continuum.
Brett played a dice game with his mother. Sometimes he counted all the dots on each die to compute his move; sometimes he just looked at the two dice and he ‘knew’ how many spaces he could move; and sometimes he said the number of one die (6) and counted up the number on the second die (7, 8, 9) to compute his move. Brett’s strategic behaviour best reflects which of the following theories?
a. Siegler’s adaptive strategy choice model
b. Brainerd and Reyna’s fuzzy-trace theory
c. Miller’s utilization deficiency theory
d. Flavell’s metacognition theory
a. Siegler’s adaptive strategy choice model
Siegler and his colleagues have conducted a series of experiments to investigate the nature of arithmetic strategy development. What did they conclude?
a. Children move from the sum to the min to the fact-retrieval strategies in a regular, stagelike progression.
b. Children’s developmental progression through stages of arithmetic strategy usage follows steps in biological maturation.
c. Children’s developmental progression in strategy usage does not follow a stagelike progression; rather, children of every age use a variety of arithmetic strategies.
d. Children’s increased success with arithmetic strategy usage is primarily a matter of replacing less sophisticated strategies with more efficient and mature strategies
d. Children’s increased success with arithmetic strategy usage is primarily a matter of replacing less sophisticated strategies with more efficient and mature strategies
What is attention span?
Capacity for sustaining attention to a particular stimulus or activity
What is the reticular formation?
Area of the brain that activates the organism and is thought to be important in regulating attention
What is selective attention?
Capacity to focus on task-relevant aspects of experience while ignoring irrelevant or distracting information
What is inhibition?
The ability to prevent ourselves from executing some cognitive or behavioural response
What is event memory?
Long-term memory for events
What is autobiographical memory?
Memory for important experiences or events that have happened to the individual
What is strategic memory?
Processes involved as one consciously attempts to retain or retrieve information
What are mnemonics (or memory strategies)?
Effortful techniques used to improve memory, including rehearsal, organization, and elaboration
What is infantile amnesia?
Lack of memory for the early years of one’s life
What is script?
General representation of the typical sequencing of events (that is, what occurs and when) in some familiar context
What is rehearsal?
Strategy for remembering that involves repeating the items one is trying to retain
What is semantic organization?
Strategy for remembering that involves grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful (or manageable) clusters that are easier to retain
What is elaboration?
Strategy for remembering that involves adding something to (or creating meaningful links between) the bits of information we are trying to retain
What is retrieval?
Class of strategies aimed at getting information out of the long-term store
What is free recall?
Recollection that is not prompted by specific cues or prompts
What is cued recall?
Recollection that is prompted by a cue associated with the setting in which the recalled event originally occurred
What is metamemory?
Knowledge about memory and memory processes
Research on event memory has identified parents as a contributor to children’s memory development. Which of the following is NOT one of the ways parents contribute to their children’s developing ability to recall events?
a. Parents teach their children specific memory strategies, such as organization and rehearsal.
b. Parents ask many questions, directing their children to form narratives.
c. Parents show children the directions conversations should go and how to construct narratives.
d. Parents provide cues to help their children remember.
a. Parents teach their children specific memory strategies, such as organization and rehearsal
What is the term for recalling items from the same category together in a free-recall task?
a. rehearsal
b. elaboration
c. clustering (organization)
d. selective combination
c. clustering (organization)
Monica was telling her friend that she can remember nothing before the age of 4. What does Monica’s inability to recall events from early in her life reflect?
a. script-based narratives
b. infantile amnesia
c. poor metamemory
d. inefficient mnemonics
b. infantile amnesia
What is reasoning?
A particular type of problem solving that involves making inferences
What is analogical reasoning?
Reasoning that involves using something you already know to help reason about something not known yet
What is the relational primacy hypothesis?
The hypothesis that analogical reasoning is available in infancy
What is learning to learn?
Improvements in performance on novel problems as a result of acquiring a new rule or strategy from the earlier solution of similar problems
What is cardinality?
Principle specifying that the last number in a counting sequence specifies the number of items in a set
At what age do children first understand the concept of cardinality?
a. 5 to 6 years of age
b. 4.5 to 5 years of age
c. 2 to 3 years of age
d. 10 to 12 years of age
b. 4.5 to 5 years of age
The research of Bisanz and colleagues supports which of the following as the most important factor in the development of mathematical competence?
a. attention span
b. linguistic proficiency
c. knowledge base
d. working memory
d. working memory
What is connectionism?
Field of cognitive science that seeks to understand mental processes as resulting from assemblies (or groups) of real or artificial neurons
