Cognition, Memory and Information Processing Flashcards
Piaget’s Sensorimotor stage
- birth to =/- 2 years
- infants use their senses and motor activity to learn about the world
- gradually understand object permanence
critique of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage
-violation of expectations research suggests that infants may know far more about properties of objects than Piaget thought
Core knowledge hypothesis
infants possess innate knowledge of certain properties of objects
contrasting view to core knowledge hypothesis
knowledge about objects is built through rapid advances in perception, attention and memory and the child’s experiences in the world.
Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
- +/- 2-7 years
- preschool children are able to use symbols (language) but thinking is often illogical
Critique of Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
-Piaget underestimated the abilities of young children by relying on verbal interviews and giving them complex tasks to perform
Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage
- +/- 7-11 years
- children can reason logically about concrete problems
- are able to conserve
Evaluating Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage
-Piaget’s descriptions have held up well. However, he may not have paid enough attention to the role of culture-based experience.
Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage
+/- 11 years +
-adolescents become capable of complex, scientific reasoning about abstract problems
Evaluating Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage
-Piaget has been criticised for overestimating the logical abilities of older children and adults
Structures of knowledge: schemes
mental representations about what things are and how we deal with them
- sensorimotor (action schemes)
- cognitive (concepts)
Structures of knowledge: organisation
combining schemes in a logical way
Structures of knowledge: operations
internalised sets of actions that allow children to do mentally what they had done physically
Adaption: Assimilation
trying to understand new info in terms of our existing schemes
Adaption: Accomodation
changing our existing schemes or developing new schemes in response to new info
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory: Contributions
- children and adults think differently
- children are active learners
- describes well the course and content of cognitive development across cultures
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory: constructive criticisms
- stage theory is too rigid
- underestimates young children’s ability to think logically (and overestimates logical abilities of adolescents)
- gives limited attention to social influences on cognitive development
Vgotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective: main themes
- culture
- zone of proximal development
- language
Vgotsky: Social interaction and thought
Cognitive development occurs as children interact with more skilled partners on tasks that are within their zone of proximal development.
Scaffolding (Bruner)
involves helpful, structured interaction between an adult and a child with the aim of helping the child achieve a specific goal.
Guided participation
Guided participation emphasizes the active role of the child in learning and cognitive growth and the complementary role of parents and other caring adults in supporting,
Vgotsky: language and thought
As social speech is transformed into private speech and then inner speech, the culture’s preferred tools of problem solving work their way from the language of competent guides into the thinking of the individual.
What is memory?
the retention of information over time
encoding
getting info into memory
storage
retaining info over time
retrieval
taking info out of storage
long term memory
relatively permanent and unlimited
short term memory
can hold a very limited amount of information for a few seconds
working memory
a short-term “storehouse” for information one is actively working on
explicit memory
conscious or intentional recollection
implicit memory
remembering that occurs without effort or conscious awareness
Recognition memory:
noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to one previously experienced
Recall memory
deliberately calling to mind objects and events without any clear reminders
Cued recall
actively retrieving memories with the help of a hint or cue.
infant recall
by 2 months (Rovee-Collier, string to baby toe)
deferred imitation (infants)
By 6 to 9 months, infants can remember and imitate a sequence of behaviours that they learnt through observation alone, and have not practised (pure recall).
infantile amnesia
-fuzz trace theory:
children more likely to use verbatim memory/adults on gist memory
Generic memory
produces a script (general outline) of a familiar, repeated event
Episodic memory
awareness of having experienced a particular incident
Autobiographical memory
Episodic memories that form a person’s life history – events that have happened to you.
Accuracy of eye witness from children increases if…
- children are interviewed only once, soon after the event
- the interviewers do not ask leading questions, ask open-ended rather than yes/no questions, and do not repeatedly ask the same questions
- the interviewers are neutral, patient and non-judgemental
Phased interview approach
- establish rapport with the child
- ask to tell you everything about the case
- ask open-ended questions
- ask closed, specific, but non leading questions
- close the interview
Why does children’s memory improve?
- changes in working memory capacity
- changes in memory strategies (selective attention)
- increased knowledge about memory
- increased knowledge about the world
Experise
extensive, highly organised knowledge and understanding in a particular domain
in late adulthood declines generally occur in..
- working memory
- processing speed
- explicit memory
- recall memory
Influences on the memory of older adults
- physiological factors and health
- beliefs and expectations
- education and memory tasks
- memory training
Representation
between the ages of 2.5-3 years, dramatic developments occur in children’s ability to use symbols to guide their problem-solving activites
Planning
- thinking further ahead and keep more steps in mind
- become more flexible in their use of planning strategies
Strategy choice
Siegler: children of all ages use a variety of problem-solving strategies when faced with a problem
Transferring skills
-even toddlers demonstrate analogical transfer
Analogical transference
Analogical transfer is transfer of a basic structure acquired through one or more instances to another instance.
Practical problem-solving and expertise in adulthood
practical problem solving improves during early and middle adulthood as expertise develops
