Exam 3 Flashcards
When does fluid intelligence peak?
Early adulthood
When does crystalized intelligence peak?
It doesn’t. It continues to increase
Alzheimer’s patients show a decrease in…?
Grey matter
What is associated with “normal” cognitive aging?
Cognitive slowing (prefrontal white matter)
Memory - working memory, encoding and retrieval (prefrontal cortex)
Cognitive control - inhibition (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex)
Compensatory activity
High performing adults show less hemispheric asymmetry as compared with younger adults. May be due to compensation as function declines.
Inhibitory deficit hypothesis
Age-related decline of selective attention is due to an impaired inhibition of irrelevant stimuli which increases distractibility.
Declarative Memory
Explicit, semantic (facts), episodic (events)
Non-declarative Memory
procedural (skills), priming, conditioning, non-associative (habituation, sensitization)
Do successful people actually show less cognitive decline?
Yes
3 Ingredients for successful aging
- avoid disease and disability
- engage with life
- high level of cognitive and physical functioning
3 protective/risk factors.
Give examples of each
- Demographic
- SES, income, living conditions - Mental
- level of education, occupational achievement, intelligence - Health
- lifestyle (smoking, drinking), cardiovascular disease (and others), genetic factors
Brain reserve
bigger brains may be more resilient to decline
Cognitive reserve
better organized brains may be more resilient to decline
2 issues with the “use it or lose it” model
- lack of studies supporting long-term effects
- limited transfer to untrained domains
Cooley’s looking-glass self
we see ourselves how we think others see us
“feedback functions as a mirror”
Testing effect
Testing helps with long-term retention
Assessment and grading places emphasis on ______ not _______.
performance
mastery
Grades increase ____ & _____ and decrease ____ & ____.
internal and external pressure
perceived pressure and importance
3 aspects of attribution (think failures and successes)
Locus of control (internal vs. external)
Stability (changeable vs. non-changeable)
Controllability (your control vs. not in your control)
5 paths of internal feedback
- adjusting/setting new goals
- adjusting strategies and tactics
- (re)consulting external feedback
- seeking external feedback
- doing nothing
True/False
Self-regulation always works.
False
the right motivational beliefs are necessary
Programmatic assessment
Grades are given per learning outcome not per assignment
5 steps of formative assessment cycle
- Clarify expectations
- Elicit and collect student reactions
- Analyze and interpret reactions
- Communicate with students about results
- Adapts education and learning
What are the 3 dimensions of student feedback literacy?
- contextual (interpersonal, sociocultural)
- engagement (behavioral, cognitive, understanding)
- individual (beliefs, goals, experience, abilities)
True/False
Students attending university colleges are less comfortable with complexity in their career.
False
UCs provide development of _____ skills rather than ______ skills.
intellectual
professional/vocational
UCs encourage 2 especially valuable skills…
listening and loafing
Listening Quad
Relational triangle with 3 points
1. affective (feelings and motivations)
2. behavioral (verbal and non-verbal)
3. cognitive (memory, attention and the brain)
5 listening process components
- receive
- comprehend
- interpret
- evaluate
- respond
metacognition
awareness and control of thinking for learning
metacognitive knowledge
define the 3 aspects
what you know about your own thinking and what you know about strategies for learning
1.declarative - knowing about yourself as a learner
2. procedural - knowing how to use learning strategies
3. conditional - knowing when and why to use strategies
metacognitive regulation
define the 3 aspects
actions you take in order to learn
1. planning - deciding which strategies to use and when for future learning tasks
2. monitoring - assessing your understanding of concepts and the effectiveness of your strategies while learning
3. evaluating - appraising your prior plan and adjusting it
Which study strategies work best?
distributive practice
interleaved practice
self-testing
What is the difference between deep and surface approaches?
deep - connecting ideas, applying knowledge in new ways
surface - recalling and reproducing content
When is it useful to use surface approaches?
acquiring background knowledge
What are some limitations of self-testing?
- likely to go easy on yourself
- recognition is not the same as recall
- lack of feedback/appropriate knowledge
- causes cognitive discomfort
- students may have difficulty being confronted with their knowledge gaps
What can students do to more accurately evaluate their learning?
Look not only at outcomes and performance but their planning.
True/False
Students often rate their confidence in their learning based on their ability to
recall concepts.
False - they base it on recognition when they should base it on recall
What is challenging about social metacognition?
- it involves collaborating with others
- you need to be aware of your own thinking as well as others’
- it is context dependent
Most studies focus on the strategies students use for learning. What else should they look at?
How students use those strategies
self-regulated learning
self-assessment and task-selection
What is the difference between self-regulated learning and self-directed learning?
self-directed learning doesn’t assume task-selection
secondary task
monitoring performance or thinking about task-selection while working on the primary problem
What is the purpose of using a secondary task in research?
- to evaluate if there is an effect on cognitive load
- they compared it to selecting a task for a peer based on information they were given
Do learners select easier or more difficult tasks for themselves as opposed to peers?
They select easier tasks for themselves and more difficult tasks for their peers.
What does the algorithm for task-selection advice convey?
high performance + low effort = more difficult task
low performance + high effort = easier task
In the task-selection study, there was no evidence of transfer. How did the researchers explain this?
- differences in the database/available tasks
- the cognitive load was too high to perform, evaluate and then properly apply task-selection
What is the discrepancy between laboratory results of the competence of older adults and everyday observations?
Laboratory results show cognitive decline while everyday observations don’t
4 ways to explain the discrepancy of research on aging adults cognitive decline
- cognitive abilities are no the only thing indicative of performance/achievement/success
- what is being tested is maximal performance and we don’t typically need to perform at that level on a daily basis
- as people age they have more experience and knowledge to rely on (utilize long term memory vs working memory)
- people begin to accommodate
True/False
Cognitive ability has moderate negative relations with a variety of measures of work functioning.
false
IADL problems
Instrumental Activities of Daily Life
necessary daily life tasks such as taking medication and hygiene
Why is research with social outcomes difficult to interpret?
It is difficult to account for the luck of being born into a certain social situation/status
How does crystalized intelligence change in comparison to fluid intelligence as people age?
Fluid intelligence declines more and more rapidly than crystalized intelligence.
This aligns with the decrease in working memory.
Why is the distinction of quantity and quality with the decline of achievement with age so important?
While the quantity declines the quality does not. A misinterpretation of this leads to a false belief that performance deteriorates with age when in reality people just begin to function slower.
True/False
Meta-analyses typically show little systematic relation of age with measures job performance.
true
What are the main critiques of longitudinal studies?
- selective attrition - dropout (change of career, death)
- restricted range - age-related decline typically only occurs much later in life at an age when participants would no longer be a part of the study
- poor outcome variables - issues with methodology (ex. use of supervisor reports)
KSAO
determinants of job performance
k - knowledge
s - specific skills
a - ability
o - other factors
Why is it important to use both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies when looking at age-related cognitive decline?
- When looking at the cross-sectional studies it appears as though the cognitive decline is much more serious than it is. The longitudinal design shows that within the individual it is not so drastic.
- Longitudinal studies are prone to many critiques and the few participants may not be a good generalization of the population.
preserved differentiation
age-related decline is less visible because the individual started at a higher level
compensation
people that have a strong background in a domain have developed specific neural scaffolding that they can rely on as they age
expertise-driven general abilities account
practicing and acquiring skills for expertise so often (in theory) transfers in some way to a practice/improvement of general skills
selective maintenece
as things become more difficult people avoid those activities
True/False
The evidence from age-comparative expertise studies is largely in line with the proposition that expert performance at any age relies more on general rather than specific cognitive mechanisms.
False
