Lecture 2 -Reasoning and Memory

Question 1

What is counterfactual reasoning?

Answer 1

-people often reflect on how an event in the past might have turned out differently
-creating such alternatives to known facts
-certain age not able to do this
eg chocolate on top self boy took to room, what if little sister came to look for instead

Question 2

Counterfactual syllogism

Answer 2

-a syllogism is a type of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true

Question 3

Other factors important in counterfactual reasoning

Answer 3

• disengagement from reality (know what is real and what is not and be able to disengage from that)
• > inhibitory processes (executive function)
• > know when to disengage
• > improves executive function, improved knowledge

Question 4

Type of counterfactual reasoning

Answer 4

1. congruent: matches up with what know about real world
2. incongruent: disagrees with what is in real world
3. fantasy: made up, nothing know about in real world

Question 5

Hawkin et al 1984

Answer 5

1. congruent: bears have big big teeth, big teeth can’t read books, can bears read?
2. incongruent: glasses bounce, everything that bounces made of rubber, is glass rubber?
3. fantasy: every banga is purple, purple animals sneeze, do bangas sneeze?
   Results: 4 y/o congruent 90% correct, incongruent 10% correct, fantasy 70% correct
   -also depended on how items presente dif fantasy before incongruent performed better than when presented after

Question 6

Scribner 1977

Answer 6

• all kpelle men are rice farmers, mr smith is not a rice farmer, is he a kpelle man?
• 53% adults got answer correct, also tested students
• interested in justification
• rather than using info in syllogism didn’t think in hypothetical way, empirical knowledge

Question 7

Bias and Harris 1988 Pretence and empirical bias

Answer 7

• pretence can prevent empirical bias
• see if can get children to answer questions in a deductive or theoretical way
• see if context of playing make believe could affect answer (toys and dolls, all cats bark, rex is a cat does rex bark)
• empirical group and theoretical group
• 4 and 6 y/o (4 y/o worse)
• correct responses: pretense increased correct
• theoretical justifications: pretense helped

Question 8

Leevers and Harris 2000, does understanding the experimenter’s intention affect it?

Answer 8

• young children may fail to understand experimenters intention and give false answer
• pretence and instructions to se imagery may make the experimenters intention clear
• autistic children find difficult to understand intentions expect to perform more poorly
• basic and imagination (of scenerio) problem
• tested children twice (autism, typical dev and MLD)
• autism: not as much differnce btw basic and imagination, other groups there were
• > autism response bias of yes, others more even
• did children carry on information?
• > yes children did, basic on second task same as imagination groups, children learned

Question 9

When is an inference necessarily true or only possibly true?

Answer 9

• if a brick is thrown at the window the glass will break
  1) a brick is thrown at window, does it break? -yes
  2) the glass is broken, was a brick thrown at the window -i don’t know (not enough info to answer)

Question 10

Pieraut-Le Bonnlec 1980 Certainty and Uncertainty (holes)

Answer 10

• can you tell without looking inside drawer what im putting into the small hole? (also same question about large hole)
• all got small hole right (certain)
• only children over 9 could get the answer for large hole correct (uncertain)

Question 11

Bynes and Overton (1986) certainty and uncertainty box task, holes

Answer 11

• gave children practice and feedback
• 8y/o able to distinguish certainty from uncertainty
• 6y/o still failed to detect uncertainty
• this type of uncertainty involves a dual solution (thin AND thick object can fit in the the large hole)
• young children may think of one solution but difficult to think of other

Question 12

certainty and uncertainty Ruffman et al 2001 slide task

Answer 12

• two slides: certain (red slide and red square) and uncertain (various could come down)
• 3 and 4 y/o
• certain 90%, uncertain 75% put counters next to both slides
• -indicates that young children can identify possible outcomes when they have a limited number of choices

Question 13

Two main types of long-term memory

Answer 13

• explicit (declarative, conscious recall): semantic (knowledge facts) and episodic (personally experienced events)
• implicit (non declarative or procedural, no conscious recall): skills (motor and cognitive) and conditioning (classical and operant) and habits

Question 14

1. Mnemonic

2. Metamemory

Answer 14

1. knowing how to know, how to organize memorizing (rehearsal, retrieval)
2. knowing about knowing, knowing about your own memory, knowing when to make a special effort

Question 15

Two alternative hypotheses of memory development

Answer 15

1. Memory processes develop in a sequence
2. All processes are available at the same time although strategies and metamemory are more restricted in younger children

Question 16

How important is knowledge to recall?

Chi 1978

Answer 16

• look at child (good chess players) and adult chess players (novice)
• children better at arrays (chess positions)
• adults slightly better at digits
• expert knowledge influences development of mnemonic strategies

Question 17

Bauer and Mandler 1989

1. Imitation of causal sequences
2. Imitation of arbitrary sequences

Answer 17

1. child tasked with making rattle (has to be right order, for end goal): blue circle, red square, green square
2. Goal: doll, train linked, on the track (but doesn’t have to be specific order)
   -16 and 20 months, shown correct order then asked to show
   Results: better at casual immediate, better delayed causal sequences in 2nd year

Question 18

Memory duration in young infants

Barr et al 1996

Answer 18

• shown puppet
• infants shown 3 actions which they were expected to model after delay (24 hours)
• remove mitten, shake & ring bell, replace mitten (shown sequence 3 times)
• 6 months produced more target action in the demonstration than the control group
• but very few imitated the complete sequence
• no recall after 2 days (Barr et al 2001)

Question 19

Using operant conditioning paradigms to study memory acquisition and recall

Answer 19

-infant responds in a certain way which produces an effect which is reinforced during the acquisition phase
-leg kick=movement of a mobile (2-6 months)
-panel press=movement of train (6mo-2yrs)
-if child responds in absense of reinforcement this is evidence for linking the response and effect previously (ie memory)
-possible to study recall either straight away or after a delay
(see next slide)

Question 20

Contingent mobile (see notes for time line) and train tasks
-Hartshorn et al 1998

Answer 20

-as age increases can retain information longer (2 mo can’t retain, 18 mo can retain for 13 weeks)
-6 months both tasks suitable for, performance same (not confounded)
-deferred imitation task: not as much retention but older more
(next slide)

Question 21

(Barr et al 2001) train task vs puppet task

• retention?
• does one task affect the other?

Answer 21

• 6 month train task more retention than puppet (14 days vs 1 day)
• > retention depends on paradigm
• can stronger memory increase weaker memory?
• 2 sessions learning train, 60 seconds with puppet task, 3 groups that did both
• tested on the puppet task after 6, 14 and 21 days
• results: puppet retention 14 days

Question 22

Use of mnemonic strategies in young children

Helsel and Ritter 1981

Answer 22

• is strategy use fragile in preschoolers
• children hid toy in one of 196 identical containers, instructed would have to retrieve at later point
• 3yrs no strategy (any location)
• 5yrs utilized simple strategies (chose a distinctive location and chose same location on all trials)

Question 23

Development of rehersal strategy

Flavell et al 1966

Answer 23

• children shown a short series of pictures and told to remember the sequence (wore space helmet with a opaque visor)
• lip reader watched for signs of verbal rehearsal
• 5yrs (10%), 7yrs (60%), 10 yrs (85%)
• strategy was effective, children who rehearsed recalled more
• young children did not spontaneously use rehearsal strategy
• non-rehearsers were encouraged to rehearse and recall imported to the level of spontaneous rehearsers, however 50% stopped rehearsing on later trials
• production deficiency

Question 24

Rehearsal and serial position effects in children

Naus and Ornstein (1983)

Answer 24

• primacy and recency effect
• results: 6yrs no primacy effect but have recency effect, 9yrs and 14 yrs have primacy effect (indicates rehearsal) and recency effect

Question 25

How does rehearsal change with age?

Ornstein et al 1975

Answer 25

• words were read aloud at a 5 second interval
• children were told to say the words out loud rather than rehearsing non verbally
• 4 words presented: yard, cat, man, desk
• results: 8 yrs passive rehearsal (do not incorporate all the words), 13 yrs active rehearsal (incorporated all the words, eg desk, man, yard, cat, man, desk, cat, yard)
• older get more efficient

Question 26

Organization in rehearsal

Schneider & Bjorklund 1998

Answer 26

• active rehearsal encourages children to notice relations between items (can lead to identification of categories)
• organized rehearsal also aids recall (category membership of items to be remembered)
• clustering is at chance levels in younger children but increases with age

Question 27

Organization in rehearsal experiment

Salatas and Flavell 1976

Answer 27

• children presented with 16 pictures each from four categories (animal, clothing, toys, tools)
• younger children don’t organize to help rehearsal as well as older children
• 27% 6yrs organized, more 8yrs but still not a lot, older children much better at this

Question 28

Organization in recall

Kobasigawa 1974

Answer 28

• similar changes are found in children’s ability to organize recall of information
• cued recall: showed children 24 pictures in 8 sets of 3
• also shown a cue picture relating to the set
• free recall (no cue picture) or cued recall
• results: spontaneous use of cue at 7 and 10 yrs improved recall (not at 5 yrs)

Question 29

Knowledge affects on strategy use

Bjorklund and Jacobs 1985

Answer 29

• conceptual development also influences strategy use
• ask children to remember and recall items from this list (scissors, paper, knife) the strategy employed for recall will differ depending on age
• younger children’s recall determined by items with strong associations (scissor and paper)
• older organized their recall around conceptual categories they have learned (scissors and knife)

Question 30

Different performance deficiencies

Answer 30

Mediation deficit: no spontaneous use of strategy, lack of mental apparatus to use strategy, unable to use strategy even after training
Production deficit: no spontaneous use of strategy, have ability to use strategy, strategy use occurs after training or prompting

Question 31

Rehearsal strategy -a production deficiency

Keeny et al 1967

Answer 31

• 3 groups: no rehearsal then training, spontaneous rehearsers then training, spontaneous rehearsers no training
• results: non rehearsers performance improved to almost the same after training

Question 32

Cued recall strategy -a production deficiency

Kobasigawa 1974

Answer 32

• free recall, cued recall and directive cued (told how many items were paired with the cue and asked to recall them beore moving onto the next category)
• 5yrs, 7yrs and 10yrs
• all children performed equally well in the directive cue condition whereas there was an improvement as a child aged in the free recall and cued recall conditions
• 5 yrs stored as much information as 10 yrs but had difficult accessing it

Question 33

Allocation of cognitive resources

Miller 1998

Answer 33

• tested the development of specific strategies to aid recall
• each child was presented with pictures of furniture under the houses and animals under the cages
• child has 30 seconds to remember where the animals are hidden
• to test they are shown a card with an animal on it and asked to point to the door that covered it
• results: 4yrs did not use a strategy, opened all doors, used a spatial approach (rows and columns), 5-6yrs partial strategy, relevant doors were opened up to 75% of the time, 6yrs selective strategy, but this did not translate into an improvement in recall (utilization deficit), 8+yrs selective strategy and improved recall

Question 34

Effort of strategies for younger children

Miller el al 1991

Answer 34

• cognitive load can be assessed using a dual task paradigm
• > baseline: finger tapping rate
• > child strategy while tapping same time
• > decline in tapping est of effort needed to execute the strategy
• all children spontaneously produced the strategy (younger children 6yrs show greater reduction in tapping than older children)
• execution of strategy more demanding for younger children (explain utilization deficit, no spare capacity for remembering)

Question 35

Utilization deficit in adults

Gaultney et al 2005

Answer 35

• task: remember 15 nonsense words
• experimenter reads the words from cards and places the cards on the table so can study for 1.5 minutes
• told that could move cards to help remember (form categories)
• participants then presented with a different task for 30 sec before being asked to recall nonsense words
• the amount of clustering in the recall was measured
• adults display utilization deficits in challeging memory tasks, the availability of working memory for store affects performance
• doing a demanding strategy leaves no working memory capacity for storage (which means no benefit in recall)
• utilization deficit are not a developmental phenomenom but are a result of demands on limited capacity

Question 36

Processing capacity and strategy development

Guttentag 1984 and 1997

Answer 36

• dual task paradigm with children 8, 9 and 12
• child rehearsed words while tapping
• younger children showed a greater decrease in tapping rate compared to baseline
• compared children who recalled same amount (younger had greater reduction in tapping)
• compared children with same decrease in tapping (younger recalled fewer words, strategy use suffers more to maintain tapping)

Question 37

Early memory awareness
DeLoache and Brown 1984
-look notes for background slides

Answer 37

• knowing that you have remembered something is extremely important to metamemory
• 21 and 27 months
• toy hidden in a natural location at home, child leaves and returns later to search for toy
• most of time toy where thought it was
• experimenters introduced two surprise trials where they moved the toy
• 27 mo were sig. more likely to search in a close by location on the surprise trials that they were when they had made an error (looked in the incorrect place for toy)

Question 38

Memory span and age relation

Dempster 1981

Answer 38

• increases with age
• increase could be due to increased absolute capacity but avidence suggests that it is due to faster processing and greater knowledge
• better at recalling numbers than letters (increases with age)

(more in notes but im fed up with this)