Lecture 5 - Information Processing and Social Context Flashcards
Traits of Stage Theory
Qualitative differences between stages
Can only move forward, can’t skip
Must pass certain thresholds to progress
Why did Piaget’s stage theory fail?
There was a lack of thought processes to apply to the principles (only one attribute explored at a time)
Criticisms of Piaget
Superficial changes in design can affect results
Success at younger ages challenges his theory
The experiments may not measure the target cognitive ability
Information Processing Approach
Children fail these tasks because of other cognitive memory limitations (memory, problem-solving, attention, metacognition).
Limitations that can effect children’s problem solving
Encoding (don’t encode appropriate info), computational (don’t have LTM strategies), retrieval (retrieve inappropriate strategy), storage, work-space (working memory restrictions)
Piaget and Inhelder (1951) - Mountains task
The child is given a demonstration of 3 mountains and asked to describe the doll’s point of view. Four year olds always described what they could see whereas 7-8 year olds understood the task.
Brainerd (1983)
The reason younger children were less successful in the mountains task was due to information processing limitations
Vurpillot (1968)
Spot the difference task - 3-5 year olds only examined some and 6-9 year olds looked at all the windows for a difference.
Miller and Seier (1994)
3-4 year olds opened all the boxes to spot the difference while 9-10 year olds focused on appropriate boxes
Roebers et al (2010) - Experiment
Comparing 7-8 year olds with 9-10 year olds on eye tracking test
• Baseline and critical trials
• Recognition test: asked whether they’d seen an image before
• Distractibility test
Roebers et al (2010) - Results
Similar pattern in both age goups
• Looked more overall at task relevant stimuli
Younger children more affected by distractors
Evidence for continuous development
Encoding strategies
Rehearsal, organisation, elaboration
Rehearsal
Mental repetition of information (older children apply strategy more effectively)
Organisation
Grouping information together (10 years and older organise more effectively)
Elaboration
Making associations. Example: 2 words to remember, combine into image or sentence
Kreutzer et al (1975)
All 10 year olds were able to come up with an effective retrieval strategy to help the boy remember the puppy. Only 1/2 of 5 year olds could do the same.
Kobasigawa (1974)
Participants learnt 24 images. Shown 8 cue cards with categories. Older children used cue cards as aid while younger children used them less systematically.
Metacognition (Flavell et al, 1970)
More aware of memory capacity with age – younger children unrealistic about number of items can recall.
Usefulness of memory strategies (Ringel and Springer, 1980)
More aware of usefulness of memory strategies – older children able to come up with more and better memory aids than younger
Constructive memory
Children can infer using: scripts (sequence of actions appropriate for a specific context) and schema (what is known about a scene, place and object
Scripts and schemas experiments
- Nelson and Gruendel (1981) – restaurant script
* Blades and Banham (1990) – kitchen schema
Chi (1978) - Children vs adults
Children better at remembering chess positions than adults.
Adults are better at remembering digits
Experience plays a role as experienced chess players are better than the children.
Vygotsky (1934)
Cognitive processes are built by the adults helping the child learn. Culture and language are important.
Zone of Proximal Development
- Difference between actual performance and potential performance
- How the child learns with help of others and at a level beyond existing skill (but not too far)
Language and Thought
• Through language that the child develops as learner and thinker
• Importance of the external monologue
Transition from language as tool for communication to a tool for thought
Help organise and plan behaviour
Internalised to become inner speech – 7 years
• Contrast to Piaget – saw monologue as evidence of egocentrism
Bruner and Scaffolding (how knowledge is passed from expert to child)
- Recruitment: engage interest of child
- Reduction of degrees of freedom: reduce number of acts required, simplify
- Direction maintenance: keep motivation up
- Marking critical features: highlight relevant features
- Demonstration: modelling solutions
Animals and cultures
Many animals socially learn and some exhibit cultures and traditions - so cultures are not as complex and there’s no evidence for cumulative culture
Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis (Hermann et al, 2007)
Humans have evolved social-cognitive skills (example is theory of mind, social learning, communication, cooperation, imitation, teaching)
Csibra and Gergely (2009)
Children are primed to attend to demonstrator’s cues while learning.
Lyons et al (2011)
Children copy both relevant and irrelevant features while copying
