Lecture 5 - Information Processing and Social Context

Question 1

Traits of Stage Theory

Answer 1

Qualitative differences between stages
Can only move forward, can’t skip
Must pass certain thresholds to progress

Question 2

Why did Piaget’s stage theory fail?

Answer 2

There was a lack of thought processes to apply to the principles (only one attribute explored at a time)

Question 3

Criticisms of Piaget

Answer 3

Superficial changes in design can affect results
Success at younger ages challenges his theory
The experiments may not measure the target cognitive ability

Question 4

Information Processing Approach

Answer 4

Children fail these tasks because of other cognitive memory limitations (memory, problem-solving, attention, metacognition).

Question 5

Limitations that can effect children’s problem solving

Answer 5

Encoding (don’t encode appropriate info), computational (don’t have LTM strategies), retrieval (retrieve inappropriate strategy), storage, work-space (working memory restrictions)

Question 6

Piaget and Inhelder (1951) - Mountains task

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

Brainerd (1983)

Answer 7

The reason younger children were less successful in the mountains task was due to information processing limitations

Question 8

Vurpillot (1968)

Answer 8

Spot the difference task - 3-5 year olds only examined some and 6-9 year olds looked at all the windows for a difference.

Question 9

Miller and Seier (1994)

Answer 9

3-4 year olds opened all the boxes to spot the difference while 9-10 year olds focused on appropriate boxes

Question 10

Roebers et al (2010) - Experiment

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Roebers et al (2010) - Results

Answer 11

Similar pattern in both age goups
• Looked more overall at task relevant stimuli

Younger children more affected by distractors

Evidence for continuous development

Question 12

Encoding strategies

Answer 12

Rehearsal, organisation, elaboration

Question 13

Rehearsal

Answer 13

Mental repetition of information (older children apply strategy more effectively)

Question 14

Organisation

Answer 14

Grouping information together (10 years and older organise more effectively)

Question 15

Elaboration

Answer 15

Making associations. Example: 2 words to remember, combine into image or sentence

Question 16

Kreutzer et al (1975)

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Kobasigawa (1974)

Answer 17

Participants learnt 24 images. Shown 8 cue cards with categories. Older children used cue cards as aid while younger children used them less systematically.

Question 18

Metacognition (Flavell et al, 1970)

Answer 18

More aware of memory capacity with age – younger children unrealistic about number of items can recall.

Question 19

Usefulness of memory strategies (Ringel and Springer, 1980)

Answer 19

More aware of usefulness of memory strategies – older children able to come up with more and better memory aids than younger

Question 20

Constructive memory

Answer 20

Children can infer using: scripts (sequence of actions appropriate for a specific context) and schema (what is known about a scene, place and object

Question 21

Scripts and schemas experiments

Answer 21

• Nelson and Gruendel (1981) – restaurant script

* Blades and Banham (1990) – kitchen schema

Question 22

Chi (1978) - Children vs adults

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Vygotsky (1934)

Answer 23

Cognitive processes are built by the adults helping the child learn. Culture and language are important.

Question 24

Zone of Proximal Development

Answer 24

• 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)

Question 25

Language and Thought

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

Bruner and Scaffolding (how knowledge is passed from expert to child)

Answer 26

• 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

Question 27

Animals and cultures

Answer 27

Many animals socially learn and some exhibit cultures and traditions - so cultures are not as complex and there’s no evidence for cumulative culture

Question 28

Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis (Hermann et al, 2007)

Answer 28

Humans have evolved social-cognitive skills (example is theory of mind, social learning, communication, cooperation, imitation, teaching)

Question 29

Csibra and Gergely (2009)

Answer 29

Children are primed to attend to demonstrator’s cues while learning.

Question 30

Lyons et al (2011)

Answer 30

Children copy both relevant and irrelevant features while copying