Memory Development Flashcards
What is the Modal Model of Memory
• Memory can be an item (information) and a process (storing and retrieval of information) it includes: o Sensory o Short term or working o Long term
What is sensory memory?
Start with sensory information which is filtered to short-term/ working memory by paying attention – important things are put into short term memory (ie listening in lecture)
o Complete in infancy, auditory is quite good
o Visual is limited and not as developed as auditory in infancy
What is short term/working memory?
Also known as working memory because this is where information is manipulated and acted upon consciously
o Increases with age in size, speed and accuracy
o Tied to frontal lobe
o Selected information is passed to long term memory where it is encoded
What is bottom up processing?
in the bottom-up processing approach, perception starts at the sensory input, the stimulus. Thus, perception can be described as data-driven. For example, there is a flower at the center of a person’s field. The sight of the flower and all the information about the stimulus are carried from the retina to the visual cortex in the brain. The signal travels in one direction.
what is top down processing?
Top-down processing is defined as the development of pattern recognition through the use of contextual information. ie. hard to read handwriting, try to understand gist of entire paragraph rather than each individual word
attention
older children better able to focus attention for longer periods
inhibition
related to frontal lobes, and requires suppressing an active process and resisting interference
o Younger children lack inhibition
o Adults who have damage to their frontal lobe share this
memory application for ADHD
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is when attention and inhibition are seriously compromised
- 5-11% children in the US, more common in boys
- Difficulty with scholastic achievement
- Evolutionary psychologists speculate ADHD may be on a continuum of excitation/ inhibition
- May help be more vigilant (distracted by new stimuli) and respond quicker
Barkley study
o Poorer on working memory
o Less proficient working memory
o Poorer delay of responses – have difficulty waiting for rewards
o Less likely to use strategies on memory
long term memory facts
• Visible even in older fetuses
• See habituation or change in heart rate patterns when playing a song on pregnant mothers’ abdomens (9 months)
• Newborns show preference for stimuli exposed to prenatally
o Sounds and tastes
long term memory (2 types)
o Nondeclarative: learned habits and skills (implicit)
- Unconscious, related to cerebellum and basal ganglia
- Motor skills, conditioning effects
o Declarative: facts and autobiographical memory (explicit)
- Semantic: knowledge of language, rules, concepts
- Episodic: memory of personal experiences
- Conscious, related to PFC and hippocampus- develops after 18 months
long term memory - implicit
Implicit:
• Processed similarly at different ages
• Developmental invariant hypothesis
o Saying that no matter the point in development the processing is the same
long term memory - explicit
Explicit:
• Script-based
• Role of parents in teaching children to remember
• Develops around 18 months because you need language to use this
implicit vs explicit LTM
Implicit memory develops earlier and is more robust in resisting brain injury
• Suggest implicit memory is evolutionarily older than explicit (can be observed in animals)
• LT memory has some domain general components, but also has domain specific (eg. Math and science)
investigating infant memory: Novelty preference
- Show a stimuli (e.g., bear), and put a delay
- Show child toy from before and a new toy
- If they look longer at the old toy they recognize it
- Shows preference (longer looking times) for a novel stimulus is taken as evidence for memory of original
investigating Infant Memory: Conjugate Reinforcement
- Baseline kicking rate (3 minutes, unattached to mobile)
- Reinforcement period (9 minutes, ribbon attached to mobile and leg – if they move leg mobile moves)
- Delay
- Test period (unattached leg from mobile and see how much infant kicks)
- Will they return to baseline kicking amount and speed or reinforcement speed?
- Found that if the context changes (ie. Move from crib to play pen) the results are not as good
Infant Memory: Deferred-Imitation
• Starts around 9 months
• Novel actions on objects
o Eg. Bauers three step sequence of having a metal post, striking with mallet
Demonstrate that they will hang piece of metal and hit with mallet
• Delay
• Test
o See if they copy the behaviour
o 50% of 9 month olds could do this and they need many demonstrations
Neurological basis of infant memory
- Long-term Memory requires hippocampus, PFC in temporal lobe
- Most of hippocampus is adult-like at birth
- Dentate gyrus (part of hippocampus- important for episodic memory) develops after birth
- Frontal cortex for encoding and retrieving declarative memories, slow to develop
infantile amnesia
• Inability to remember autobiographical memories of childhood (before ages 3 or 4)
o Freudian account – memories repressed to preserve ego
o Memory as action patterns (pre verbal)
o Sense of self
o Verbatim vs fuzzy trace (gist)
Children try to remember EVERYTHING but it can be difficult to do this
what is event memory
memory for things that happen during course of day
o Doesn’t involve effort
o Children attend to different stimuli than adults, often irrelevant items and events
script based memory
o Tend to remember recurring events
o Facilitate storage of consistent memory
o BUT leads to loss of info for individual episodes
role of parents in memory
reminiscing, asking questions/cues,
o Making inferences
o Eg. American parents talk to children about 3x more about past events than Korean parents which influences autobiographical memories
children as eyewitnesses: memory processes
. Memory Processes: encoding, storage, retrieval
Encoding: representation of event
Storage: info after witnessing
Retrieval: manipulation at time of testing
children as eyewitnesses: focus of study
Focus of study by which the type of information being assessed
