Midterm 2 Flashcards
Information processing
How children process information about their world; how they manipulate information, monitor it, and create strategies to deal with it
Theoretical approach about cognitive development and how children learn
Maturational changes (how children make cognitive gains) in basic components of a child’s mind
“Machinery”
Attention, working memory (active), long term memory (passive)
Attention
“Focusing of mental resources” (eye contact, nodding)
Working memory
“Manipulate and assemble information”
Long term memory
“Relatively permanent memory”
Lisa’s teacher tells her to try to remember a string of words- ball, hat, tree, fork
Attention
Lisa’s teacher tells her the string of words again, but this time asks her to say them backwards
Working memory (need to manipulate)
Lisa’s teacher asks her to write about her favorite memory - Lisa writes about when she went to Disney World three years ago
Long term memory
Developmental changes in information processing
Capacity (amount of information)
Speed of processing (how quickly)
Biological changes in information processing
Frontal lobes developing (in early childhood), synaptic pruning (taking out what isn’t important), myelination (efficiency)
Processing speed
How quickly children process information impacts what they can do with the information
The quicker you can process, the more complex ideas you can manipulate in your mind
Changes rapidly across development
Increase in processing speed precedes increase in working memory
Amy needs 2 eggs per cake. She bakes 3 cakes. How many eggs did she need?
Amy needs 2 eggs. She bakes 3 cakes. She also needs one egg per 6 cupcakes. She bakes 18 cupcakes. How many eggs does she need all together?
If you can easily process the first part it will make the second part a lot easier
Processing speed problems in children
Falling behind, prolonged time on homework and tests, extra accommodations
Encoding
The process by which information gets into memory; involves encoding relevant information, ignoring irrelevant information
Example: Amy needs 2 eggs per cake. Amy likes cupcakes better than cakes. Amy bakes one cake. How many eggs does she need?
(Ignore that Amy likes cupcakes better- irrelevant information)
Automaticity
Ability to process information with little or no effort; with practice, children encode increasing amounts of information automatically
Example: with practice, children do not need to think about each letter when reading, they can process the entire word
Sounding out words while reading as a child, now taking word in as whole, relevant information is first and last letter
Strategy construction
Creating new procedures for information processing
Involves metacognition (knowing about knowing)
Organizing words
Child knows something about how they learn
Example: a child knows that relating a story to his or her own life will help him/her remember the story better
Mechanisms of change
Development is gradual
Unlike Piaget, does not view development as occurring in stages
Proposes that individuals gradually develop increased capacity to processing information –> acquiring complex knowledge and skills
Selective attention
Focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant
Divided attention
Concentrating on more than one activity at the same time
Sustained attention
Ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time
Executive attention
Planning actions, allocating attention to goals, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, dealing with novel circumstances
(Executive function)
Attention
Continues to develop and improve into adulthood (prime at age 25)
Go no go
84% go, 16% no go
3 go stimuli every 6 seconds
no go stimulus every 10-15 seconds
Works on selective attention, just looking at part of the screen
Works on sustained attention, lasts 15 minutes, helps determine ADD
Tower of London
Executive attention planning component
Can look at: how well they plan or rule violations (how impulsive they are)
Development of attention in infancy
Orienting/investigative process Sustained attention Habituation and dishabituation Joint attention Gets better as you get older
Joint attention
Requires: ability to track another’s behavior, one person directing another’s attention, reciprocal interaction
“Gaze following” develops around 10-11 months
Beneficial for learning
In infancy, related to: language development in toddlers, long term memory, self-regulation
Attention in childhood
Rapid development during preschool years
Sustained attention and executive attention important for school
Gradually able to direct attention more
What parents think teachers want vs. what they actually want
Attention in adolescence
Sustain attention for longer
Divided attention- multitasking
“Cognitive flexibility”
Memory
Retention of information over time
Basis processes: encoding, storage, retrieval
Encoding
Getting information into memory
Storage
Retaining information over time
Retrieval
Taking information out of storage
Short-term memory
Limited capacity, retained 15-30 seconds
Originally thought of as “passive storage house”
Long-term memory
Relatively permanent memory
Working memory
Mental manipulation
“Work bench”
Often preferred over the term “short term memory”
Alan Baddeley’s model of working memory
Visualspacial working memory, input via sensory memory, phonological loop, rehearsal, long-term memory... These processes are always going on Active process (a lot of parts working together)
Working memory and cognitive development
Working memory and attention predicted growth in emergent literacy and number skills
Working memory predicts foreign language comprehension in school age children
Assessment of working memory in kindergarten predicts math achievement at end of first grade
Constructing memories
People construct their own memories; mind can distort information as it is being encoded (won’t remember event the same way someone else does who was also there)
Schema theory
People mold memories to fit information already in their minds
Cultural- specificity hypothesis
To different people, different information is more meaningful
Take in what’s interesting to them and relevant to their life
Infantile amnesia
Uncommon to remember events prior to 3-4 years old
Adults, older children, school age children do not remember much about early childhood years (prefrontal lobes still immature) (related to brain development more than time span)
World is so different under age 3 when you are being taken care of
First memories
Carolyn Rovee-Collier: infants remember perceptual-motor information
Experiment with mobile: baby’s ankle tied to mobile with ribbon, baby returned to mobile weeks later, will kick only if mobile is identical
Signifies early memories
Implicit memory
Memory without conscious recollection; memories of skills and routines that are performed automatically
Explicit memory
Conscious memory of facts or experiences
Episodic and semantic memories
Episodic memories
Autobiographical (events)
Semantic memories
Remembering words
Hippocampus
Impacts ability to retain and recall information; important for explicit memories
Considerable development between 6-12 months
Prefrontal cortex
More involved in episodic memory
Minor involvement in semantic memory
Amygdala
Involved in encoding emotionally balanced memories
“Flashbulb memories”
Older part, has been there evolutionarily
Fear, disorders, phobias, anxiety
Emotionally charged
9/11- fear component, negative charge
Help to avoid danger in future
Fuzzy trace theory
Individuals encode two different types of information: verbatim memory trace, fuzzy trace or gist
“Fuzzy traces” used more as children get older; related to improved memory
Fuzzy traces allow you to take in more information, good strategy to use
More bananas than apples, not how many
Memory
Continues to improve in adolescence and early adulthood
Depends on content knowledge and expertise
Not always a function of age, but also expertise
Chi, 1978
Young chess players and college students
Assessed on auditory working memory, visual memory
College students performed better on auditory working memory (hearing words)
Chess players better on visual working memory (where chess pieces were located on a board) (remember set of faces)
Memory span
7 + or - 2 digits
Short term memory has limited capacity (primacy effects, recency effects)
Improve memory with
Processing speed, rehearsal of information, strategies
Organization
Improves throughout childhood
Rarely used by preschool age children
Pneumonic phrases
Elaboration
Thinking of examples, finding ways to make information meaningful
Imagery
Developing a “mental image” to remember material
Works best for older children
Reconstructive memories
Build memories from pre-existing schemas
Memories are vulnerable, have gaps
Children (and adults) fill in information differently
Individual differences in susceptibility
Age differences in susceptibility
Interviewing techniques may produce distortions
Younger children are more susceptible to filling in gaps without being aware
Memories at Disneyland
Participants had previously been at Disneyland and were asked to read ads:
1. Ad mentioned no cartoon characters
2. Same add but saw 4 ft cardboard Bugs Bunny
3. Fake ad for Disney with Bugs Bunny
4. Fake ad and 4 ft cardboard Bugs Bunny
Who remembered seeing Bugs Bunny at Disneyland?
10% in groups 1 and 2
30-40% in groups 3 and 4
Bugs Bunny was not at Disneyland
Susceptible to false memories
Letting people fill in the gaps and not knowing if its your own memory
“Lost in a shopping mall”
Elizabeth Lofus Study on "childhood memory" Participants told about being lost in mall Specifics of story personalized 25% recall event Not everyone is convinced
Child interview techniques
Open questions (older children) Focused questions = best Multiple choice questions True/fase Avoid leading questions - don't lead them to any specific answer (sometimes in court these are asked but they should NOT be asked during the initial interview)
What is the difference between explicit and implicit memory? Give examples
Implicit is automatic response, habit (driving)
Explicit is episodic, semantic, words, events
Semantic clustering is an example of?
Organizational strategy
Robert’s teacher told the class to study their spelling words for 5 min, write in their journals for 10 min, and work w/ parter on math hw…
Primacy effect
Thinking
Transforming and manipulating information in mind
Allows people to reason, reflect, evaluate ideas, solve problems, and make decisions
Takes mental effort
Not automatic
Cognitive domain: thought, intelligence, and language
Perceptual categorization
Based on similar perceptual attributes (how they look)
Earlier: 3-4 months
Animals vs. objects
Conceptual categorization
Based on concepts (how things go together)
Later: 7-9 months
Dogs vs. barn
Concepts
Cognitive groupings of similar objects, events, people, or ideas
Habituation
Kids will dishabituate when things don’t belong
Analogy
Correspondence between things that are dissimilar
Symbol
“I feel like a fish out of water”
“Life is like a box of chocolate”
Tiny room experiment
2 1/2 year olds failed
3 year olds passed
Hide toy in tiny room (doll house), kid sees, hide in real room, 2 year olds search randomly, 3 year olds find it
Expanding room experiment
2 1/2 year olds passed
3 year olds passed
Big lights and noises, same room grows bigger, then they find it