Task 4 Flashcards
Information processing theories
Class of theories that focus on structure of cognitive system and mental activities used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems.
Two characteristics of these theories
It specifies precisely the processes involved inchildrens thinking
It puts emphasis in thinking as an activity that occurs over time
What is task analysis?
Research technique of identifying goals, relevant information in the environment, and potential proccesing strategies for a problem
What is the childrens nature?
information processing theorists see childrens cognitive growth as occuring continuously, in small increments occuring at different times on different tasks.
Child as a limited capacity processsing system?
Childrens thinking is limlited by everal factors that are gradually surmounted as cognitive development arises:
Memory capacity
Speed thought proccess
Availability of useful strategies and knowledge
Explain how the factors that limit children cognitive development are surmounted
Memory capacity :Surmounted by the amount of information they can proccess at one time
Speed of thought ^proccess :Surmounted with increase of speed with which they execute thought processing
Availability of useful strategies and knowledge: Surmounted through acquisition of new strategies and knowledge
Child as a problem solver
Information processing theories assume that children are active problem solvers.
What is problem solving?
Proccess of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle
Central developmental issues
uniqueness of information processing theories lies on the emphasis on precise descriptions of how change occurs and on how thay address issues of nature and nurture.
Development of memory
Mos of informtion proccessing theories distinguish among working memory, long term memory and executive functions
Working memory
Involves actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, storing and processing information.
Limited in its capacity ( the amount of information it can store) and in legth of time it can retain information without updating activities.
How do capacity and speed of working memory change along the years?
Till when are spatial and verbal information represented seprately in working memory?
Capacity and speed vary with task and type of material being processed
Capacity and speed increase with age and relevant exprience
Al in part to maturational changes i the brain
Spatial and verbal infromation are represented separately in working memory until the age of 10
What is long term memory?
Information and knowledge that people accumulate over their lifetime
It can retain an unlimited amount of information for unlimited periods of time.
Including factual knowledge conceptual knowledge procedural knowledge attitudes and reasoning strategies
Not all on none form in long term memory?
People store information in different units and can retrieve some units without retrieving others
What are executive functions?
Involve control of cognition and integrates informartion from working and long term memory to acomplish goals. Prefrontzl cortex plays important role in this cognitive control
What are the three major types of executive functions?
Those that inhibit tempting actions that would be counterproductive
Those that enhance working memory through the use of startegies
Those that makes- us be cognitive flexible( takignsomeone elses shoes)
When do executive functions emrge and when are they fulfilled?
Exectuive functions emerge during preschool years but dont fully mature until early adulthood.
What does quality of exectuive functioning during early childhood period predicts?
Quality of executive functioning during early childhood predicts important life outcomes later like academic achievement, enrollment in college, income and occupational status during adulthood
What are the explanations of memory development?
What are the three capapbilities being limited from being better?
They are efforts to explain proccesses that make memory as good as it is at each age and limitations preventing it form being better focus on three types of capabilities.
Basic processes
strategies
content knowledge
WHat are basic processes?
Simplest and most frequently used mental activities
They include association of events,recognizing objects as familiar, recalling facts and procedures -, generalizing form one instance to another and encoding
What is encoding
Basic process of representing in memory, information that draws attention or is considered important. It is key to all the other basic processes. information that is not encoded, is not remembered later. Also it shows how memoy is selective .
What are the biological processes that contribute to faster processing?
Myelination(prenatal period through adolescene) and an increased connectivity among the brain regions(especially prominent in later childhood and adolescence).
Strategies
When do strategies arise?
Plan of action designed to achieve a goal
Between 5 to 8 years children start to use broadly useful memory startegies
Name two types of strategies and explain them
Rehearsal: Proccess of repeating infromation multiple times in order to remember it
Selective attention: Proccess of intetnionally focusing on information that is most relevant to current goal
What is content knowledge ?
How does it improve memory? explain
With age and experience children´s knowledge about almost everything increases.
It improves memory in many different ways
By improving encoding- recall of new material make sit easier to integrate with existing understand
By providing useful associations- Remembering either one of two related information, increasing memory for the other.
What is the develoment of problem solving?
Information processing theories depict children as active problem solves who use strategies to allow thel to overcome limitation spf knowledge and proccesing
What is the overlapping waves theory?
Proposes that at any one age children use multiple strategies. Most children use three different strategies:
With age and experience they rely increasingly on more advanced strategies
Children discover new strategies that are more effective than the previous one, learn to execute both new and old and then choose th emore appropriate on eto a particular situation
Model characterizes childrens problem solving in a wide range of contexts such as arithmetic time telling reading spelling scientific experimentation ;;;
How does planning help?
Problem solving is more succesful if people plan before acting
Why do children and some adolescents fail to plan in situations in which planning would help their problem solving?
1 It requires inhibiting desire to solve problem immediately in favor of first trying to construct a best strategy.
2. Children tend to be overly optimistic about their abilities and think thay can solve problems more effectively tha their capabilities allow.
What happens to overoptimistics children?
What increase the freauency and quality of planning?
They have more accidents than those who evaluate their capabilities more realistically.
Maturation of prefrontal cortex and experiences reducing over-optimism lead to increzse i the frequency and quality of planning.
Differences and resemblances with piagets
check it out fuck
