Task 4 my socks in the dryer

Question 1

Information-processing theories

Answer 1

a class of theories that focus on the structure of the cognitive system and the mental activities used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems
•	Limited to memory capacity, speed of thought processes, and availability of useful strategies and knowledge

Question 2

Gains in information-processing capacity

Answer 2

Time needed to process information on a wide variety of cognitive tasks declines rapidly between ages of 6 and 12, possibly due to myelination and synaptic pruning in the brain.
o Processing speed improves mainly during the school years, digit span increases from about 5 to 7 digits

Question 3

Gains in cognitive inhibition

Answer 3

the ability to resist interference from internal and external distracting stimuli improves from infancy on. The largest progress is made in middle childhood because of the development of the cerebral cortex

Question 4

Precise analysis of change mechanisms

Answer 4

two critical goals are to identify the change mechanisms that contribute most development and to specify exactly how these mechanisms work

Question 5

Continuous self-modification

Answer 5

The outcome generated by the child’s own activities change the way the child will think in the future

Question 6

Selectivity and Adaptability (development)

Answer 6

improves sharply between ages 6 and 10, with gains continuing into adulthood, they are also more flexible with moving attention to momentary requirements of situations

Question 7

Sustained attention

Answer 7

staying focused increases around 2-3 years

Question 8

Selective attention

Answer 8

focus on relevant aspects if task, improves between age 6-12
o Four step sequence:
 Production deficiency: pre-schoolers rarely engage in additional strategies, so they fail to produce strategies when they could be helpful (3-4)
 Control deficiency: Young elementary school children sometimes produce strategies but not constantly. They fail to control, or execute strategies efficiently (5-6)
 Utilization strategy: Slightly later, children execute strategies consistently, but their performance does not improve (7-8)
 Effective strategy use: By the mid-elementary school years, children use strategies consistently, and performance improves (9-10)

Question 9

Planning

Answer 9

o School age children’s attentional strategies become increasingly planful, they first have to construct the plan and the remember all the steps, on the way they probably have to change the next step
o Depends largely on working memory capacity

Question 10

Sensory memory development

Answer 10

people posses a special capacity for briefly retaining relatively large amounts of information that they have just encountered
o Unlimited, exact copies, very brief,
o The sensory memory of a 5-year-old is as great as that of an adult

Question 11

Working memory

Answer 11

memory system that involves actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, storing, and processing memory
o Limitation: the amount of information that can be stored, and the length of time information can be retained without updating actions
o Increases over childhood and adolescence because of increased knowledge and in part because of maturational changes in the brain

Question 12

Longterm memory

Answer 12

consists on knowledge that people accumulate over their lifetime

Question 13

Executive functions

Answer 13

involves the control of cognition (especially prefrontal cortex)
o Inhibiting tempting actions that would be counterproductive (response inhibition)
 Seems to develop a little later, largely in the first few years of elementary school
o Enhancing working memory through use of strategies such as repeating a telephone number which would otherwise be forgotten
o Being cognitive flexible e.g. taking another person’s perspective in an argument despite it is differing from owns one
o Monitoring about answers and solutions

Question 14

Basic progress of memory development

Answer 14

the simplest and most frequently used mental activities
 Includes associating events with one another, recognizing objects as familiar, recalling facts and procedures and generalizing from one instance to another

Question 15

Encoding (memory development)

Answer 15

the process of representing in memory information that draws attention or is considered important
• With development children execute basic processes more efficiently
• We fail to encode a lot of information which is then not remembered later

Question 16

Processing speed (memory development)

Answer 16

increases most rapidly at young ages but continues to increases in adolescence, due to myelination and increased connectivity among brain regions
• Myelination: enhances executive function, contributing to the ability to resist distractions, also increases processing capacity and speed by increasing the efficiency of communication among brain areas

Question 17

Long distance connectivity (memory development)

Answer 17

especially prominent in later childhood and adolescence

Question 18

the role of automatization

Answer 18

Processes which need a lot of attention (controlled), little attention (automatic)
 Practice reduces amount of attention

Question 19

Memory strategies

Answer 19

Between 5 and 8 years the child starts to use memory strategies

Question 20

Rehearsal (strategy)

Answer 20

the repeating of information multiple times in order to remember it

Question 21

Selective attention(strategy)

Answer 21

the process of intentionally focusing on the information that is most relevant to the current goal

Question 22

Organization (strategy)

Answer 22

organize information, and grouping related items

 improves recall

Question 23

Elaboration (strategy)

Answer 23

end of middle childhood. Involves creating relationships, or shared meanings, between two or more pieces of information that are not members of the same category (develops late because it need good working memory capacity) Becomes increasingly common during adolescence and adulthood

Question 24

current knowledge

Answer 24

 With age and experience children’s general knowledge increases, this increase in long term memory improves recall of new materials with existing understanding
 Knowing more about a topic makes new information more meaningful and familiar so it is easier to store and retrieve

Question 25

Problem solving

Answer 25

the process of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle (representation, planning, strategy choice, transferring skills)
o Children’s cognitive flexibility helps them pursue their goals

Question 26

Development of problem solving

Answer 26

o Overlapping wave theory: The overlapping-waves model proposes that, at any one age, children use multiple strategies; that with age and experience, they rely increasingly on more advanced strategies (the ones with the higher numbers); and that development involves changes in use of existing strategies as well as discovery of new approaches.
o Children use different strategies at the same time (at least three), they then decide which is more successful and start to use them more often

Question 27

Planning (problem solving)

Answer 27

problem solving is more successful if you plan before acting, but we still often fail to plan this is because of lack of inhibition on the immediate solving of a problem, or they are over optimistic about their abilities
o Over time, maturation of prefrontal cortex, along with experiences that reduce overoptimism or demonstrate the value of planning lead to increase in the frequency and quality of planning

Question 28

Precise analysis of change mechanisms

Answer 28

two critical goals are to identify the change mechanisms that contribute most development and to specify exactly how these mechanisms work

Question 29

Task analysis

Answer 29

the research technique to identify goals, relevant information in the environment, and potential process strategies for a problem

Question 30

Mean end analysis

Answer 30

involves repeatedly comparing ones current state with ones original goal and then taking steps to reduce distance between them

Question 31

Similarities between Piaget and information processing

Answer 31

Both try to identify childrens cognitive capabilities and limits in various points of in development

Question 32

Differences between Piaget and information processing

Answer 32

Information processing: processing limitations, strategies to overcome these and knowledge about specific content. Greater emphasis on ongoing cognitive change. Knowledge how children think can be gained by understanding how adults think

Question 33

Recognition

Answer 33

identical or similar stimuli, easier than recall, increases in speed with age

Question 34

Recall

Answer 34

mental representation of a stimulus which is not present anymore, appears during the first year