Unit 3 - Lesson #1 = Information Processing: Thinking and Metacognitive Flashcards
What is critical thinking?
Thinking about thinking → grasping the deeper meaning of ideas, considering different ideas, perspectives and approaches. It is usually self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking
ex. You are doing the work beyond what is expected (Level 4)
What is thinking?
Manipulating information to transform it in our memory. It is our ability to reason, reflect, evaluate ideas, solve problems and make decisions
Thinking in infancy?
-3-4 months, 7-9 months
- Think in terms of concepts
- Cognitive grouping of similar objects, events, people or ideas
- Piaget → build on schemas, child may say dog instead of horse until they build schema to learn that it is actually a horse
- Grouped together in terms of size, color and movement;
a) Ex. What makes a bird a bird? - Without this, we would see each object and event as unique and wouldn’t be able to make any generalizations → attributing different characteristics to different animals
- We don’t know how early this starts, but…
a) Perceptual categorization starts off with basic (ex. Size and movement) → early as 3-4 months → visual any images (start to create concepts)
b) Conceptual (digger deeper) → can tell the difference between a plane & a bird (both can fly but are different) → as early as 7-9 months
Childhood: thinking
Executive functioning: managing one’s thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and to exercise self-control (fall under critical thinking)
- Ability to process oh i will get 2 marshmallows if I wait
- Young children tend to have a harder time in this
- This is a higher-level cognitive process linked to the development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex
- Restraining the urge to do something that is incorrect
- Delayed gratification - foregoing immediate pleasure for a more desirable outcome later
ex. Marshmallow experiment
Found that preschool children who were able to delta gratification were more successful, had stronger SAT scores, higher GPA and a better handle of stress - Develop understand of to do and what not to do → self-control
Delayed gratification:
- Maybe after you study you get a dessert
- Emotions and environment play a role (like delayed gratification can get better because of something)
Adolescence: thinking
- Most important change here is improving executive functioning
- Mainly in terms of cognitive control (attention, reducing interfering thoughts and being cognitively flexible → ability to look beyond yourself and moment, executive and critical thinking develop)
- Also a time of increased decision making (ex. School, home, friends, etc)
- Choose wisely, make good decisions
Social context
- More responsible means more maturity like having a child at a younger age (have to be responsible for yourself and a child)
- Environment plating a role
- It is the most important during this stage to be surrounded with good influences and like-minded people
- My surrounds and my future → metacognitive
Executive functioning:
- Allow us to think critically and this is arguably the most important stage for thinking
- Some critics suggest that schools don’t teach students to think critically, that we spend to much time getting students to memorize and recite information rather than encourage them to think deeper about an issue
- As a result: students stay on surface level of problems, don’t engage meaningfully
Their are a number of factors that impact adults cognitive functioning:
Education → higher educational attainment is associated with greater levels of cognitive performance
Health → different conditions (Heart disease and high blood pressure — can lead to stroke and changes in blood vessels in the brain that can lead to dementia)
Work → (how long or how little you work for instance) engagement in stimulating and cognitively demanding activities can improve cognition, which may likewise improve cognitive reserve
USE IT OR LOSE IT: Similar to physical development, if stop using cognitive abilities, you will lose them
Adulthood: thinking
-domain and more knowledgable and understanding + experince, ability to adapt, less risk
- brain decrease
With adulthood (experience and years of learning) comes with expertise or extensive, highly organized knowledge and understanding of a particular domain (understanding within a given area, knowledge of other areas having racism, but had to learn to understand it in their community)
- Experience play a big role and social context→ prompting you to learn more
- Ability to understand concepts but rather needs experiences to clearly know
- Meaning in terms of decision making, adults tend to make better decisions especially if familiar with situation
- Deterioration with age → factor
- Depend on experiences in previous life span
- Ability to adapt
- Gone through this again, so able to learn from this
- Take less risks → ex. In jobs like maybe you stay with your job as an adult because you need that stability
Yet, in terms of executive functioning, older adults do not perform as well as younger adults in multitasking and flexibility
- Ability set in your ways
- Brain deteriorate
- Don’t want to shift or change → remain the same
What is the definition of metacognition?
- Reflecting on our ability to process information so we know when and where to use strategies for learning or solving problems
- Thinking about and knowing when and where to use particular strategies for learning on for solving problems
a) Planning
b) Evaluating
c) Self-regulation
- Helps complete cognitive tasks more effectively
- Requires understanding of how we learn the best
what occurs in infancy (metacognition)
- theory of mind (curious), understand people
- Young children are curious about human mind →meaning they have a theory of mind
- Awareness of one’s and others mental processes
- View children as thinkers trying to explain, predict and understand people’s thoughts, feelings and ideas
Cognitive ability develops in the following ways:
- see things in front of their eyes, positive and negative emotions, others desires are different
- From 18 months to 3 years, children begin to realize that another person will see what is in front of their eyes → instead of what is in front of the child’s eyes
- They can distinguish between positive and negative emotions
- Recognize that someone else’s desires can be different from their own
What occurs in childhood (metacognition)
- Between ages 3 and 5, children also come to understand that the mind can represent objects and events accurately and inaccurately
- The realization that people can have false beliefs, beliefs that are not true, is a pivotal realization in understanding in the mind - recognizing that people can have different and sometimes incorrect beliefs
- It is not until age 5-7 that children move from understanding that beliefs can be false, to realizing that the same event can be open to multiple interpretations
What occurs in adolescence (metacognition)
- plan ahead, manage cognitive resources to meet demend of learning task, understand ppl and their own thorughts, people do not have control over mental ability
- Have increased ability to monitor and manage cognitive resources to effectively meet the demands of a learning task
- Metacognition provides the ability to plan ahead, see the future consequences of an action, and provide alternative explanations
- Period where people understand that people do not have complete control over their mental activity
- Are able to understand their own thoughts and conceive of other people’s thoughts
What occur in adulthood (metacognition)
- By middle age, adults have accumulated a great deal of metacognitive knowledge;
- They can draw on this metacognitive knowledge
- They can draw on this metacognitive knowledge to help them combat and decline in memory skills
- Ex. they are likely to understand that they need to have good organization skills and reminders to help combat the decline in memory skills they face at this age
