Transcript Chapter 7 - Play Psych Mun

Last Class
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning/think like a
scientist.
– Hypothetical solutions; Test them one at a time.
– Pendulum Problem.
• Think about thinking and reflective abstraction.
• Egocentricity and Personal Fable (playing to an
audience); Invulnerability
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• Contributions: Task-based, Role of the child,
Equilibration as an explanation, Accurate description
• Criticisms: Underestimated, trained (task specific),
overestimated adults (garlic powder)
• Fuzzy Trace Theory: reason by processing inexact
memory representations, continuum
• Fuzzy Traces are more easily remembered.
• Output Interference: Scheduling Effects and Feedback
Effects
• Children are biased towards verbatim memories.
• They shift to gist during the school years.
– Brainerd & Gordon (1994)
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1
PSYCHOLOGY 3050:
Executive Function, Strategies, and Problem
Solving (Chapter 7)
Dr. Jamie Drover
SN-3094, 864-8383
e-mail – [email protected]
Winter Semester, 2015
Assumptions of Information Processing
• Information moves through a system or pathway.
• Depicted by flow charts.
• Input must go through this system of stores in
serial fashion.
• Based on the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model (1968).
The Information Processing System
Assumptions of Information Processing
• We can only deal with a certain amount of info at
a time, i.e., we have limited capacity.
• If too many operations are added, it will interfere
with the execution of other operations.
• Cognition is domain-general.
– They rely on the same pool of mental resources.
Assumptions of Information Processing
• Automatic Processes: require none of the
short-term store’s limited capacity.
– Occur without intention, don’t interfere with other
processes, don’t improve with practice, not influenced
by individual differences in intelligence.
– E.g., Frequency of occurrence judgments.
Assumptions of Information Processing
• Effortful Processes: require the use of mental
resources for their successful completion.
• Often referred to as strategies or control
processes.
– Available to consciousness, interfere with other
processes, improve with practice, influenced by
individual differences.
– Using a memory strategy.
The Development of Executive Function
• Executive Functions: the processes involved in
planning and monitoring what we attend to and what we
do with the input.
• It involves:
• Working Memory: How much one can hold in the shortterm store and “think about”
• Inhibition and resisting interference.
• Selective attention.
• Cognitive flexibility.
The Development of Executive Function
• Individual differences on executive function are
related to higher level cognitive abilities.
– Reading, mathematics, IQ
Speed of Processing
• Young children require more time and use more
of their limited capacity to execute cognitive
processes.
• The results of these limitations are seen on
several memory tasks.
• Constraints on time and resources/capacity
translate into poorer performance on WM tasks.
Speed of Processing
• Kail (1991; 1997)
– Showed that general developmental changes
in processing speed are similar across
different tasks
– Participants aged 6 to 21 yr
– Series of reaction time (RT) tasks:
• RT is the time it takes to make a response
• Assumption in controlled conditions is that longer
RT means more thinking
• Measure of processing load
Speed of Processing
• Tasks varied in cognitive requirements, difficulty
–
–
–
–
–
Mental rotation
Memory search
Name retrieval
Mental addition
Visual search
• Pattern of responses varied across the tasks
was the same across age – faster RT –
increased speed
Kail (1991) – Speed of Processing
Speed of Processing
• Kail believes that maturationally based factors
are primarily responsible for the age-related
changes in speed of processing.
• Brain maturation (e.g., myelin – neural speed)
accounts for this in part.
Memory Span and Working Memory
• Usually assessed with tests of memory span.
– Unrelated items that can be recalled in order.
• Digit span improves with age.
• Span of apprehension has been tested.
– Number of items that can be kept in mind at any one
time.
– Amount of information people can attend to at any
one time
Memory Span and Working Memory
• Can be measured while one is playing computer
games and hears number presented over
headphones.
– Told to ignore numbers. Later recall numbers.
• Apprehension span increases with age.
• A detailed knowledge base in a particular area
facilitates memory for that information.
– Eg. Chess experts.
Chi (1978) – chess experts
versus novices
So organized knowledge
facilitates recall from STM:
Development of Working Memory
• Working Memory: involves storage of memory
and the capacity to transform information in the
short-term system.
• STM is just storage.
Last Class
• Information Processing: Process info, goes through stores
• Sensory-STM-LTM
– Limited Capacity: Deal with a certain amount of info.
– Automatic: without intention, don’t interfere, don’t improve
– Effortful: available, interfere, improve
• Speed of Processing: Children slow, perform poorly.
• Kail: 6-21 (RT task: mental rotation, memory search, name
retrieval, mental addition, visual search).
• Memory Span (words, digits)
• Span of Apprehension: what can be kept in mind at any one
time.
• Knowledge Base, expertise (Chi, 1978)
The Development of Working Memory
• Baddely and Hitch (1974) stated that working
memory contained a central executive that
stores information.
• Also, two temporary systems.
– Articulatory Loop: encodes verbal information.
Verbal information may be rehearsed here.
– Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad: encodes visual
information.
Visuo-spatial
Sketch pad
Stores:
Visual info
Central Executive
Attentional system:
Directs, coordinates “slave systems”
Articulatory
loop
Stores:
Verbal info
Rehearsal
(subvocalize)
The Development of Working Memory
• Age differences in verbal memory span are
caused by developmental changes in the
articulatory loop.
• Verbal or phonological information is stored in
the articulatory loop.
• Rehearsal of information takes place here.
• As we get older, the rate of rehearsal in the
articulatory loop increases.
– We rehearse more information.
– We remember more information.
Baddeley’s Model: speech rate and memory
span linearly related
Memory Span
High
Low
Low
Causes of
Speech rate
differences
Long words
Young kids
Slow talkers
Rate of Speech (items/sec)
High
Short words
Older kids
Fast talkers
The Development of Working Memory
• Speed of information processing is important.
– Speed of articulation is important.
– Familiarity with the information is also critical.
• Speed of processing is important to cognitive
development in general.
Attention as Resources
• Attention = Concentration
• Attention may consume mental resources.
• Age differences in the ability to attend to a task
may lead to differences in the ability to allocate
limited mental resources.
• There are individual differences and age
differences in the ability to stay on task.
• Attention span increases with age.
Inhibition and Resistance to Interference
• Inhibition: Active suppression process, such as
the removal of task-irrelevant information from
working memory.
• As children get older, they are better able to
inhibit inappropriate responses which permits
more efficient execution of other operations.
• Resistance to Interference: avoiding
performance decrements under conditions of
multiple distracting stimuli.
Inhibition and Resistance to Interference
• Can be assessed using the day/night task.
– Very difficult for preschoolers.
• Can also be assessed with the tapping task or
Simon says.
• Young children show difficult inhibiting speech
(Kipp & Pope, 1997).
Developmental Differences
• As children get older, they are better able to
execute inhibitory processes.
• Harnishfeger and Bjorklund (1990; 1994)
propose that differences in the ability to keep
task-inappropriate information out of working
memory influences task performance.
– Young children can not ignore task-irrelevant info
– Can’t keep task irrelevant thoughts out of WM.
– Task-irrelevant info clutters WM reducing functional
memory space.
The Development of Strategies
• Memory strategies:
– Goal directed processes that are adopted to enhance
cognitive (e.g., memory) performance
• Effortful
• Deliberate
• Usually conscious or explicit
The Development of Strategies
• Even a 2-year-old will use strategies.
• The frequency and effectiveness of strategy use
increases with age.
• Younger children can be taught strategies that
they do not use spontaneously, which can
improve their performance.
– Eg. rehearsal
– Production deficiency
The Development of Strategies
• Preschoolers do use strategies, even though
they lead to incorrect answers.
• Children as young as 18 months use strategies.
The Development of Strategies
De Loache, Cassidy, & Brown (1985)
• 18- 24-mo-olds watch as Big Bird hidden in their home
environment (e.g., under sofa cushion)
• During a distraction (attractive toy), kids interrupted play
to comment on Big Bird or the hiding place
– Looked at hiding location
– “strategic” – i.e., do something to aid recall
Utilization Deficiencies
• There is a phase in which young children use
strategies as effectively as older children, but do
not benefit.
• Miller et al (1990) found that young preschoolers
showed no selective strategy.
cage
cage
house
cage
house
house
house
house
cage
house
cage
cage
Utilization Deficiencies
• Later, children partially use selective strategies.
• Later, they use selective strategies, but they do
not help, i.e., utilization deficiency.
• Utilization deficiencies are common.
Utilization Deficiencies
• These deficiencies may be due to lack of mental
resources.
– Don’t have enough available resources to retain the
information.
• May be due to poor metacognition.
• Utilization deficiencies may be beneficial and
may be short-lived.
– Coyle & Bjorklund (1997).
– But see Schlagmüller & Schneider (2002).
How Do Strategies Develop?
• Children use a variety of strategies to solve a
problem.
• Siegler’s adaptive strategy choice model
proposes that in cognitive development, children
generate a variety of strategies.
• Those that are effective will remain, those that
are less effective will eventually decrease in
frequency.
How Do Strategies Develop?
• But development occurs
as a series of overlapping
waves, not through a
series of steps.
• Multiple strategies are
available, but those that
are used change with
age.
Last Class
• Working Memory: Central Exec, Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad,
Articulatory Loop
• Articulatory Loop develops, rehearse faster, rehearse more,
remember more.
• Strategies: Effortful, deliberate, conscious.
• Production Deficiency, Not always (DeLoache et al., 1985).
• Utilization Deficiency (Miller et al., 1990).
– Coyle & Bjorklund (1997).
– But see Schlagmüller & Schneider (2002).
– Limited capacity, metacognition
• Adaptive Strategy Choice Model: Have a number of strategies
available.
– Those used most frequently change with age.
How Do Strategies Develop?
• A common example to illustrate strategy
development is simple arithmetic.
• There are many available strategies.
– Sum strategy, min strategy, fact retrieval,
• Children use a variety of these strategies at any
one time.
• The frequency with which they are used varies
with age.
How Do Strategies Develop?
• Bjorklund and Rosenblum (2002) looked at
strategies used by children when playing
Snakes and Ladders and performing academic
arithmetic.
• Children rarely relied on one strategy only and
distribution varied depending on the context.
– The sum strategy was most used in the game context,
but least used in the academic context.
• Strategies also varied with the difficulty of the
problem.
The Development of Memory Strategies
• AKA Mnemonics.
Rehearsal
• Flavell et al. (1966)
– Grade K, 2, and 5 children were shown pictures they
were asked to remember.
– Age-related increases in amount of rehearsal (lip
movements), in picture recall task
– 85% of GR 5 vs. 10% of GR K.
– Within age – more rehearsal, better recall
• greater frequency
The Development of Memory Strategies
• Ornstein et al. (1975) – not only frequency, but
type of rehearsal is important
– Used overt rehearsal procedure in grade 3, 6, and 8
children.
– All kids instructed to rehearse.
– Age difference in style of rehearsal, not in frequency
– Young children use passive rehearsal.
– Older children use cumulative rehearsal.
• older kids showed better recall than younger
Rehearsal sets
Word presented
Eighth grade child
Third grade child
1. Yard
yard, yard, yard
yard, yard, yard,
yard, yard
2. Cat
cat, yard, cat, yard
cat, cat, cat, cat,
cat
3. Man
man, cat, yard,
man, cat, yard,
man, man, man,
man, man, man
4. Desk
desk, man, cat, yard,
desk, man, cat, yard
desk, desk, desk,
desk, desk
The Development of Memory Strategies
Organization
• The structure discovered or imposed on a set of
items that is used to guide performance.
• Often assessed by clustering.
• Adults who show high levels of clustering tend to
recall more.
• Recall and clustering increase with age.
The Development of Memory Strategies
• Children can be trained to use clustering.
• This often leads to positive results.
– Production Deficiency
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
• Mental Capacity
• Perhaps children do not have enough resources
to execute a strategy and perform other aspects
of the task at the same time.
• Bjorklund and Harnishfeger (1987) had grade 3
and 7 children study a list of words using
organization.
• At the same time they had to press a space bar
as fast as they could.
– Tapping rates were compared to those from a
baseline measure.
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
• The more mental effort required from the
strategy use, the slower the tapping rate.
• Both groups used the organization strategy.
• Both groups showed decreases in tapping rates.
• Only the grade 7 children showed recall
improvement.
• Strategies are effortful, particularly in young
children.
– They are less likely to benefit from strategy use.
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
• Knowledge base affects the use of strategies.
• Having a detailed or elaborate knowledge base
results in faster processing for domain specific
information.
• This results in more efficient processing and
greater availability of mental resources.
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
•
There are three ways in which knowledge can
affect task performance.
1. Item specific effects
• Individual items are more richly represented in
the semantic memories of older children than
in younger children.
–
Leads to easier retrieval.
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
•
When these lists are balanced in terms of
meaningfulness, age effects disappear.
2. Nonstrategic Organization
• As we get older, there is an increase in
automatic organization.
• When highly associated words are used on a
memory test, both young and old children
benefit.
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
• When nonassociated words are used, young
children show poor performance compared to
older children.
• Semantic relations between highly associated
items occurs with little effort.
• Studies show that age differences in recall are
eliminated when children have detailed
knowledge about the information.
– See page 279 (Bjorklund & Zeman, 1982).
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
3. Facilitating Strategies
• Detailed knowledge allows one to used
strategies more efficiently.
• Sometimes we realize that we categorize
information during recall, and then continue to
use the strategy for the rest of the task.
• Problem solving routines can become
automatic
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
• Metacognition implies that a person is selfaware of his or her thinking.
• Use and availability of strategies require
metacognitive awareness.
• Children vary in terms of the strategies they
have available, their effectiveness, when they
should be used, and their ability to monitor
performance.
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
• Declarative metacognition: explicit, conscious,
and factual knowledge a person has about the
characteristics of the task being performed,
one’s weak and strong points, and strategies
that can be used on the task.
• Procedural metacognition: knowledge of when
strategies need to be used, and monitoring
one’s performance on a task.
Factors Influencing Strategy Use and Effectiveness
• Metamemory: Our knowledge of our own
memory.
• Grade kindergarten and one children show little
evidence of metamemory (Kreutzer, 1975).
• Young children are often unaware that strategies
can help them solve problems.
• When taught strategies, they are often unaware
that they facilitate performance and do not
generalize.
– See Ringel and Springer (1980) on p. 283.
Problem Solving and Reasoning
Four basic components of problem solving:
1. Goal
– desired object, state
2. Obstacles
– can’t attain goal -- blocked
3. Strategies for overcoming obstacles
– deliberate solutions, plans
4. Evaluation of results
– Did the strategy work?
– Why or why not?
– Reorganize
The Development of Problem Solving
• When does it begin?
• Basic cognitive requirement
– some sense of goal-directed behavior
• Need precedes action
• Not fortuitous discovery
– Beginning of cause and effect (means-end)
understanding
• intentionality: make a response to produce an
effect
• “If I remove the cloth, I can get the toy”
The Development of Problem Solving
• Piaget said: by about 8 months
• Beginning of the coordination of secondary
circular reactions
– Substage 4 of the sensorimotor period
• Infants use one behavior strategically in the
service of another
– Remove a cloth to get hidden toy
The Development of Problem Solving
• Willatts (1990) tested 6-8 month-olds with a meansend problems solving task.
– distant toy on cloth out of reach
– pull cloth, toy moves within reach, get toy
• All infants pulled cloth
– 6 mo: lost interest in toy, play with cloth
– 8 mo: ignore cloth, retrieve toy
The Development of Problem Solving
The Development of Problem-Solving
• Chen et al. (1997) tested infants with a complex Willattstype task -- retrieve out of reach toy (p. 288)
– Barrier between baby and toy
– Two strings: one attached to toy, one not – also out of reach –
each string is on a cloth that is within reach
– Solution: pull cloth, then pull string attached to toy
– parents model if baby can’t do in 100 sec
• Question: can they use solution to retrieve other toys in
similar problems?
– Task (toy) 1 -- 29% correct; Task 2 -- 43%; Task 3 -- 67%
– efficiency (goal-directed vs trial/error) increased across trials
• 12 mo-olds use similarity between tasks to solve
analogous problems
The Development of Problem Solving
• Bullock & Lutkenhaus (1988) -- 15 to 35 mo.
– build a house by stacking blocks
– copy adult-built model
• Youngest infants: little goal-directed activity
– Random “stacking”
– No reference to the model
• Older children: goal-directed
– Monitored performance, self-correction (85%)
– Showed pleasure at outcome (e.g., smiling)
The Development of Problem Solving
• Knowledge of the problem domain and context factors
enhances problem solving
• Ceci (1996)
– Defined context as the way in which a problem is
represented in long-term memory
• Includes knowledge about the task and reason for
doing it
– 10-yr-olds asked to use a joystick to predict where (on
a computer screen) a target would land
– Dull version (shapes, colors)
– Fun version – video game (capture prey)
– Algorithm to solve problem identical
– Poor performance on the dull task, excellent
performance on the game task
Reasoning
• A type of problem-solving that requires making
an inference
– go beyond information given
– consider evidence and arrive at a new solution
• 3 types of reasoning
– Analogical: use something you know to figure
something you don’t know
– Formal: form of an argument, not its semantic content
is critical – formal logic
– Scientific: hypothesis generation and testing
Analogical Reasoning
• Using something you know to figure something you don’t
know
– involves relational mapping
– A:B as C:? ; man is to woman as boy is to ?
– Similarity relations
• Large individual differences across lifespan; related to IQ
• Piaget: formal operational skill
• Others argue for earlier signs in toddlers, preschoolers
– Depends on factors such as task complexity,
knowledge, working memory capacity, representation
– More than reasoning per se
Analogical Reasoning in Young Children
• Holyoak (1984) -- preschoolers, kindergarten
• problem: move gumballs from near bowl to far out-ofreach bowl
– can’t leave chair
– props -- paper, scissors, aluminum cane, tape, string
• Before solving: hear story about a different but
analogous problem and solution using props.
– 50% solve gumball problem, remainder successful
after hint
– Success depended on perceptual similarity between
objects in story and their objects
Analogical Reasoning in Young Children
• Goswami (1990): relational similarity harder -- bird :
nest as dog :?
– Problems must be resolved based on relational
similarity, not perceptual similarity.
– 4-, 5-, 9-yrs perform at 59%, 66%, 94% correct,
respectively
Scientific Reasoning
• Formal operational skill
• Involves generating hypotheses about how
something works and systematically testing them
• Identify factors that affect the phenomenon -vary one factor at a time -- hold other factors
constant
– e.g., pendulum problem
Scientific Reasoning
• Four variables
–
–
–
–
Amount of weight of the hanging object
Length of the string
Height from which weight is dropped
Force of the push
• Which variable affects pendulum speed?
– (answer: length of the string)
• Can only be ascertained by systematic
hypothesis testing experimentation
– Hold three variables constant and vary the fourth
Scientific Reasoning
• One must consider evidence when reasoning
scientifically.
• Adolescents and children often don’t do this (see
Kuhn et al., 1988; p 296).
• Can improve with practice and training
– See CVS study (Chen & Klahr, 1999; p. 296).
– 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders were trained on how to conduct
experiments.
– Involved explicit or implicit instructions.
– They transferred these abilities to different tests.
Inhibition and ADHD
• Hyperactivity, impulsiveness, difficulty in
sustaining attention
– Children and adults
– 3 to 7% in USA, more common in boys
– One-third of these persist into adulthood
• Children with ADHD more likely to have
problems in and outside school
– Learning
– Antisocial behavior
– Peer relationships
Inhibition and ADHD
• Barkley (1997) believes the principal cause of
ADHD is deficits in behavioral inhibition.
• BI requires the ability to:
– Inhibit a prepotent (dominant) response
– Stop an ongoing response
– Resist interference
• BI influences:
– Working memory
– Self-regulation of emotion
– Internalization of speech
Inhibition and ADHD
• Children with ADHD (compared to those without)
do show deficiencies in these areas:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Do poorly on WM tasks
Less proficient at imitating long sequences of actions
Poor sense of time
Adversely affected by delay
More likely to be irritable, excitable
Less likely to use task appropriate strategies
• BI is likely at least part of the problem of ADHD
Cognitive Flexibility
• The ability to shift between rules or tasks.
• Can be assessed using the Dimensional Card Sorting
Task.
• 3 year-olds have trouble with switch trials. 4-year-olds
do not.
Cognitive Flexibility
• This shift may be explained by the cognitive
complexity and control theory (Zelazo & Frye,
1997).
• There are age-related changes in the complexity
of rule systems that one can represent.
• Differences in reflection lead to increased
control over behavior and cognition.
Cognitive Flexibility
• A recursive process whereby the contents of
consciousness become an object of
consciousness that can be operated on and
modified.
• Children acquire rules early and can follow them
sometimes. Coordinating rules requires greater
conscious reflection, which develops over the
preschool years.