Transcript Chapter 8 - Bakersfield College

Chapter 8
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:
INFORMATION-PROCESSING
PERSPECTIVES
INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORIES
• Analogy of the mind as a computer
• Information flows through a limited-capacity
system of mental hardware and software
– Hardware – brain and nervous system
– Software – mental rules and strategies
INFORMATION FLOW AND THE MULTISTORE
MODEL
• Multistore Model
– Sensory store (sensory register)
• Detects and holds raw sensory input
• Separate store for each sense
• Large amounts of information
• Very limited duration
INFORMATION FLOW AND THE MULTISTORE
MODEL
– Short-term store (STS) / working memory
• Limited information (5-9 pieces)
• Several seconds
• Lost if we do nothing with the info
– Long-term store (LTS)
• Vast and relatively permanent
•
Figure 8.1 A schematic model of the human information processing system. ADAPTED FROM
ATKINSON & SHIFFRIN, 1968.
INFORMATION FLOW AND THE MULTISTORE
MODEL
– Control processes or executive functions
• Involved in planning and monitoring
what is attended to, and what is done
with the information
• Metacognition – knowledge of one’s
cognitive abilities and processes related
to thinking
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN
INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY
• Development of the Short-Term Store
– Assessed with memory span
• Recall in order of rapidly presented
unrelated items
• Highly reliable age differences
• May be based on knowledge base, not
capacity of STS.
•
Figure 8.2 Children’s memory span for digits (digit span) shows regular increases with age. FROM
DEMPSTER, 1981.
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN
INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY
– Assessed with span of apprehension
• Number of items kept in mind at one
time, without mentally operating on them
• Increases with age
• Again related to knowledge base
•
Figure 8.3 Knowledge base affects memory. Children who are chess “experts” recall more about
locations of chess pieces than “novice” adults do. However, adults recall more about numbers
than children do, a finding Chi attributes to adults’ greater familiarity with (or knowledge of)
numbers. ADAPTED FROM CHI, 1978.
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFEERENCES IN
INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY
• Changes in Processing Speed
– Due to biological maturation
• Increased myelination of associative
(thinking) areas of the brain
• Elimination of unnecessary synapses
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT
CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING
• The Development of Strategies
– Deliberately implemented, goal-directed
operations used to aid task performance
• Production and Utilization Deficiencies
–Fail to produce effective strategies
when young
–Fail to benefit immediately from a
newly trained strategy
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT
CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING
• Multiple - and Variable – Strategy Use
–Children have a variety of strategies
they choose from
–Adaptive strategy choice model
»With experience, more
sophisticated strategies are used
»Novel situations children fallback
to easier strategies
•
Figure 8.4 Seigler’s adaptive strategy choice model of development. Change in strategy use is
seen as a series of overlapping waves, with different strategies being used more frequently at
different ages. FROM ROBERT S. SIEGLER, 1996.
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT
CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING
• Teaching strategies to school children
– For reading comprehension
• Summarization
• Mental imagery
• Self-generation of questions
• Question-answering strategies
• Story grammar
• Activating prior knowledge
•
Table 8.1 General model of how to teach strategies. Source: Pressley, M. & Woloshyn, V. (1995).
Cognitive strategy instruction that really improves children’s academic performance (second
edition). Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.
DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT
CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING
• What Children Know about Thinking
– Implicit cognition – thought without
awareness
• An early developing ability that shows
little difference across age
– Explicit cognition – thought with awareness
• Large age differences
•
Figure 8.5 Incomplete drawings similar to these are used in studies of implicit memory. FROM
E.S. GOLLIN, 1962.
BOX 8.1: FOCUS ON RESEARCH
FUZZY-TRACE THEORY
• Fuzzy-Trace Theory – continuum of memory
representations
– Verbatim = literal
• More likely to forget
–Young children use more often
– Fuzzy (gist) = content, but not detail
• Easier to access, and use
–Older children use more often
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENTION
• Changes in Sustained Attention
– Attention span increases dramatically
• Myelination of reticular formation in
puberty
– Selective Attention: Ignoring Irrelevant Info
• Also improves with age; less distraction
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
• Memory Development in Infancy
– Studied with
• Habituation/dishabituation
• Conjugate-reinforcement procedure
–Remember context where previously
reinforced, will repeat action
»Mobile task (2-6 months)
»Train task (6-18 months)
•
Figure 8.6 Maximum duration of retention from 2 to 18 months of age. Filled circles show retention
on the mobile task, open circles show retention on the train task; 6-month-olds were trained and
tested on both tasks. FROM ROVEE-COLLIER, 1999.
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
• Deferred imitation
–Possible at 6 months
–Performance increases with age
–Duration of memory increases with
age
–Based on brain development
»Early maturation of hippocampus
»Slower development of prefrontal
cortex and temporal lobe
•
Figure 8.7 Percentage of 13-, 16-, and 20-month-old infants displaying deferred imitation of threestep sequences as a function of length of delay. FROM BAUER, WENNER, DROPIK, &
WEWERKA, 2000.
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
• The Development of Event and
Autobiographical Memory
– Origins of Event Memory
• Infants remember events
• Demonstrate infantile amnesia
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– Development of Scripted Memory
• Scripts – schemes for recurring events
organized in terms of causal and
temporal sequences
–Organizes world
–Tend to remember info consistent
with scripts
–Become more elaborate with age
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– The Social Construction of
Autobiographical Memories
• Memory of personal experiences
• Parents play a role in development,
through talking with children
–Helps with organization into stories
–What information is important
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
• Children as Eyewitnesses
– Age Differences in Eyewitness Memory
• Typical developmental differences as in
event memory
–Recall few precise details
–Generally accurate, central to event
–Prompting yields more correct and
incorrect facts
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– How Suggestible are Child Witnesses?
• Younger than 9-10 very susceptible to
memory distortions (suggestibility)
• Come to believe events created by
suggestion
• Must be plausible
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– Implications for the Legal Testimony
• Rare for children under 5 to testify
• 6-10 often called as witnesses
–Must use nonleading questions
–Limit number of times interviewed
–Saying “I don’t know” is better than
guessing
–Remaining friendly and patient
•
Table 8.2 Sequence of phases for interviewing children, as recommended by the NICHID
guidelines (adapted from Poole & Lamb, 1998, pp. 98-99)
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
• The Development of Memory Strategies
– Rehearsal – based on repetition
• Older children use rehearsal more
efficiently
–Active or cumulative – repeating
several earlier items as they rehearse
a successive word
• Younger children not able to form useful
clusters (limited capacity)
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– Organization
• Grouping into related categories
–Young children can be trained
– Retrieval Processes
• Free-recall – general prompt
–Difficult for young children
• Cued recall – given specific cues
–Easy for young children
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– Metamemory and Memory Performance
• Knowledge of memory and memory
processes
–Increases from 4-12
»Mind stores interpretations, not
copies of reality
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– Knowledge Base and Memory
Development
• Age differences in recall memory
–Due to increases in knowledge base
–Due to increases in strategies
–The more one knows, the more one
can learn and remember
•
Figure 8.8 Number of idea units remembered about a soccer story for high- and low-aptitude
soccer experts and soccer novices. In this case, being an expert eliminated any effect of
academic aptitude (IQ) on performance. ADAPTED FROM DATA PRESENTED IN SCHNEIDER,
KORKEL, & WEINERT, 1989.
MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING
INFORMATION
– Culture and Memory Strategies
• Rehearsal and organization
–Industrialized societies
• Recall of location or orally transmitted
stories
–Non-western cultures
•
Table 8.3 Four Major Contributors to the Development of Learning and Memory
ANALOGICAL REASONING
• Reasoning
– Type of problem solving requiring one to
make an inference
• Analogical Reasoning
– Applying knowledge about one set of
elements to infer relations about different
elements
• Based on similarity relations
ANALOGICAL REASONING
• Analogical Reasoning in Young Children
– Relational primacy hypothesis
• Analogical reasoning is available in early
infancy
–1 year olds if it is perceptual similarity
–Relational similarity, more advanced,
apparent by 4 years
•
Figure 8.9 The configuration of the three problems 1-year-olds solved to test their reasoning by
analogy. FROM CHEN, SANCHEZ, & CAMPBELL, 1997.
•
Figure 8.10 Example of problem used in Goswami & Brown. Children must select from set of
pictures in bottom row (picture D through G) the one that best completes the visual analogy on the
top row (the correct answer is D). FROM GOSWAMI & BROWN, 1990.
ANALOGICAL REASONING
• The Role of Knowledge in Children’s
Analogical Reasoning
– Must understand the base relation
• Transitivity inferences – relations among
at least 3 objects
–3 and 4 year olds capable, IF the
basis for the analogy was familiar
ANALOGICAL REASONING
• The Role of Metacognition in Children’s
Analogical Thinking
– Metacognition – knowing about analogical
reasoning is important
• Teaching children the value of reasoning
by analogy increases use of this type of
thinking
DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS
• Infants can use quantitative info
• Toddlers have a rudimentary understanding
of ordinal relationships
• Counting and Arithmetic Strategies
– 3-4 can count accurately
– 4 ½ - 5 cardinality – last word in a
sequence is the number if items in a set
– Sum strategy – counting both numbers
– Min strategy – start from value of larger
DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS
• Development of Mental Arithmetic
– Decomposition strategies
• Breaking problem into simpler problems
– Fact retrieval
• Retrieved from long-term memory
– Tends to follow the adaptive strategy
choice model
DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS
• Math Disabilities
– Poor procedural skills
– Deficits in retrieval from long-term memory
– Smaller working-memory spans
– Computation errors produce incorrect
answers
• Can become part of long-term memory
DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS
• Cultural Influences on Math Performance
– Math Competencies of Unschooled
Children
• Problems embedded in real-life contexts
are solved correctly
• Standard, out-of-context presentation
tend to be incorrect
DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS
– Cultural Variations in Arithmetic Among
Schooled Children
• Americans worse than East Asians
–Beginning in 1st grade; grows larger
–Linguistic Supports
»Numbering system, fractions
–Instructional Supports
»More practice, colored text for 1’s
10’s and 100’s
EVALUATING THE INFORMATIONPROCESSING PERSPECTIVE
• Reasonable description of how cognitive
processes change with age and influence
thinking
• Ignores evolutionary/neurological influences
• Little attention to social/cultural influences
• Not a comprehensive theory
– An analysis of parts
• Underestimates richness/diversity of
cognition