Cognitive Processes PSY 334

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Cognitive ProcessesPSY 334

• Chapter 13 Individual Differences in Cognition
• August 28, 2003

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Cognitive Development

• Humans are born with immature brains.
• Brain doubles in size during first year.
• Brain size doubles again by puberty.
• Much neural development takes place after birth.
• Slow physical growth may provide a longer
  dependence on adults, giving time for the
  acquisition of knowledge.

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Piagets Stages

• Provides a structure for organizing observations
  of child behavior.
• Currently being revised, corrected and
  restructured.
• Controversy over idea that development progresses
  in stages rather than as a continuous process.

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Studies of Conservation

• Knowledge of what properties of the world are
  preserved under various transformations.
• Object permanence sensorimotor stage
• Conservation of quantity, volume, weight changes
  at 6, the boundary between preoperational and
  concrete-operational.

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What Develops

• Two explanations for changes in childrens
  thinking
• They think better more working memory.
• They know better more facts.
• Probably both occur, due to neural changes
• Increase in synaptic connections.
• Myelination increases neural transmission speed.

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Memory Space Theory

• Case growing working memory capacity is key to
  developmental changes.
• Some problems require more facts to be kept in
  memory.
• Increased neural speed leads to increased memory
  capacity.
• Practice reduces demands on working memory.

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Examples

• Noeltings juice problems
• lt 4 all orange juice must be in one pitcher
• 4-5 pick pitcher with most orange juice
• 7-8 compare OJ with water
• 9-10 compute difference between OJ water
• Kails mental rotation problems mental speed
  may increase due to practice.

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Importance of Knowledge

• Chi suggests developmental differences may be
  knowledge-related.
• Kids do worse on memory tasks because they know
  less about the world.
• Chess expert children do better at chess memory,
  worse on digit span.
• Adults more familiar with digits, so do better.
• Soccer memory study only expertise mattered,
  not grade level.

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Cognition and Aging

• Decreases in IQ performance scores occur after
  age 20
• Related to speed of response on tests.
• Older adults do better on jobs.
• Age-related declines in brain function
• Cell loss, shrinkage atrophy.
• Compensatory growth of remaining cells.
• Brain-related degenerative disorders such as
  Alzheimers.

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Productivity in Old Age

• With age, loss of neural function is steadily
  offset by growth of knowledge.
• While the 30s may be the time of peak
  performance, very high performance frequently
  continues into 40s 50s.
• Speed of neural processing changes so less
  information can be held in working memory.

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Psychometrics

• Measures of performance of individuals on a
  number of tasks examination of correlations
  across such tasks.
• IQ Tests Binet, Stanford-Binet, Wechsler
• Mental age vs deviation IQ.
• Factor analysis of performance scores
• Attempt to explain intercorrelations among
  subtests.
• Ongoing debate about identifying factors.

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Factor Theories

• Spearman one general factor called g
• Multiple factors
• Thurstone 3 (verbal, spatial, reasoning)
• Guilford 120
• Cattells theory
• Crystallized intelligence (acquired knowledge)
  increases with age
• Fluid intelligence decreases with age.
• Horn added spatial intelligence to fluid.

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Carrolls Three Strata

• Lowest stratum specific abilities (e.g., be a
  physicist), not inheritable.
• Second stratum broader abilities (verbal
  spatial ability, reasoning, crystallized vs
  fluid).
• Third stratum correlations among second stratum
  abilities to form g

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Kinds of Abilities

• Reasoning ability
• Sternberg connects psychometrics to the
  information-processing approach.
• People who score high on IQ tests also perform
  reasoning steps more quickly.
• Verbal ability
• People who recall words more rapidly do better on
  verbal ability tests.
• Working memory capacity is related to verbal
  ability.

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Kinds of Abilities (Cont.)

• Spatial ability
• Rate of mental rotation is slower for those with
  lower spatial ability test scores.
• People with high spatial ability may choose to
  solve a problem spatially, not verbally.
• Differences in abilities may result from
  differences in rates of processing and
  working-memory capacities.
• Unclear whether this is innate or a difference in
  practice (nature vs nurture).

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Gardners Multiple Intelligences

• Gardner proposed that seven different
  intelligences are supported by different kinds of
  knowledge representation
• Separate neural mechanisms.
• Separate developmental histories.
• Cross-cultural universals in the display of such
  abilities.
• Abilities linguistic, musical, mathematical,
  spatial, bodily kinesthetic, personal
  (self-understanding, social).

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Critique of Multiple Intelligences

• Strong evidence for distinct linguistic and
  spatial intelligence.
• Mathematical intelligence closely related to
  spatial so may not be distinct.
• Remaining intelligences not usually considered
  cognitive but may be universal.
• Gardner argues that intelligence is not unitary
  and thus hard to compare.