HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1 PSYCHOLOGY 3050: Strategy Development Ch 6

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HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1PSYCHOLOGY 3050Strategy
Development (Ch 6)
Dr. Jamie Drover SN-3094, 737-8383 e-mail --
jrdrover_at_mun.ca Winter Semester, 2009
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Strategies of Attention

• Older children are better able to allocate
  attention in accordance with task demands.

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The Cost of Strategy Use

• 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.

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The Cost of Strategy Use

• 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.

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Knowledge and Strategies

• 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.
• Kee and Davies (1990) used Harnishfegers and
  Bjorklunds dual task procedure in 10- and
  11-year-old children.

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Knowledge and Strategies

• Children were given pairs of words and told to
  form associations between them.
• Paired associates task
• Children were instructed to use an elaborations
  strategy to form these associations.
• They used accessible pairs and inaccessible pairs
  to make elaboration easy or difficult.
• The children remembered fewer inaccessible pairs.

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Knowledge and Strategies

• Learning the inaccessible pairs expended more
  mental effort.
• There are three ways in which knowledge can
  affect task performance.
• Item specific effects
• Individual items are more richly represented in
  the semantic memories of older children than in
  younger children.
• Leads to easier retrieval.

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Knowledge and Strategies

• When these lists are balanced in terms of
  meaningfulness, age effects disappear.
• 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.

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Knowledge and Strategies

• 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 166 (Bjorklund Zeman, 1982).

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Last Class

• Strategies of Attention
• Vurpillot and Miller
• Incidental learning (Hagen Stanovich, 1977)
• Utilization deficiencies may occur because
  strategy use requires so much effort.
• Harnishfeger Bjorklund (1987)
• Knowledge and Strategies.
• Explains the performance of experts and age
  effects.
• Kee Davies (1990)
• 3 ways in which knowledge affects performance
• Item-specific effects
• Non-strategic organization (Bjorklund Zeman,
  1982)

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Knowledge and Strategies

• 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.

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Knowledge and Strategies

• Problem solving routines can become automatic.