Chapter Eight

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Chapter Eight

• Cognitive Development Information Processing
  Perspectives

2
Information Flow and the Multistore Model

• Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968)
  developed a multistore model of the information
  processing system.
• The first component is the sensory store (or
  sensory register), in which stimuli are noticed
  and briefly available for further processing.
• The second information processing store is the
  short-term store (STS). Here stimuli are retained
  for several seconds and operated on (also called
  working memory).
• New information that is operated on while in the
  STS passes into the long-term store (LTS).
• This is the vast, relatively permanent storehouse
  of information that includes your knowledge and
  impressions of the world.

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The Information-Processing System
Responses
Environmental Input
Sensory Store
Short-term (working) memory
Long-term memory
Executive control processes
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Other Information-Processing Theories

• Similar theories propose that the mind like a
  computer, and thought to be of limited capacity.
• Also included in most information-processing
  models is a concept of executive control
  processes, or metacognition.
• These include processes by which we plan,
  monitor, and control all phases of information
  processing.

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Differences in Information-Processing Capacity

• STS (short-term store) is usually assessed using
  memory span. Memory span refers to the number of
  rapidly presented and unrelated items that can be
  recalled in exact order.
• Age differences in memory span are highly
  reliable. This differences, however, might
  represent differences in strategy use, rather
  than in age and capacity.

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Differences in Information-Processing Capacity

• Cowan and his colleagues also discovered that
  span of apprehension could measure STS capacity.
  The span of apprehension refers to the number of
  items people can keep in mind at one time.
• Prior knowledge also effects memory. Knowledge
  base, how quickly children process information,
  also accounts for differences.

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Strategies and Knowledge of Thinking

• Information processing often depends on
  strategies, which are goal oriented operations
  used to help in task performance.
• Frequently children have production deficiencies,
  in which children fail to produce a strategy on
  their own but can do so when instructed.

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Strategies and Knowledge of Thinking

• Utilization deficiencies occur when children
  experience little or no benefit from a new
  strategy.
• Sielger uses the adaptive strategy model to
  explain how there are a variety of strategies
  which children can choose from at a given time,
  but one strategy usually wins and thats the one
  they use. As children get older, more
  sophisticated strategies begin to win.

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What children know about Thinking

• Implicit thinking refers unconscious thought,
  which accounts for most of our thinking.
• Explicit thinking is conscious thinking that we
  are aware of.
• Childrens understanding of what thinking is
  increases over the preschool years. The are few
  developmental differences, however, that occur in
  implicit cognition during this time.

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Fuzzy-Trace Theory An Alternative View

• Proposed by Brainerd and Reyna, this theory
  postulates that people encode experiences on a
  continuum from literal, verbatim traces to fuzzy,
  gistlike traces.
• A gist is a fuzzy representation of information
  that preserves the central content but few
  precise details.
• Other alternatives to traditional
  information-processing models emphasize the role
  of inhibition.
• Inhibition is the ability to prevent ourselves
  from executing some cognitive or behavioral
  response.

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Development of Attention

• With age, attention spans, the capacity for
  sustaining attention to a particular activity,
  increase dramatically. This is thought to be a
  result of the increasing myelination of the
  central nervous system because reticular
  formation, the area of the brain responsible for
  attention regulation, is not fully myleniated
  until puberty.

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Development of Attention

• Selective attention, the ability to focus on a
  given task while ignoring distracters, develops
  with age. Planning of attention also develops
  with age.
• ADHD is used to describe children who find it
  very difficult to sustain attention for an
  extended period of time. These children fail to
  develop planned attention strategies.

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Memory Retraining and Retrieving Information

• Strategic memory refers to the processes involved
  as one consciously attempts to retain or retrieve
  information.
• On the other hand, event memory refers to
  long-term memory for events.
• Autobiographical memory is memory for important
  events that have happened to us.

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Development of Memory Strategies

• Mnemonics are effortful techniques used to
  improve memory, including rehearsal,
  organization, and elaboration.
• Rehearsal is a strategy for remembering that
  involves repeating the items one is trying to
  retain.
• Semantic organization is another strategy that
  involves grouping or classifying stimuli into
  meaningful (or manageable) clusters that are
  easier to retain.
• Elaboration involves adding something to (or
  creating meaningful links between) the bits of
  information one is trying to retain.

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Retrieval Processes

• Retrieval is a class of strategies aimed at
  getting information out of long-term memory.
• In free-recall, a recollection occurs that is not
  prompted by specific cues.
• In cued-recall, a recollection is prompted by a
  specific cue associated with the setting in which
  the recalled event originally occurred.

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Metamemory

• Metamemory is an aspect of metacognition that is
  defined by ones knowledge about memory and
  memory processes.
• This increases with age and contributes to
  developmental and individual differences in
  memory.
• Older children known more about memory processes,
  and their greater metamemory allows them to
  select the most appropriate strategies for the
  task at hand and to carefully monitor their
  progress.

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The Development of Event and Autobiographical
Memory

• Event memory in general, and our memory for
  personal experiences (or autobiographical memory)
  are rarely intentional as strategic memory is.
• Although infants can remember events that
  happened earlier in time, most of us display
  infantile amnesia.
• Early autobiographical memory is based on
  scripts. Even very young children organize their
  experiences in terms of scripts, which become
  more detailed with age.

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Autobiographical Memories

• These memories improve dramatically during the
  preschool years.
• Parents play a key role in the growth of
  autobiographical memories by discussing past
  events, providing clues about what information is
  important, and helping children recall their
  experiences.
• One aspect of autobiographical memory that has
  received much attention is age differences in eye
  witness memory and suggestibility.
• The accuracy of childrens eyewitness memory
  increases with age.
• Young children are more susceptible to suggestion
  than older children and are more likely to form
  false memories.

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Problem Solving

• Problem solving involves having a goal, obstacles
  to that goal, strategies for overcoming the
  obstacles, and an evaluation of the results.
• Research by Zelazo and colleagues suggests that
  young children often fail to use a rule even
  though they can demonstrate knowledge of the
  rule.

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Reasoning

• Reasoning is a special type of problem solving,
  one that usually requires that one make an
  inference.
• Analogical reasoning involves using something one
  knows already to help reason about something not
  known yet.
• Usha Goswami (1996) proposed the relational
  primacy hypothesis, suggesting that analogical
  reasoning is available in infancy.

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Factors that Affect Childrens Analogical
Reasoning

• One important factor is knowledge.
• Their knowledge, or familiarity, with the
  underlying relations used to make the analogy is
  significant.
• Metacognition plays a role as well.
• A conscious awareness of the basis on which one
  is solving the problem is integral.

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Development of Number and Arithmetic Skills

• The ability to process quantitative information
  is innate.
• Counting normally begins shortly after children
  begin to talk.
• By age 4 ½ to 5, children have acquired the
  principle of cardinalitythe knowledge that the
  last word in a counting sequence represents the
  number of items in a set.

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Early Arithmetic Strategies

• Childrens earliest arithmetic strategies are
  based on counting, at first out loud, and often
  using props such as fingers.
• At some point during the early grade-school
  years, childrens solutions to simple arithmetic
  problems become more covert.
• They no longer count objects on their fingers,
  because they can perform arithmetic operations in
  their heads.

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Cultural Influences on Mathematics Performance

• Unschooled children develop arithmetic strategies
  that they apply quite skillfully to the practical
  problems they encounter.
• East Asian youngsters typically outperform
  American children in certain academic subjects,
  most notably mathematics.
• This is a result of the structure of their
  languages and instructional practices that aid
  them in retrieving math facts and acquiring
  computational skills.

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Conclusions

• The information processing approach has been
  criticized due the lack of attention it pays to
  neurological as well as sociocultural influences.
• The information processing approach also fails to
  provide an integrative theory of childrens
  intelligence and shows a lack of understanding
  for cognitive diversity.
• Still the approach has greatly advanced our
  understanding of childrens intellectual growth.