Chapter 7 - Information Processing Flashcards
The INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH to DEVELOPMENT
The INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH analyses how children manipulate information, monitor it, and create strategies for handling it. Not unlike a computer, children’s information processing may be limited by CAPACITY and SPEED as well as by their ability to manipulate information.
Children’s cognitive development results from their ability to overcome processing limitations by increasingly executing basic operations, expanding information-processing capacity, and acquiring new knowledge and strategies.
COGNITIVE RESOURCES: CAPACITY and SPEED
Developmental changes in information processing are likely to be influenced by increases in both CAPACITY and SPEED of processing - these characteristics are called COGNITIVE RESOURCES and have an important influence on memory and problem solving.
Children’s speed in processing information is linked with their competence in thinking - there is abundant evidence that processing speed improves dramatically across the childhood years.
3 MECHANISMS of CHANGE in the INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH
Three mechanisms work together to create changes in children’s cognitive skills:
1) ENCODING, the process by which information gets into memory - cognitive development depends on increased skill at encoding relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information.
2) AUTOMATICITY, the ability to process information with little or no effort. Practice allows children to encode increasing amounts of information automatically - as information processing becomes automatic, processing speed increases (once children have learned to read well, they do not think about each letter in a word as a letter - they encode whole words).
3) STRATEGY CONSTRUCTION is the creation of new procedures for processing information. Children’s information processing is characterized by SELF-MODIFICATION - the use of knowledge acquired in different circumstances to adapt their responses to a new situation. According to the information processing approach, children can play an active role in their cognitive development if they are engaged in METACOGNITION -knowing about knowing. One example of metacognition is what children know about the best ways to remember what they have read.
ATTENTION and DIFFERENT TYPES of ATTENTION
ATTENTION is the focusing of mental resources - it improves cognitive processing for many tasks. Like adults, children (1) can pay attention to only a limited amount of information and (2) allocate their attention in different ways:
1) SELECTIVE ATTENTION is focusing on a specific aspect of the environment that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant;
2) DIVIDED ATTENTION involves concentrating on more than one activity at the same time;
3) SUSTAINED ATTENTION is the ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a pro- longed period of time - it is also called VIGILANCE;
4) EXECUTIVE ATTENTION involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.
ATTENTION in INFACY
Attention in the first year of life is dominated by an ORIENTING/INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS, followed by SUSTAINED ATTENTION. This process involves directing attention to potentially important locations in the environment and recognizing objects - new stimuli typically elicit an orienting response followed by sustained attention.
Infants’ attention is strongly governed by NOVELTY - when an object becomes familiar, attention
becomes shorter, making infants more vulnerable to distraction. It is influenced by two processes:
1) HABITUATION - decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated exposure;
2) DISHABITUATION - recovery of a habituated response due to change in the stimulus.
In JOINT ATTENTION individuals - usually an infant and a caregiver - focus together on the same object. It requires:
(1) an ability to track another’s behavior, such as following someone’s gaze;
(2) one person directing another’s attention;
(3) reciprocal interaction.
It is the very first step towards COMMUNICATION, as infants are attracted by the movement of someone else’s eye and infer that if they are focusing on a certain object in the environment, that object is worthy of attention.
Early in infancy, joint attention usually involves a caregiver pointing or using words to direct an infant’s attention - by their first birthday, infants have begun to use vocalisations and gestures to direct adults to objects that capture their interest.
ATTENTION in CHILDHOOD
The child’s ability to pay attention improves significantly during the preschool years - young children especially make advances in two aspects of attention—EXECUTIVE and SUSTAINED attention.
Instead of being drawn to the most striking stimulus in their environment, late childhood children can direct their attention to more important stimuli. This change reflects a shift to COGNITIVE CONTROL of attention, so that children act less impulsively and reflect more.
ATTENTION in ADOLESCENCE
Further improvements of SUSTAINED and EXECUTIVE attention are important aspects of adolescent cognitive development. One phenomenon involving divided attention is adolescents’ MULTITASKING, promoted by the availability of multiple electronic media. Multitasking forces the brain to share processing resources, which can distract the adolescent’s attention from what might be most important at the moment.
Controlling and managing attention is a key aspect of LEARNING and thinking in adolescence.
MEMORY and TYPES of MEMORY
MEMORY is the retention of information over time. Basic memory processes are ENCODING, STORAGE and RETRIEVAL.
IMPLICIT MEMORY refers to memory without conscious recollection, whereas EXPLICIT MEMORY refers to the conscious memory of facts and experiences.
Two types of memory can be classified based on their permanence:
1) SHORT TERM MEMORY, a memory system with a limited capacity in which information is usually retained for up to 15 to 30 seconds;
2) LONG TERM MEMORY, a relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory.
STM was first described as a passive waiting room in which information has to stay before being transferred to LTM - but some scholars argued that we do many things with the information stored in short-term memory . Thus, the concept of WORKING MEMORY was born to substitute STM - working memory is a kind of mental “workbench” where individuals manipulate and assemble information when they make decisions, solve problems, and comprehend written and spoken language.
BADDLEY’s model of working memory includes two slave systems — the PHONOLOGICAL LOOP, for auditory information, and the VISUOSPATIAL SKETCHPAD, for visual and spatial information—as well as a CENTRAL EXECUTIVE, which controls the whole system. Its duties include determining what information is stored, relating information from long-term memory to the information in the short-term stores, and moving information into long-term memory.
2 THEORIES of MEMORY CONSTRUCTION
There are two main theories that try to explain how memories are constructed:
1) SCHEMA THEORY
According to schema theory, people shape memories to fit information that already exists in their minds. This process is guided by SCHEMAS, mental frameworks that organize concepts and information - schemas influence the way we encode, make inferences about, and retrieve information. We reconstruct the past rather than retrieve them objectively.
2) FUZZY TRACE THEORY
This theory states that when individuals encode information, they create two types of memory representations, namely (1) a memory for precise details and (2) a representation of the central idea of the information.
EXPERTISE influence an individual’s ability to remember new information - acquired knowledge influences what experts notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information. This in turn affects their ability to remember, reason, and solve problems.
MEMORY in INFANCY
Infants have different abilities in EXPLICIT and IMPLICIT MEMORY formation.
ROVEE-COLLIER conducted research demonstrating that infants as young as 2 to 6 months of age can remember motor-perceptual information in the form of IMPLICIT MEMORY. In the characteristic study, she places an infant in a crib underneath an elaborate mobile which is tied to the baby’s ankle in such a way that if the baby kicks, the mobile moves. Weeks later, the baby is returned to the crib, but its foot is not tied to the mobile - the baby kicks, apparently trying to make the mobile move, only if the mobile is exactly identical to the one she had seen before. If the mobile slightly differs, but is then restored to being exactly as it was when the baby’s ankle was originally tied to it, the baby will begin kicking again.
On the other hand, babies do not show EXPLICIT MEMORY until the second half of the first year - it improves substantially during the second year of life. From about 6 to 12 months of age, the maturation of the HIPPOCAMPUS and the surrounding cerebral cortex, especially the FRONTAL LOBES, makes the emergence of explicit memory possible.
INFANTILE, or CHILDHOOD AMNESIA is the universal phenomenon by which most individuals do not remember the first three years of their lives - during these early years the prefrontal lobes , which play a crucial role in long term memory, are immature.
MEMORY in CHILDHOOD
Children’s memory improves considerably after infancy sources of improvement include:
1) Changes in MEMORY SPAN:
MEMORY-SPAN TASKS - in which a short list of stimuli is presented at a rapid pace and the participant is asked to repeat them - are used to assess the capacity of STM. Research shows that short-term memory increases during childhood. Increase in the SPEED of processing information, especially the speed with which memory items can be identified, could explain this developmental change.
2) Use of STRATEGIES:
Children’s memory improves because they learn to use effective learning strategies, such as:
A) ORGANIZATION, which develops in late childhood;
B) ELABORATION, or more extensive information processing;
C) IMAGERY, the use of mental images to aid memory.
THINKING
THINKING involves manipulating and transforming information in memory - it is the job of the central executive in Baddeley’s model of working memory. CONCEPTS are cognitive groupings of similar objects, events, people, or ideas - they are the product of CATEGORISATION.
METACOGNITION
METACOGNITION includes thinking about and knowing when and where to use particular strategies for learning or for solving problems.
The CULTURAL-SPECIFICITY HYPOTHESIS of MEMORY FORMATION
The CULTURAL-SPECIFICITY HYPOTHESIS of MEMORY FORMATION states that cultural experiences determine what is relevant in a person’s life and thus what the person is likely to remember - culture sensitizes its members to certain objects and events, which in turn can influence the nature of memory.
Furthermore, cultures may vary in the STRATEGIES that children use to remember information, and these cultural variations are usually due to schooling - schooling provides children with specialized information-processing tasks, such as remembering large amounts of information in a short time frame and using logical reasoning, which generates specialized memory strategies.
