DEVELOP Adolescent Cognitive Development

Question 1

What are two examples of basic level and high level cognitive functions?

Answer 1

Attention, Perception + Memory-> Basic.
Logical reasoning, problem solving-> High.

Question 2

What is the maturation of cognitive function linked to?

Answer 2

The maturation of prefrontal cortex.

Question 3

What are the three interrelated concepts associated with cognitive function?

Answer 3

1. Content of adolescent cognitive functions (i.e. what information is being used).
2. Structure in which adolescents’ cognitive functions are organised (i.e. how it is related to other cognitive functions).
3. Process by which adolescents perform basic and higher functions (i.e. how a problem is approached from beginning to solution).

Question 4

What is perception?

Answer 4

Cognitive ability present from early on in life.
Changes in age.
Changes in flexibility of perception;
-flexibility of visual perception is tested easily with ambiguous figures- a figure that can be perceived in 2 (or more) ways.
e.g. gopnik & rosati (2001), van krevelen (1959), wimmer et al (2011).
=presented with ambiguous figures: younger children 2-5yrs generally report seeing one figure.
Only when adult makes distinction between 2 elements do younger children see 2nd figure.
Young adolescents (11-13) can perceive them more flexibly.

Question 5

What is selective attention?

Answer 5

Ability to allocate attentional resources and focus on a specific object.
-ability improves with age, especially in adolescence.
-crucial for problem solving where you may need to pay attention to relevant information + ignore irrelevant information.

Question 6

What is the central-incidental learning task?

Answer 6

Task uses set of cards containing 2 objects belonging to different categories (e.g. animal and a tool).
-ppt asked to remember one category (i.e. central) and not pay attention to another category (i.e. incidental).
-later asked to recall items from both.
-adolescents better at selective attention cause more likely to remember items from central class than incidental class.

Question 7

What is processing speed?

Answer 7

Defined as tie taken by brain to receive or output information; or speed in which mental calculation can be carried out.
-speed of processing develops during childhood + continues during adolescence.
-older adolescents show faster speed of processing compared to young.
-development is partially driven by maturation of white matter in brain (i.e. myelination).

Question 8

What is used to investigate white matter parts of brain?

Answer 8

Diffuse technique imaging.
Directionality of water in white matter can be used to reconstruct structure of white matter. Myelination increases processing speed increases as well.

Question 9

Outline Ferrer et al (2013) study into processing speed + reasoning?

Answer 9

Ppt: 103 children + adolescents between 6-19yrs of age.
Measured relationship between white matter organisation- diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) + processing speed- cross out subtest of Woodcock-Johnson tests of Achievement (Woodcock et al 2001).

Question 10

What are the behavioural tasks to study visuospatial ‘fluid’ reasoning?

Answer 10

Reasoning Measures, Block Design, Woodcock- Johnson Tests of Achievement.

Question 11

Describe Matrix reasoning?

Answer 11

Sub-test of Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI;Wechsler, 1999).
Modelled after traditional test of ‘fluid’ or non-verbal reasoning, the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1938).
Measures ability to select geometric visual stimulus that accurately completes array of stimuli arranged according to one or more progression rules.

Question 12

What is Block Design?

Answer 12

Another sub-test of WASI:
Measure ability to arrange set of red-and-white blocks in way to reproduce 2-dimensional visual pattern shown on set of cards.

Question 13

What are concept formulation ?

Answer 13

Subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement.
-Concept Formation: ppt must identify rules making up geometric figures after exposure to concepts.
-Analysis Synthesis: measures the ability to analyse the structure of an incomplete logical puzzle and complete the missing parts.

Question 14

What are the four measures of reasoning?

Answer 14

Matrix Reasoning, Block Design, Concept Formation, Analysis synthesis.

Question 15

What is Short Term Memory (STM)?

Answer 15

Subject to temporal decay (i.e. loss over time) and chunk capacity limits (i.e. storage limits).
Try to measure changes in how quickly information in STM forgotten and how many items can be remembered as we age.
Look at how these correlate with changes in brain and other cognitive functions (e.g. reasoning) in adolescence.

Question 16

How is STM often measured?

Answer 16

->Span task- series of items presented at rate of 1/sec (letter/digits or words); task is to repeat them in same order.
-> Spatial span task-blocks presented in particular arrangement and experimenter taps the blocks in specific order, ppt required to repeat the sequence.

Question 17

How does chunking capacity change over time?

Answer 17

Improves during adolescents.
These age-related improvements remain constant across varying retention intervals 5-30 seconds of delay (Ryan, 1990) not purely function of temporal decay.

Question 18

What explanations are there for age-related improvements in STM?

Answer 18

-neurological changes during childhood and adolescence.
-volumetric changes in medial temporal lobe cause of sexual maturation during puberty (Hu et al, 2013) i.e. changes in amygdala, hippocampus etc.
-grey matter changes in frontal lobe cause of brain maturation during adolescence (Conklin et al, 2007).

Question 19

What does Cowan (2008) detail as the 3 conceptualisations of WM?

Answer 19

1. short-term memory applied to cognitive tasks.
2. multi-component system holds and manipulates information in short term memory.
3. use of attention to manage short-term memory.

Question 20

How is Working Memory measured?

Answer 20

-modified span task- participants presented with series of items and asked to reproduce them in reverse order.
-letter span task- list of random letters presented, ppt required to repeat letters in order they appear.

Question 21

What is Long Term Memory (LTM)?

Answer 21

-longer than STM.
-memory for people or events and general knowledge.
-absolute capacity does not appear to change with age.
-strategies on how we form these memories does change with age.

Question 22

What is memory formation?

Answer 22

Forming memories relies on brain plasticity.
-> neurogenesis, synaptogenesis and pruning.
Brain has ability to learn from experience throughout life, in sensitive periods, plasticity of brain is experience-expectant.

Question 23

What is the difference between memory strategies used by young children and older children?

Answer 23

Young kids use rehearsal strategy.
Older kids use complex strategies e.g. noticing patterns.

Question 24

What is the cluster effect?

Answer 24

Seen in older children who are able to reorganise clusters (or chunks) of items in memory.
Different kinds of elaboration is organisation strategy.
Both rehearsal + elaboration help STM memory, former is more effective.

Question 25

How do things go from STM to LTM?

Answer 25

More sophisticated strategies for remembering information increases through childhood. Young children use elaboration strategies- do so in a limited way. -If presented with list of items of different categories to remember (e.g. colours, animals, types of tools), adolescents will use information about categories to recall more items when asked to recall as many items as possible from list. -means actively organise material. But not all elaboration strategies produce same benefits.

Question 26

Detail Luciana et al (2005) research into Working Memory strategies?

Answer 26

Tested 9-20yr olds on various WM tasks: -non-verbal recognition-shown faces, then shown two, one already seen before. -delayed spatial recall-dots flash in locations on screen with short or long delay, ppt needed to indicate location of dot with touch pen. -spatial memory span- sequences tapped on 3 blocks in front of ppt, need to reproduce in correct order (tests immediate spatial recall + attention) and backwards (as non-verbal test of working memory). -spatial self-ordered search- measures ppt ability to conduct organized search of locations to obtain tokens hidden at each location.

Question 27

Why does working memory place heavy demand on executive control?

Answer 27

Needs strategic self-monitoring + organization of behaviour plus ongoing demand for information updating.

Question 28

When does recall-guided actions for single units of spatial information develop?

Answer 28

11-12 yrs.

Question 29

When does the ability to maintain and manipulate multiple spatial units in WM develop?

Answer 29

13-15yrs.

Question 30

When does strategic self-organization develop?

Answer 30

16-17yrs.

Question 31

How does face recognition work?

Answer 31

Early adulthood our memory for faces is amazing. 90% accuracy in recognizing faces of high school classmates from yearbook photos- as long as 35 yrs after graduation. Adult recognition ability to result of rapid development of faces processing during childhood + adolescence.

Question 32

What is the encoding switch hypothesis?

Answer 32

Information about faces in represented in memory differently at different ages. -> young children rely on information about individual features. ->adolescents and adults use information about configuration of the features.

Question 33

Why may children not recognise adults when remove e.g. hat or glasses?

Answer 33

Cause encode them based on nonessential information vs adult who encode based on critical information.

Question 34

What where Modloch's findings?

Answer 34

Found that: -6yr olds made more errors than adults on all tasks. -8yr olds as accurate as aduls on facial expression + lip reading, but not head orientation + eye gaze. -10yr olds made more errors than adults on task 2.

Question 35

Why are adolescents better at facial processing than young kids?

Answer 35

Use different information compared to young kids, more experience and general brain maturation. Better memory + can encode and store more relevant information than young kids.

Question 36

Detail Fuhrmann et al (2016) face perception and memory task?

Answer 36

Ppt asked to memorise target faces and find target in panel containing 2 non-target faces. Face Perception Task: ppt asked to decide whether 2 consecutively presented faces were same age or different depending on: 1. gaze direction (left/right). 2. expression (happy/sad). 3. identify (person A/person B).

Question 37

What where the results of Fuhrmann et al study?

Answer 37

-face cognition abilities mature relatively late, around 16yrs. -female better at face memory not face perception. -protracted development in identity perception causes late maturation in face perception. -gaze perception abilities already comparatively mature in early adolescence.

Question 38

Why does face identity perception seem to develop later in adolescence than other aspects of face cognition?

Answer 38

-could be cause of temporal lobe areas such as fusiform gyrus an white matter tracts, connecting this area to occipital lobe (responsible for vision). -know that white matter organisation develops throughout childhood and adolescence, the fusiform gyrus also increased in volume (Peelen et al, 2009). -Adolescence is sensitive period where lots of changes happen.