Chapter 8 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: INFORMATION-PROCESSING PERSPECTIVES

INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORIES Analogy of the mind as a computer Information flows through a limited-capacity system of mental hardware and software Hardware – brain and nervous system Software – mental rules and strategies

INFORMATION FLOW AND THE MULTISTORE MODEL Sensory store (sensory register) Detects and holds raw sensory input Separate store for each sense Large amounts of information Very limited duration

INFORMATION FLOW AND THE MULTISTORE MODEL Short-term store (STS) / working memory Limited information (5-9 pieces) Several seconds Lost if we do nothing with the info Long-term store (LTS) Vast and relatively permanent

Figure 8.1 A schematic model of the human information processing system. ADAPTED FROM ATKINSON & SHIFFRIN, 1968.

INFORMATION FLOW AND THE MULTISTORE MODEL Control processes or executive functions Involved in planning and monitoring what is attended to, and what is done with the information Metacognition – knowledge of one’s cognitive abilities and processes related to thinking

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY Development of the Short-Term Store Assessed with memory span Recall in order of rapidly presented unrelated items Highly reliable age differences May be based on knowledge base, not capacity of STS.

Figure 8.2 Children’s memory span for digits (digit span) shows regular increases with age. FROM DEMPSTER, 1981.

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY Assessed with span of apprehension Number of items kept in mind at one time, without mentally operating on them Increases with age Again related to knowledge base

Figure 8. 3 Knowledge base affects memory Figure 8.3 Knowledge base affects memory. Children who are chess “experts” recall more about locations of chess pieces than “novice” adults do. However, adults recall more about numbers than children do, a finding Chi attributes to adults’ greater familiarity with (or knowledge of) numbers. ADAPTED FROM CHI, 1978.

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFEERENCES IN INFORMATION-PROCESSING CAPACITY Changes in Processing Speed Due to biological maturation Increased myelination of associative (thinking) areas of the brain Elimination of unnecessary synapses

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING The Development of Strategies Deliberately implemented, goal-directed operations used to aid task performance Production and Utilization Deficiencies Fail to produce effective strategies when young Fail to benefit immediately from a newly trained strategy

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING Multiple - and Variable – Strategy Use Children have a variety of strategies they choose from Adaptive strategy choice model With experience, more sophisticated strategies are used Novel situations children fallback to easier strategies

Figure 8. 4 Seigler’s adaptive strategy choice model of development Figure 8.4 Seigler’s adaptive strategy choice model of development. Change in strategy use is seen as a series of overlapping waves, with different strategies being used more frequently at different ages. FROM ROBERT S. SIEGLER, 1996.

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING Teaching strategies to school children For reading comprehension Summarization Mental imagery Self-generation of questions Question-answering strategies Story grammar Activating prior knowledge

Table 8. 1 General model of how to teach strategies Table 8.1 General model of how to teach strategies. Source: Pressley, M. & Woloshyn, V. (1995). Cognitive strategy instruction that really improves children’s academic performance (second edition). Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.

DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN WHAT CHILDREN KNOW ABOUT THINKING Implicit cognition – thought without awareness An early developing ability that shows little difference across age Explicit cognition – thought with awareness Large age differences

Figure 8.5 Incomplete drawings similar to these are used in studies of implicit memory. FROM E.S. GOLLIN, 1962.

BOX 8.1: FOCUS ON RESEARCH FUZZY-TRACE THEORY Fuzzy-Trace Theory – continuum of memory representations Verbatim = literal More likely to forget Young children use more often Fuzzy (gist) = content, but not detail Easier to access, and use Older children use more often

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENTION Changes in Sustained Attention Attention span increases dramatically Myelination of reticular formation in puberty Selective Attention: Ignoring Irrelevant Info Also improves with age; less distraction

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Memory Development in Infancy Studied with Habituation/dishabituation Conjugate-reinforcement procedure Remember context where previously reinforced, will repeat action Mobile task (2-6 months) Train task (6-18 months)

Figure 8. 6 Maximum duration of retention from 2 to 18 months of age Figure 8.6 Maximum duration of retention from 2 to 18 months of age. Filled circles show retention on the mobile task, open circles show retention on the train task; 6-month-olds were trained and tested on both tasks. FROM ROVEE-COLLIER, 1999.

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Deferred imitation Possible at 6 months Performance increases with age Duration of memory increases with age Based on brain development Early maturation of hippocampus Slower development of prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe

Figure 8.7 Percentage of 13-, 16-, and 20-month-old infants displaying deferred imitation of three-step sequences as a function of length of delay. FROM BAUER, WENNER, DROPIK, & WEWERKA, 2000.

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION The Development of Event and Autobiographical Memory Origins of Event Memory Infants remember events Demonstrate infantile amnesia

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Development of Scripted Memory Scripts – schemes for recurring events organized in terms of causal and temporal sequences Organizes world Tend to remember info consistent with scripts Become more elaborate with age

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION The Social Construction of Autobiographical Memories Memory of personal experiences Parents play a role in development, through talking with children Helps with organization into stories What information is important

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Children as Eyewitnesses Age Differences in Eyewitness Memory Typical developmental differences as in event memory Recall few precise details Generally accurate, central to event Prompting yields more correct and incorrect facts

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION How Suggestible are Child Witnesses? Younger than 9-10 very susceptible to memory distortions (suggestibility) Come to believe events created by suggestion Must be plausible

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Implications for the Legal Testimony Rare for children under 5 to testify 6-10 often called as witnesses Must use nonleading questions Limit number of times interviewed Saying “I don’t know” is better than guessing Remaining friendly and patient

Table 8.2 Sequence of phases for interviewing children, as recommended by the NICHID guidelines (adapted from Poole & Lamb, 1998, pp. 98-99)

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION The Development of Memory Strategies Rehearsal – based on repetition Older children use rehearsal more efficiently Active or cumulative – repeating several earlier items as they rehearse a successive word Younger children not able to form useful clusters (limited capacity)

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Organization Grouping into related categories Young children can be trained Retrieval Processes Free-recall – general prompt Difficult for young children Cued recall – given specific cues Easy for young children

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Metamemory and Memory Performance Knowledge of memory and memory processes Increases from 4-12 Mind stores interpretations, not copies of reality

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Knowledge Base and Memory Development Age differences in recall memory Due to increases in knowledge base Due to increases in strategies The more one knows, the more one can learn and remember

Figure 8.8 Number of idea units remembered about a soccer story for high- and low-aptitude soccer experts and soccer novices. In this case, being an expert eliminated any effect of academic aptitude (IQ) on performance. ADAPTED FROM DATA PRESENTED IN SCHNEIDER, KORKEL, & WEINERT, 1989.

MEMORY: RETAINING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION Culture and Memory Strategies Rehearsal and organization Industrialized societies Recall of location or orally transmitted stories Non-western cultures

Table 8.3 Four Major Contributors to the Development of Learning and Memory

ANALOGICAL REASONING Reasoning Type of problem solving requiring one to make an inference Analogical Reasoning Applying knowledge about one set of elements to infer relations about different elements Based on similarity relations

ANALOGICAL REASONING Analogical Reasoning in Young Children Relational primacy hypothesis Analogical reasoning is available in early infancy 1 year olds if it is perceptual similarity Relational similarity, more advanced, apparent by 4 years

Figure 8.9 The configuration of the three problems 1-year-olds solved to test their reasoning by analogy. FROM CHEN, SANCHEZ, & CAMPBELL, 1997.

Figure 8. 10 Example of problem used in Goswami & Brown Figure 8.10 Example of problem used in Goswami & Brown. Children must select from set of pictures in bottom row (picture D through G) the one that best completes the visual analogy on the top row (the correct answer is D). FROM GOSWAMI & BROWN, 1990.

ANALOGICAL REASONING The Role of Knowledge in Children’s Analogical Reasoning Must understand the base relation Transitivity inferences – relations among at least 3 objects 3 and 4 year olds capable, IF the basis for the analogy was familiar

ANALOGICAL REASONING The Role of Metacognition in Children’s Analogical Thinking Metacognition – knowing about analogical reasoning is important Teaching children the value of reasoning by analogy increases use of this type of thinking

DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS Infants can use quantitative info Toddlers have a rudimentary understanding of ordinal relationships Counting and Arithmetic Strategies 3-4 can count accurately 4 ½ - 5 cardinality – last word in a sequence is the number if items in a set Sum strategy – counting both numbers Min strategy – start from value of larger

DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS Development of Mental Arithmetic Decomposition strategies Breaking problem into simpler problems Fact retrieval Retrieved from long-term memory Tends to follow the adaptive strategy choice model

DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS Math Disabilities Poor procedural skills Deficits in retrieval from long-term memory Smaller working-memory spans Computation errors produce incorrect answers Can become part of long-term memory

DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS Cultural Influences on Math Performance Math Competencies of Unschooled Children Problems embedded in real-life contexts are solved correctly Standard, out-of-context presentation tend to be incorrect

DEVELOPMENT OF ARITHMETIC SKILLS Cultural Variations in Arithmetic Among Schooled Children Americans worse than East Asians Beginning in 1st grade; grows larger Linguistic Supports Numbering system, fractions Instructional Supports More practice, colored text for 1’s 10’s and 100’s

EVALUATING THE INFORMATION-PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE Reasonable description of how cognitive processes change with age and influence thinking Ignores evolutionary/neurological influences Little attention to social/cultural influences Not a comprehensive theory An analysis of parts Underestimates richness/diversity of cognition