child psychology chapter 7

fuzzy trace theory example/explanation

(1) verbatim questions, such as "How many cats are in the pet store, 6 or 8?" and (2) gist questions, such as "Are there more cats or more dogs in the pet store?" Researchers have found that preschool children tend to remember verbatim information more than gist information, but elementary-school-aged children are more likely to remember gist information

Carolyn Rovee-Collier and first memories

-According to Rovee-Collier, even by 2½ months the baby's memory is incredibly detailed -How well can infants remember? Some researchers such as Rovee-Collier have concluded that infants as young as 2 to 6 months of age can remember some experiences through 1½ to 2 years of age -but some experts argue that the infants in Rovee-Collier's experiments are displaying only implicit memory

fuzzy trace theory

-Another variation of how individuals reconstruct their memories -states that when individuals encode information, they create two types of memory representations: (1) a verbatim memory trace, which consists of precise details; and (2) a fuzzy trace, or gist, which is the central idea of the information.

COMPARISONS WITH PIAGET'S THEORY

-according to piaget children actively contruct their understanding and knowledge of the world -At each stage, children develop qualitatively diff erent types of mental structures (or schemes) that allow them to think about the world in new ways -Like Piaget's theory, some versions of the information-processing approach are constructivist; they see children as directing their own cognitive development. And like Piaget, information-processing psychologists identify cognitive capabilities and limitations at various points in development -the information-processing approach also focuses on more precise analysis of change and on the contributions made by ongoing cognitive activity—such as encoding and strategies—to that change

childhood (memory)

-improves after infancy -young children can remember a great deal of information if they are given appropriate cues and prompts -One reason children remember less than adults is that they are far less expert in most areas, but their growing knowledge is one likely source of their memory improvement

AGE RELATED CHANGES IN THE LENGTH OF TIME OVER WHICH MEMORY OCCURS

6-month-olds 24 hours 9-month-olds 1 month 10-11-month-olds 3 months 13-14-month-olds 4-6 months 20-month-olds 12 months

information processing example

A computer metaphor can illustrate how the information-processing approach can be applied to development. A computer's information processing is limited by its hardware and software. The hardware limitations include the amount of data the computer can process—its capacity—and speed. The software limits the kind of data that can be used as input and the ways that data can be manipulated; word processing programs will not handle music, for example.

Some researchers have found that executive function is a better predictor of school readiness than general IQ

A number of diverse activities have been found to increase children's executive function, such as computerized training that uses games to improve working memory Further, a longitudinal study of an important dimension of executive function—inhibitory control—found that 3- to 11-year-old children who had better inhibitory control (able to wait their turn, not easily distracted, more persistent, and less impulsive) were more likely to still be in school, less likely to engage in risk-taking behavior, and less likely to be taking drugs in adolescence

Decision Making

Adolescence is a time of increased decision making—which friends to choose, which person to date, whether to have sex, buy a car, go to college, and so on older adolescents are described as more competent than younger adolescents, who in turn are more competent than children However, older adolescents' (as well as adults') decision-making skills are far from perfect, and having the capacity to make competent decisions does not guarantee they will be made in everyday life, where breadth of experience oft en comes into play Most people make better decisions when they are calm rather than emotionally aroused, which often is especially true for adolescents Adolescents need more opportunities to practice and discuss realistic decision making. Many real-world decisions on matters such as sex, drugs, and daredevil driving occur in an atmosphere of stress that includes time constraints and emotional involvement

executive function

An umbrella-like concept that consists of a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain's prefrontal cortex. Executive function involves managing one's thoughts to engage in goal directed behavior and to exercise self-control

Elaboration

Another important strategy is elaboration, which involves engaging in more extensive processing of information. When individuals engage in elaboration, their memory benefits. Th inking of examples is a good way to elaborate information. For example, self reference is an effective way to elaborate information. Th inking about personal associations with information makes the information more meaningful and helps children to remember it

Individual Differences

As in other developmental research, there are individual differences in the ages when children reach certain milestones in their theory of mind. Executive function, which describes several functions (such as inhibition and planning) that are important for flexible, future-oriented behavior, also may be connected to the theory of mind development (e, in one executive function task, children are asked to say the word "night" when they see a picture of a sun, and the word "day" when they see a picture of a moon and stars. Children who perform better at executive function tasks seem also to have a better understanding of theory of mind)

METACOGNITION IN CHILDHOOD

By 5 or 6 years of age, children usually know that familiar items are easier to learn than unfamiliar ones, that short lists are easier to remember than long ones, that recognition is easier than recall, and that forgetting becomes more likely over time However, in other ways young children's metamemory is limited. They don't understand that related items are easier to remember than unrelated ones or that remembering the gist of a story is easier than remembering information verbatim (by fifth grade this becomes easier) Preschool children also have an inflated opinion of their memory abilities. For example, in one study, a majority of preschool children predicted that they would be able to recall all 10 items on a list of 10 items. When tested, none of the young children managed this feat Preschool children also have little appreciation for the importance of cues to memory, such as "It helps when you can think of an example of it." By 7 or 8 years of age, children better appreciate the importance of cueing for memory

Reconstructive Memory and Children as Eyewitnesses

Children's memories, like those of adults, are constructive and reconstructive. Children have schemas for all sorts of information, and these schemas affect how they encode, store, and retrieve memories One student might reconstruct the story by saying the characters died in a plane crash, another might describe three men and three women, another might say the crash was in Germany, and so on Reconstruction and distortion are nowhere more apparent than in clashing testimony given by eyewitnesses at trials. A special concern is susceptibility to suggestion and how this can alter memory Why? preschool children are more susceptible to believing misleading or incorrect information given aft er an even Some preschoolers are highly resistant to interviewers' suggestions, whereas others immediately succumb to the slightest suggestion When children do accurately recall information about an event, the interviewer often has a neutral tone, there is limited use of misleading questions, and there is an absence of any motivation for the child to make a false report

metacognition

Cognition about cognition, or "knowing about knowing.

Imagery

Creating mental images is another strategy for improving memory. However, using imagery to remember verbal information works better for older children than for younger children

Executive function also involves the ability to think critically in effective ways

Critical thinking involves thinking reflectively and productively, and evaluating evidence. If you think critically, you will do the following things: • Ask not only what happened but how and why. • Examine supposed "facts" to determine whether there is evidence to support them. • Argue in a reasoned way rather than through emotions. • Recognize that there is sometimes more than one good answer or explanation. • Compare various answers and judge which is the best answer. • Evaluate what other people say rather than immediately accepting it as the truth. • Ask questions and speculate beyond what is known to create new ideas and new information. -some schools don't push kids to debate or think critically

COGNITIVE RESOURCES: CAPACITY AND SPEED OF PROCESSING INFORMATION

Developmental changes in information processing are likely to be influenced by increases in both capacity and speed of processing -These two characteristics are often referred to as cognitive resources, which are proposed to have an important influence on memory and problem-solving. -Both biology and experience contribute to growth in cognitive resources (thnk about how much faster you can process you native language rather than your 2nd language) -Important biological developments occur both in brain structures, such as changes in the frontal lobes, and at the level of neurons, such as the blooming and pruning of connections between neurons -Most information-processing psychologists argue that an increase in capacity also improves processing of information -A recent study of 9- to 14-year-olds revealed that faster processing speed was linked to a higher level of oral reading fluency )reaction time and stimulus) for speed processing

types memory

Encoding, storage, and retrieval are the basic processes required for memory. Short-term memory is a memory system with a limited capacity in which information is usually retained for up to 15 to 30 seconds unless strategies are used to retain it longer. Long-term memory is a relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory. People are usually referring to long-term memory when they talk about "memory."

automacy example

For example, once children have learned to read well, they do not think about each letter in a word as a letter; instead, they encode whole words. Once a task is automatic, it does not require conscious effort. As a result, as information processing becomes more automatic,

encoding example

For example, to a 4-year-old, an s in cursive writing is a shape very different from an s that is printed. But a 10-year-old has learned to encode the relevant fact that both are the letter s and to ignore the irrelevant differences in their shape

Using Strategies to Solve Problems

Good thinkers routinely use strategies and effective planning to solve problems Do children use one strategy or multiple strategies in problem solving? They often use more than one strategy Most children benefit from generating a variety of alternative strategies and experimenting with different approaches to a problem, discovering what works well, when, and where

Classic False Belief Task

In a classic false-belief task, young children were shown a Band-Aids box and asked what was inside (Jenkins & Astington, 1996). To the children's surprise, the box actually contained pencils. When asked what a child who had never seen the box would think was inside, 3-year-olds typically responded, "Pencils." However, the 4- and 5-year-olds, grinning at the anticipation of the false beliefs of other children who had not seen what was inside the box, were more likely to say "Band-Aids."

sally and anne false belief task

In the false-belief task, the skit above in which Sally has a basket and Anne has a box is shown to children. Sally places a toy in her basket and then leaves. While Sally is gone and can't watch, Anne removes the toy from Sally's basket and places it in her box. Sally then comes back and the children are asked where they think Sally will look for her toy. Children are said to "pass" the false-belief task if they understand that Sally looks in her basket first before realizing the toy isn't there

Metacognition

It includes thinking about and knowing when and where to use particular strategies for learning or for solving problems. Conceptualization of metacognition includes several dimensions of executive function, such as planning Metacognition helps children to perform many cognitive tasks more effectively it includes knowledge about when and where to use particular strategies for learning or for solving problems

Stageties

Learning to use effective strategies is a key aspect of improving memory aspect of improving memory Rehearsal is just one of the strategies that can sometimes aid memory, although rehearsal is a better strategy for short-term memory than long-term memory. Following are some strategies that benefit children's long term retention of information.

Infantile Amnesia

Let's examine another aspect of memory. Do you remember your third birthday party? Probably not. Most adults can remember little, if anything, from the first three years of their life One reason older children and adults have difficulty recalling events from their infant and early child years is that during these early years the prefrontal lobes of the brain are immature; this area of the brain is believed to play an important role in storing memories of event

metacognition example

One example of metacognition is what children know about the best ways to remember what they have read. Do they know that they will remember what they have read better if they can relate it to their own lives in some way? Thus, in Siegler's application of the information-processing approach to development, children play an active role in their cognitive development

Organization

Organizing is a strategy that older children (and adults) typically use, and it helps them to remember information. Preschool children usually don't use strategies like organization; in middle and late childhood they are more likely to use organization when they need to remember something If children organize information when they encode it, their memory benefits. Consider this demonstration: Recall the 12 months of the year as quickly as you can. How long did it take you? What was the order of your recall? You probably answered something like "a few seconds" and "in chronological order." Memorizing in alphabetical order will take longer

Content Knowledge and Expertise

Our ability to remember new information about a subject depends considerably on what we already know about it -For example, one study found that 10- and 11-yearolds who were experienced chess players ("experts") were able to remember more information about chess pieces than college students who were not chess players ("novices")

Developmental Changes

Perceptions. By 2 years of age, children recognize that another person will see what's in front of her own eyes instead of what's in front of the child's eyes (Lempers, Flavell, & Flavell, 1977), and by 3 years of age, they realize that looking leads to knowing what's inside a container (Pratt & Bryant, 1990). • Emotions. Th e child can distinguish between positive (for example, happy) and negative (for example, sad) emotions. A child might say, "Tommy feels bad." • Desires. All humans have some sort of desires. But when do children begin to recognize that someone else's desires may diff er from their own? Toddlers recognize that if people want something, they will try to get it. For instance, a child might say, "I want my mommy."

balance scale results

Robert Siegler (1976) hypothesized that children would use one of the four rules listed in Figure 7.12. He reasoned that presenting problems on which diff erent rules would generate diff erent outcomes would allow assessment of each child's rules. Th rough a child's pattern of correct answers and errors on a set of such problems, that child's underlying rule could be inferred. What were the results? Almost all 5-year-olds used Rule I, in which the child considers only the weight on the scales. Almost all 9-year-olds used either Rule II, which takes both weight and distance into account, or Rule III, which calls for guessing if the weight and distance dimensions would give confl icting information. Both 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds generally used Rule III. In other words, the older children performed better at solving the problems because they used a better rule. But even 5-year-old children can be trained to use Rule III if they are taught to pay attention to differences in distance. As children learn more about what is relevant to a problem and learn to encode the relevant information, they are better at using rules in problem solving.

THE TYPE OF BALANCE SCALE USED BY SIEGLER

Rule I. If the weight is the same on both sides, predict that the scale will balance. If the weight differs, predict that the side with more weight will go down. Rule II. If the weight is greater on one side, say that that side will go down. If the weights on the two sides are equal, choose the side on which the weight is farther from the fulcrum. Rule III. Act as in Rule II, except that if one side has more weight and the weight on the other side is farther from the fulcrum, then guess. Rule IV. Proceed as in Rule III, unless one side has more weight and the other more distance. In that case, calculate torques by multiplying weight times distance on each side. Then predict that the side with the greater torque will go down.

What do Schemas do for us?

Schemas influence the way we encode, make inferences about, and retrieve information. We reconstruct the past rather than take an exact photograph of it, and the mind can distort an event as it encodes and stores impressions of it. Oft en when we retrieve information, we fill in the gaps with fragmented memories

Scientific Thinking

Scientific reasoning oft en is aimed at identifying causal relations. Like scientists, children place a great deal of emphasis on causal mechanisms. Their understanding of how events are caused weighs more heavily in their causal inferences than even such strong influences as whether the cause happened immediately before the effect. Children might go through mental gymnastics trying to reconcile seemingly contradictory new information with their existing beliefs. For example, aft er learning about the solar system, children sometimes conclude that there are two earths, the seemingly fl at world in which they live and the round ball fl oating in space that their teacher described

How might executive function change during the middle and late childhood years and be linked to children's success in school?

Self-control/inhibition. Children need to develop self-control that will allow them to concentrate and persist on learning tasks, to inhibit their tendencies to repeat incorrect responses, and to resist the impulse to do something now that they would regret later. • Working memory. Children need an effective working memory to process the masses of information they will encounter as they go through school and beyond. • Flexibility. Children need to be flexible in their thinking to consider different strategies and perspectives.

Schema example

Suppose a football fan and a visitor from a country where football isnt played are eating at a restaurant and overhear a conversation about last night's game. Because the visitor doesn't have a schema for information about football, he or she is more likely than the fan to mishear what is said. Perhaps the visitor will interpret the conversation in terms of a schema for another sport, constructing a false memory of the conversation

ADOLESCENCE

There also is evidence that working memory increases during adolescence. In one study, the performances of individuals from 6 to 57 years of age were examined on both verbal and visuospatial working memory tasks

orienting/investigative process (infancy)

This process involves directing attention to potentially important locations in the environment (that is, where) and recognizing objects and their features (such as color and form) (that is, what)

CHILDHOOD

To explore thinking in childhood, we will examine four important types of thinking: executive function, critical thinking, scientific thinking, and problem solving

Teaching Strategies

Two other strategies adults can use to guide children's retention of memory were recently proposed • Repeat with variation on the instructional information and link early and often. These are memory development research expert Patricia Bauer's (2009) recommendations to improve children's consolidation and reconsolidation of the information they are learning. Variations on a lesson theme increase the number of associations in memory storage, and linking expands the network of associations in memory storage; both strategies expand the routes for retrieving information from storage. • Embed memory-relevant language when instructing children. Teachers vary considerably in how much they use memory-relevant language that encourages students to remember information. In recent research that involved extensive observations of a number of first-grade teachers in the classroom, found that in the time segments observed, the teachers rarely used strategy suggestions or metacognitive (thinking about thinking) questions. In this research, when lower-achieving students were placed in classrooms in which teachers were categorized as "high-mnemonic teachers" who frequently embedded memory-relevant information in their teaching, their achievement increased

when people think about memory

When people think about memory, they are usually referring to explicit memory. Most researchers find that babies do not show explicit memory until the second half of the first year (Bauer, 2013). Then, explicit memory improves substantially during the second year of life researchers have documented that 6-month-olds can remember information for 24 hours, but by 20 months of age infants can remember information they encountered 12 months earlier. What changes in the brain are linked to infants' memory development? From about 6 to 12 months of age, the maturation of the hippocampus and the surrounding cerebral cortex, especially the frontal lobes, make the emergence of explicit memory possible Explicit memory continues to improve in the second year, as these brain structures further mature and connections between them increase. Less is known about the areas of the brain involved in implicit memory in infancy.

METACOGNITION IN ADOLESCENCE

adolescents have an increased capacity to monitor and manage cognitive resources to effectively meet the demands of a learning task. Th is increased metacognitive ability results in cognitive functioning and learning becoming more effective Further, adolescents have a better meta-level understanding of strategies—that is, knowing the best strategy to use and when to use it in performing a learning task.

sustained attention infancy aka focused attention

allows infants to learn about and remember characteristics of a stimulus as it becomes familiar.

Analogies to Solve Problems

analogy involves correspondence in some respects between things that are dissimilar. Even very young children can draw reasonable analogies under some circumstances and use them to solve problems

information processing

analyzes how children manipulate information, monitor it, and create strategies for handling it

concepts

are cognitive groupings of similar objects, events, people, or ideas. Without concepts, you would see each object and event as unique; you would not be able to make any generalizations

mindfulness

being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life's everyday activities and tasks—is an important aspect of thinking critically Mindful individuals create new ideas, are open to new information, and can operate from more than one perspective. By contrast, mindless individuals are entrapped in old ideas, engage in automatic behavior, and operate from a single perspective. Robert Roeser and Philip Zelazo have emphasized that mindfulness is an important mental process that children can engage in to improve a number of cognitive and socioemotional skills, such as executive function, focused attention, emotion regulation, and empathy techniques such as yoga, meditation, and tai chi have been recently proposed as candidates for improving children's cognitive and socioemotional development

Gaze following and Joint attention

by andrew and rachele, which involves looking where another person has just looked

Strategy construction example

children's reading benefit when they develop the strategy of stopping periodically to take stock of what they have read so far

habituation

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

selective attention

focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant

ADOLESCENCE

further argues that the most important cognitive change in adolescence is improvement in executive function

Carolyn Rovee-Collier and first memories experiment

has conducted research demonstrating that infants can remember perceptual-motor information. In a characteristic experiment, she places a baby in a crib underneath an elaborate mobile and ties one end of a ribbon to the baby's ankle and the other end to the mobile. Th e baby kicks and makes the mobile move Weeks later, the baby is returned to the crib, but its foot is not tied to the mobile. Th e baby kicks, apparently trying to make the mobile move. However, if the mobile's makeup is changed even slightly, the baby doesn't kick. If the mobile 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.

childhood

in note book

adolescence

in notebook

babbleys model

in notebook

joint attention

individuals focus on the same object or event. Joint attention requires (1) an ability to track another's behavior, such as following someone's gaze; (2) one person directing another's attention; and (3) reciprocal interaction -helps with long term memory for example reading

metamemory

individuals' knowledge about memory, is an especially important form of metacognition. Metamemory includes general knowledge about memory, such as knowing that recognition tests

infancy (thinking)

interest in thinking during infancy has especially focused on concept formation and categorization

Problem solving

involves finding an appropriate way to attain a goal. Let's examine two ways children solve problems—by applying rules and by using analogies—and then consider some ways to help children learn effective strategies for solving problems. During early childhood, the relatively stimulus-driven toddler is transformed into a child capable of flexible, goal-directed problem solving For example, because they lack a concept of perspectives, 3- to 4-year-olds cannot understand that a single stimulus can be redescribed in a different, incompatible way 3- to 4-year-olds showed representational inflexibility. With age, children also learn better rules to apply to problems With age, children also learn better rules to apply to problems Figure 7.12 provides an example; it shows the balance scale problem that has been used to examine children's use of rules in solving problems. Th e scale includes a fulcrum and an arm that can rotate around it. Th e arm can tip left or right or remain level, depending on how weights (metal disks with holes in the center) are arranged on the pegs in each side of the fulcrum. Th e child's task is to look at the confi guration of weights on the pegs in each problem and then predict whether the left side will go down, the right side will go down, or the arm will balance

thinking

involves manipulating and transforming information in memory; it is the job of the central executive in Baddeley's model of working memory

executive attention

involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

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 -many psychologist prefer to use to term working memory over short term memory

sustained attention

is the ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time. Sustained attention is also called focused attention and vigilance

Strategy construction

is the creation of new procedures for processing information.

memory

is the retention of information over time. Without memory you would not be able to connect what happened to you yesterday with what is going on in your life today

Constructing memories

memory is not like a tape recorder. Children and adults construct and reconstruct their memories

divided attention

n involves concentrating on more than one activity at the same time. If you are listening to music or a television program while you are reading this, you are engaging in divided attentiterm-11on.

infancy

parents that 6- to 8-month-old babies cannot hold in their mind a picture of their mother or father. Child development researchers, however, have revealed that infants as young as 3 months of age show a limited type of memory

schema theory

people mold memories to fit information that already exists in their minds This process is guided by schemas, which are mental frameworks that organize concepts and information.

implicit memory

refers to memory without conscious recollection—memories of skills and routine procedures that are performed automatically, such as riding a bicycle

explicit memory

refers to the conscious memory of facts and experiences.

childhood (memory span)

short-term memory has a very limited capacity. One method of assessing that capacity is the memory-span task. You simply hear a short list of stimuli—usually digits—presented at a rapid pace (one per second, for example). Th en you are asked to repeat the digits. -Speed of repetition was a powerful predictor of memory span. Indeed, when the speed of repetition was controlled, the 6-year-olds' memory spans were equal to those of young adults. Rehearsal of information is also important; older children rehearse the digits more than younger children. And children are more effective in using strategies to remember in middle childhood than in early childhood

automacy

the ability to process information with little or no effort

attention

the focusing of mental resources. Attention improves cognitive processing for many tasks, from grabbing a toy to hitting a baseball or adding numbers. At any one time, though, children, like adults, can pay attention to only a limited amount of information.

encoding

the process by which information gets into memory. Changes in children's cognitive skills depend on increased skill at encoding relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information.

When psychologists first analyzed short-term memory

they described it as if it were a passive storehouse with shelves to store information until it is moved to long-term memory. But we do many things with the information stored in short-term memory. For example, the words in this sentence are part of your short-term memory, and you are manipulating them to form a meaningful whole

3 mechanisms of change

three mechanisms work together to create changes in children's cognitive skills: encoding, automaticity, and strategy construction

theory of mind

which refers to awareness of one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others. Studies of theory of mind view the child as "a thinker who is trying to explain, predict, and understand people's thoughts, feelings, and utterances"

dual-process model

which states that decision making is influenced by two cognitive systems—one analytical and one experiential—that compete with each other. The dual-process model emphasizes that it is the experiential system—monitoring and managing actual experiences—that benefits adolescents' decision making, not the analytical system. In such contexts, adolescents just need to know that there are some circumstances that are so dangerous that they need to be avoided at all costs Further, adolescents who have a higher level of trait inhibition (self-control that helps them to manage their impulses effectively) and find themselves in risky contexts are less likely to engage in risk-taking behavior than their adolescent counterparts with a lower level of trait inhibition

Critical Thinking (adolescense)

• Increased speed, automaticity, and capacity of information processing, which free cognitive resources for other purposes • Greater breadth of content knowledge in a variety of domains • Increased ability to construct new combinations of knowledge • A greater range and more spontaneous use of strategies and procedures for obtaining and applying knowledge, such as planning, considering the alternatives, and cognitive monitoring

The following four recent studies illustrate the importance of working memory in children's cognitive development:

• Working memory and attention control predicted growth in emergent literacy and number skills in young children in low-income families (Welsh & others, 2010). • Working memory capacity at 9 to 10 years of age predicted foreign language comprehension two years later at 11 to 12 years of age (Andersson, 2010). • A computerized working memory intervention with 9- to 11-year-old children improved their reading performance (Loosli & others, 2012). • Assessment of working memory in kindergarten was a key process in predicting math achievement at the end of the first grade