Chapter 8- LifeSpan Human Development

Gender and metacognation

-Adolescence girls use more metacognitic strategies than boys

Recalling memories in infants?

-By age two infants can verbalize (use words) to reconstruct events that happened months earlier

Infants: Operant Conditioning

-Child learns to produce a behaviour that is already in their repertoire and vary it systematically (increase it or decrease it voluntarily) to gain a rewarding stimulus from the environment

Changes in memory strategies in children

-Children as young as two remember "important" things (remind mom to buy candy) and are more likely to use external memory aids -kids younger than 4 show little flexibility in switching strategies (ineffective to effective) -kids older than 4/5 will flexibly switch strategies and make them more effective on memory tasks

What is organization and when is it mastered?

-Classifying items into meaningful groups ( grouping food items and animals separately) then rehearse each category and recall it as a cluster (chunking is used to break up long numbers) -Mastered later in childhood then rehearsal (usually children around 8 or 9 finally are better at recalling lists of items readily to grouping

Basic capacities: Adolescents

-Continue to increase (perform faster than children do on cognitive operations) -Greater function; use of their working memory due to maturational changes in the brain (process information faster and to simultaneously process more chunks of information) -No difference on low complexity tasks like face recognition

Explicit memory is

-Declarative -Divided into two ways: semantic (facts and general knowledge) memory and episodic (events) memory -long term

Adolescent and memory

-Elaboration is mastered -Develop and refine advanced learning and memory strategies highly relevant to school learning (i.e.; note taking &highlighting) -USe existing strategies more effectively -better able to focus only on the relevant material

Knowledge base in adulthood

-Experts know more than novices (knowledge base is more organized, and able to use knowledge and strategies and solve problems in their expertise but not in other domains)

Recall vs recognition (older adults)

-Likely to be deficient on tasks requiring recall memory than on tasks that require recognition of what they learned

Personal significance

-Most people believe that personal significance to an event allows for better memory but it shows to have almost no effect on one's ability to later recall an event

Knowledge base

Knowledge of a content area to be learned (highly specialized and effective strategies of information processing when in their area of expertise

Timed tasks (older adults)

-Slower then younger adults to learn and retrieve information - may need to review several times to know it equal as well as younger adults - may need more time when their memory is tested =timed tasks cause them to struggle

_____ memory gives a hint/cue to facilitate retrieval

Cued recall

________ memory requires active retrieval without the aid of cues

Recall

_________ memory needs you to recognize the correct answer among the options

Recognition

Scripts/general event reperensations (GERs)

Represent the typical sequence of actions related to an event and guide future behaviours in similar settings (i.e.; bed time= bath, put pjs on, brush teeth, read story, cuddles, sleep)

Recall in infants after training?

-2 month olds remember how to move mobile for 2 days -3 month olds remember for 1 week -6 months old for two weeks -18 months for 3 months

Explicit memory is _______ and _______

deliberate; effortful (more likely to be impacted by amnesia(

Rule assessment approach

determines what information about a problem children take in and what rules they then formulate to account for this information (assumes that children's problem solving attempts aren't hit or miss but governed by rules and they fail yo solve problems because they fail to encode all the critical aspects of the problem and are guided by faulty rules)

Autobiographical memory

episodic memories of personal events that are essential ingredients of present and future experiences as well as our understanding of who we are

Metacognation

knowledge of the human mind and the range of cognitive processes (i.e. an understanding that you are better at learning a new language than learning algera) *improves over childhood

Eyewitness memory/testimony

the reporting of events witnessed or experienced -they can demonstrate accurate call when asked clear and unbiased questions their memory can become muddled when the questioning gets tough

Metamemory

this term refers to to knowledge of memory and to monitoring and regulating memory process (ie; knowing your memory limits, what strategies are more effective)

Infants: Imitation

-Getting an infant to repeat an active that they saw (in order to repeat something, they need to: encode it, store it away and reproduce it)

Metamemory and metacogniton: Adolescence

-Impove and are able to tailor study reading strategies to different purposes (skimming vs studying) -Realize when they don't understand something -fairly accurate at monitoring if they have set aside enough time to learn new material (more studying time to hard material)

Problem solving in infants?

-Improves over childhood -realize that they can get adults to help them solve problems

Knowledge base (older adults)

-Know more about real world categories of information then younger adults -information that has undergone meaningful consolidation can be retained in long term memory for many years -deficiencies in knowledge base are not the source of memory problems because it helps them compensate for losses in information processing efficiency

Unexercised skills (older adults)

-Likely a disadvantage when they need to use learning/memory skills they don't use in daily life BUT they do equal when they can use well practised skills -Elders read to get the gist of the story but not to memorize details

What are the important qualifications on learning memory?

-Most research is cross-sectional that compare age groups (might be caused by factors other than age) -Declines when observed are noticeable around 70's -Difficulties in remembering affect elderly people more noticeably as they continue to age (older = more severe -Not all older people experience these difficulties -Not all kinds of memory tasks cause oder people difficulty

Changes in basic capacities in children

-Nervous system is still developing so children have a more efficient information processing system -Basic capacities of sensory register and long term memory don't change much with age -Improvements with age in operating speed and efficiency of working memory -Age 4/5, working memory is in frontal lobes that continue to develop throughout childhood

Implicit memory is:

-Nondeclarative -Skills, procedures, habits -priming -other (classical conditioning, etc) -long term

Life phase of the event

-People recall more information from their teens and twenties then any other time except the present (15-25 is greater recalled) *maybe because this time is shaping us to be who we are?

What four factors influence autobiographical memories? (bauer)

-Personal significance -Distinctiveness -Emotional intensity -Life phase of the event

Metamemory (older adults)

-Seem to know as much as younger adults about what strategies are best and what memory tasks are harder -if they believe aging brings worse scores they do worse then people who don't

Infants: Habituation

-They learn how NOT to respond to a repeated stimulus -it measures the degree to which the infant is bored of the stimulis (which means they recognized the stimulus as already viewed and dont have any interest in it) (recognition)

What is the information processing approach?

-This approach uses computer analogy to describe how the basic mental processes that are involved in attention, perception, memory, decision making

Problem solving and aging; what happens?

-Use constraint seeking question -Performance on meaningless taks decrease -Performance on meaningful, everyday tasks remains stable or improves -solutions tend to be goal orientated, selective and emphasizing quality over quantity

Preservation errors

-Younger children more likely to make -It means they continue to use the same strategy that was successful in the past despite the strategy's current lack of success

Cohort differences in education and IQ

-elderly people are less educated (longer time out of school) which leads to differences in memory and learning BUT if they are highly educated, they can perform similar to young adults

Explicit vs implicit memory tasks (older adults)

-more trouble with explicit tasks that require effort than with implicit tasks that rely on automatic mental processes -little trouble with skills/tasks that they have done over the years (habits)

Memory strategies (older adults)

-most older adults don't spontaneously use strategies like organization or elaboration even if they know and are capable of using them -They struggle with retrieving the event but the encoding of the event is not effected (seen in tip of the tounge...more episodes of this as we age)

What are other contextual contributors?

-motivation or lack of -types of tasks -memory aids

Cohort differences between health and lifestyle

-older people have more of a likelihood of chronic, degenerative diseases. (even mild diseases can impair memory performance) -older people who are both PHYSICALLY and MENTALLY have better memory then those who are not

Unfamiliar/Artificial content (older adults)

-poorly compared to younger adults when info to be learned is meaningless/unfamiliar (can't connect to what they know) -older adults do worse in laboratory settings but better in naturalistic settings ( the more meaningful task the better they do)

What is rehearsal and what age is it used?

-repeating of items that are trying to be remembered -very few 3,4,5 year olds use it -over half of 7 year olds use it -over 85% of 8 year olds use it

semantic memory (older adults)

-retained over the years (general factual knowledge accumulated over time)

episodic memory (older adults)

-steady decline in recalling specific events (specific time and place)

Sensory changes (older adults)

-visual and auditory skills are better predictors than processing speed of cognitive performance amine older adults

Basic processing capacities (older adults)

-working memory decreases (speed of processing peaks in adolescence and declines slowly) -the central nervous system is slowing

Memory system:

1, Sensory register (holds incoming information for a fraction of a second) 2. Short term memory (holds about 7 teams for several seconds) 3. Working memory (active form of short term merry) 4. Long term memory (relatively permanent store of information) 5. Process of learning and memory (encoding, storage, retrieval)

How does the ability to explain memory development change in childhood?

1. Changes in basic Capacities 2. Changes in memory strategies 3. Increased Knowledge about memory 4. Increased knowledge about the world

What are the steps in learning something?

1. Encoding (get it into the system) 2. Consolidation (processed and organized in a form suitable for long term storage) 3. Storage (holding information in long term memory) 4. Retrieval (the process of getting the information out when needed)

Problem solving

1. Involves sensory register (short and long term) 2. Exectutive control process (plans and monitors activity) 3. Parallel processors (several mental activities at the same time

What are the four phases of successful strategy use?

1. Mediation deficiency 2. Production deficiency 3. Utilization deficiency 4. The final stage is when children exhibit effective strategy use by both producing and benefiting from a memory strategy

What are the four conclusions about the development of learning and memory?

1. Older children are after information processors and can juggle more information in working memory . They do not differ in terms of sensory register or long term capacity 2. Older children use more effective memory strategies in encoding and retrieving information and acquisition of memory strategies reflex qualitative not quantitate changes. 3. Older children know more about memory and good metamemory may help children choose more appropriate strategies and control and monitor their learning better 4. Older children know more in general and their larger knowledge base improves their ability to learn and remember

What is elaboration?

Actively creating meaningful links between items to be remembered -achieved by adding something to the items in the form of either words or images (helpful in learning a foreign language)

Fuzzy trace theory

Children store verbatim (word for word recall of information) and general accounts of an event separately

Executive control process

It's invalided in planning and monitoring what is done -they run the show (guiding selection, organization, manipulation, interpretation of information throughout)

Contextual contributors emphasis on learning/memory tasks

Interaction of three factors: -Characteristics of the learner (goals, motivations, etc) -Characteristics of the task or situation -Characteristics of the broader environment including the cultural context in which a task is performed

Distinctiveness

The distinctiveness/uniqueness of an event is associated with better recall

Emotional intensity

The emotional intensity of an event influences later recall (highly positive or highly negative) *strong emotions activate body's arousal system and the neural components associated with arousal enhance the encoding and consolidation of the events

overlapping waves theory

a process of variability, choice, and change. (children's problem solving skills is a matter of knowing and using a variety of skills, becoming more selective with experience about what strategy they will use and changing or adding strategies as needed)

Mediation deficiency

cannot spontaneously use or benefit from strategies even if they are taught how to use them

Parellel Processes

carrying out many cognitive actives simultaneously (i.e. listing and taking notes at the same time)

Production deficiency

children can use strategies they are taught but cannot produce them on their own

Utilization deficiency

children spontaneously produce a strategy but their task performance does not yet benefit from using the strategy

Memory and aging

most elderly people report having troubles with remembering at the very least, minor things (recalling names and items they may need later on)

Implicit memory is ________ and ________

unintentional; automatic

Problem solving

use of information processing system to achieve a goal or arrive at a decision (answer)