Final PSY 545 ch. 7-10
Define in relation to executive function: articulatory loop
According to the Baddeley + Hitch model, working memory consists of a central executive that stores information and two temporary systems, one for coding verbal information
Define in relation to executive function: visuo-spatial scratch pad
According to the Baddeley + Hitch model, working memory consists of a central executive that stores information and two temporary systems, one for coding visual information
instructed learning -
Actor A modifies his or her behavior only in the presence of another, Actor B, without attaining any immediate benefits. As a result of encouraging or discouraging B's behavior, B acquires a new skill. To be done effectively, teaching requires that both the instructor and student take the perspective of the other. Example: An adult shows a child how to make actions to open a box, perhaps making slow and deliberate motions, molding the child's fingers, and the child, not the adult, gets the candy inside.
Define and Contrast: analogical reasoning vs. scientific reasoning
Analogical reasoning: Involves using something you already know to help you understand something you don't know yet. Analogies are thus based on similarity relations. Scientific reasoning: Involves generating hypotheses about how something in the world works and then systematically testing those hypotheses. One uses scientific reasoning by identifying the factors that can affect a particular phenomenon and then exhaustively varying one factor at a time while holding the other factors constant.
Robert Kail
age differences in speed of processing
Self-reflection
allows us to analyze our thoughts and actions.
Declarative memory
refers to facts and events and comes in two types: episodic memory and semantic memory.
Implicit memory
refers to the fact that it is unavailable to conscious awareness and can be assessed only indirectly.
Present a chronological depiction of the child's development of gender constancy. Speculate on why these steps occur in this particular order. In other words, to what extent does mastery of a type of gender knowledge depend on mastery of the previous one?
6-8 months: Discriminate between voices of males and females. Will habituate (reduce looking time) to one category of faces (male or female). 12-14 months: Associate female faces with female voices and male faces with male voices. 18-20 months: Associate sex-stereotypic objects with the appropriate gender (i.e. associate male faces with male-stereotypic objects and female faces with female-sterotypic objects). Associate verbal labels (lady, man) with appropriate faces. 24-26 months: Correctly identify pictures of boys and girls. Imitate gender-related sequences. Generalize imitation to appropriate gender (e.g., using a male doll to imitate a masculine activity). Can anyone speculate why these steps occur in this order? (The chart is at the top of pg. 436) I would speculate biological reasons. Auditory perception is even adult like in some ways at birth; this could why we begin with voices, because it is the most easy to process. Then we move to visual information about when we attain greater visual ability. So I strongly suggest a basis on biological factors of development that parallel or facilitate the development of gender constancy. (Student Jamye)
wishful thinking -
A characteristic of preschool thought such that children often do not differentiate between their wishes and their expectations
Account for the evolution of human intelligence according to the "social brain hypothesis."
A number of scholars have propose the social brain hypothesis to account for the evolution of human intelligence and our species' eventual ecological dominance. Basically, the hypothesis is that humans evolved the ability to better learn from other members of their species, which resulted in enhanced skills at both competing and cooperating with one another as well as the rapid acquisition and transmission of material culture.
social learning
Albert Bandura
What are mirror neurons?
Although there is no solid evidence that mirror-neuron systems are functional at birth, how might such systems account for the neonatal imitation observed by Meltzoff and Moore back in the 1970's. One phenomenon in social neuroscience of particular relevance for the development of social learning is the discovery of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons responded when a monkey either performed or watched someone else perform a goal directed act. They are basically specific neurons that became activate when they performed an action and when they watched others performing actions the monkey itself could make.
local enhancement -
An individual notices activity at a particular location, moves to that location, and, in the process of trial and error, discovers a useful behavior. Example: One chimpanzee notices another chimpanzee cracking nuts with stones at a location, moves to that location, and, in the process of trial and error, learns to crack nuts with stones, although using other techniques than the ones observed
12-14 months:
Associate female faces with female voices and male faces with male voices.
18-20 months:
Associate sex-stereotypic objects with the appropriate gender (i.e. associate male faces with male-stereotypic objects and female faces with female-sterotypic objects). Associate verbal labels (lady, man) with appropriate faces.
What is the nature of the first 50 words that children acquire?
At about 18 months of age, or when children have about 50 words in their active vocabulary, the rate at which they learn new words increases substantially, from 8 to 11 to between 22 and 37 words per month. This has been termed the word spurt.
CHAPTER 9 Name three important ways human language differs from communication systems of other animals.
At its most basic level, language refers to the systematic and conventional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols for the intention of communication or self expression. Although other animals have communication systems, they differ from humans in at least three important ways: Human language is symbolic, grammatical, and although all biologically typical people acquire language, the particular language children learn to speak varies through culture.
CHAPTER 10 Distinguish between the terms "social cognition" and "social learning".
At its most basic, social learning refers to acquiring information from other individuals. A narrower definition of social learning refers to "situations in which one individual comes to behave similarly to others."
Define and Contrast: automatic processes vs. effortful processes
Automatic processes: requires none of the short-term store's limited capacity. occur without intention and without conscious awareness. (breathing, heartbeat, etc.) Effortful processes: requires the use of mental resources for their successful completion. Requires strategies or control processes. Available to consciousness. interfere with the execution of other effortful processes. (Driving, writing, etc.)
Identify and describe the sub processes of observational learning in Bandura's social cognitive theory.
Bandura proposed four sub-processes that govern observational learning: (1) attentional processes, (2) retention processes, (3) production processes, and (4) motivational processes. Information must be attended to, coded in memory, stored, and retrieved, and the behavior must be performed at the appropriate time. Each of these processes changes with age, and a failure in any one process rules out successful observation learning.
Why does Russell Barkley think behavioral inhibition processes are related to ADHD? State the research support for his contention.
Barkley thinks that deficits in behavioral inhibition influences working memory, self-regulation of emotion, internalization of speech (critical in directing problem solving and reflecting upon one's behavior) and reconstitution (involves the "creation of novel, complex goal-directed behaviors"). Because these abilities are essential for cognition, children with deficits in these areas are at a disadvantage. Evidence for Barkley's theory: compared to children without ADHD, children with ADHD: 1) Do more poorly on working memory tasks. 2) Are less proficient at imitating lengthy sequences of actions. 3) Have a poorer sense of time. 4) Are more adversely affected by delay. 5) Are more likely to be describe as irritable, hostile, and excitable. 6) Perform more poorly on comprehension tasks. 7) Are less likely to use strategies on memory tasks.
Why might drinking alcohol to excess have its most deleterious effects during late adolescence and early adulthood?
Because the brain is not fully developed until later into adulthood. (From pg. 266). That is, "The prefrontal cortex is one of the last areas of the brain to reach full maturity. Development of the frontal lobes in humans is rapid between birth and about 2 years of age. Another, less pronounced growth spurt occurs between about 4 and 7 years, with additional changes occurring over adolescence into adulthood." deleterious means causing harm or damage, according to merriem-webster dictionary. On pg 266-267 I finally found the reference for this question. Adolescence and young adults are in a sensitive or critical period for the development of executive functioning. This is unique to this developmental stage, whereas children and older adults do not have as a high of activity and growth in their frontal cortex. (Student Jamye)
According to Bjorklund, there is reason to believe that memory is not a domain-general skill but comprises different domain specific abilities. Describe two research studies supporting his position.
Beth Kurtz-Costes and colleagues administered a set of 12 memory tasks to 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children, including several tasks reflecting everyday activities, school-related tasks, and laboratory tasks. Researchers reported little intertask consistency among the 12 tasks at any age, with only slightly more correlations reaching statistical significance than would be expected by chance. The average correlations among tasks did increase slightly with age. Overall, few developmental differences were observed. Wolfgang Schneider and his colleagues assessed the intertask correlations in the same group of individuals from 4-23 years old for a variety of memory tasks, including memory-span tasks, sort-recall tasks, and two story-recall tasks. Researchers reported relatively high intertask correlations among the two span tasks and the two story-recall tasks. That is, consistency was high only when the parallel measures of story recall and word span were used. Results there is no unitary "memory" construct and little change in the relationship among memory tasks with development.
Describe the relationship between bilingualism and executive function.
Bilinguals seem to have an advantage in terms of executive function, particularly on tasks that demand flexible thinking. Bilinguals must manage two languages at the same time, ensuring that one does not interfere with the other one, and this requires significant attentional control. As result, simultaneous bilingual children display enhanced levels of executive control, and such bilingualism postpones the deterioration of executive function in the elderly.
Explain Bjorklund's theory about how knowledge base may influence memory performance?
Bjorklund's theory about how knowledge base may influence memory performance is by 1) increasing the accessibility of specific items (item-specific effects) 2) by the relatively effortless activation of relations among sets of items (nonstrategic organization) and 3) by facilitating the use of deliberate strategies.
Describe the "wug test?" For what is it used?
Children are shown a series of unfamiliar objects or pictures of people performing unfamiliar actions. For the "wug" example, children are then shown two of these creatures and told, "Now there are two of them. There are two ________." If children know the regular rules for making plurals, they will say "wugs." When shown a picture of a man who knows how "to rick," when asked what he did yesterday, children who know the rule for making a verb past tense will say that "he ricked," and if they know the rules for the present progressive, they will say that currently "he is ricking."
Explain the "less is more" hypothesis related to the ease with which young children learn language.
Children in the early stages of language learning start out slowly--more slowly than adults do when learning a second language. This is partly because children perceive and store only component parts of complex stimuli.Their speech starts with single morphemes, and they gradually increase the syntactic complexity and the number of units they can control. Newport claims that because of their limited cognitive abilities, the simplified language that they deal with makes the job of learning language easier.
telegraphic speech -
Children's economical use of words, including only high-information words that are most important in conveying meaning
egocentric speech -
Children's speech that is apparently produced for the self and not directed to others
holophrastic speech -
Children's use of one-word sentences
Define: selective attention
Concentration on chosen stimuli without distraction by non-target stimuli
24-26 months:
Correctly identify pictures of boys and girls. Imitate gender-related sequences. Generalize imitation to appropriate gender (e.g., using a male doll to imitate a masculine activity).
What language ability is impaired when there is damage to Broca's area in the frontal lobe.
Damage to Broca's area, located in the frontal lobes, usually results in problems with speech production.
What language ability is impaired when there is damage to Wernicke's area in the temporal lobe of the brain?
Damage to Wernicke's area, located in the temporal lobe, results in problems comprehending speech, although the ability to produce speech is not usually affected.
declarative memory (explicit) vs. nondeclarative memory (implicit)
Declarative memory: refers to facts and events and comes in two types: episodic and semantic memory. Nondeclarative memory: The knowledge of procedures that are unconscious.
6-8 months:
Discriminate between voices of males and females. Will habituate (reduce looking time) to one category of faces (male or female).
Describe Kenneth Dodge's Social Information Processing theory including the 5 sequential steps of information processing necessary for competent social functioning.
Dodge's original model of social exchange has five major units of social interaction. The first unit is a social stimulus. A child must make sense of the social cues and decide how to respond. Once a child evaluates the information, he or she must emit some social behavior. This behavior serves as a social stimulus for a child's peers, who make some judgment of the child, and then act themselves and repeats. social stimulus → child's processing → child's social behavior → peer's processing and judgement about child → peer's social behavior → begins again
collective monologues -
Egocentric exchanges between two or more children with participants talking "with" one another, but not necessarily "to" one another, such that what one child says has little to do with the comments of others
less is more hypothesis
Eliza Newport;
episodic memory vs. semantic memory
Episodic memory: Memory for episodes, such as what you had for breakfast this morning, the gist of a conversation you had with your mother last night, and the Christmas visit to your grandparents when you were 5 years old - can be consciously retrieved. Semantic memory: Refers to our knowledge of language, rules, and concepts. So, for instance, the meaning of the term democracy or the rules for multiplication are examples of my semantic memory.
critical period for language acquisition
Eric Lenneberg;
Explain why deferred imitation is considered to be a type of explicit memory rather than implicit memory.
Explicit memory is contrasted with implicit memory. The former represents a deliberate attempt to remember and is potentially available to conscious awareness, whereas the latter is often referred to as "memory without awareness." Most researchers who have investigated deferred imitation in older infants believe it to be a form of nonverbal explicit memory. One example of this is people with antegrade amnesia cannot perform deferred imitation tasks.
List and briefly describe the basic information processing abilities involved in executive function.
Executive function refers to the processes involved in regulation attention and in determining what to do with information just gathered or retrieved from long-term memory. The basic information processing abilities involved are 1) working memory: How much information one can hold in the short-term store and "think about" at a time. 2) how well one can inhibit responding and resist interference. 3) Selectively attending to relevant information. 4) Cognitive flexibility, as reflected by how easily individuals can switch between different sets of rules or different tasks. Each of these abilities is related to how quickly one can process information.
enactment -
Finally, the child must execute the chose response.
Assumptions shared by information processing theories:
Four assumptions common to information processing theories: 1. Thinking is information processing. We mentally act on information in order to know it. 2. People have limited capacity for how much information can be dealt with at one time. 3. Information moves through the system 4. Developmental change is produced by a process of continuous self-modification. That is, the outcomes generated by the child's own activities change the way the child will think in the future (similar to Piaget but without stages).
Define: strategies
Goal-directed and deliberately implemented mental operations used to facilitate task performance
reciprocal determinism -
In Bandura's theory, the belief that children have as much of an effect on their environment as their environment has on them
language acquisition device (LAD) -
In Chomsky's theory, the hypothetical construct possessed by all humans at birth enabling them to acquire language
How is imitative learning different from mimicry and emulation.
In contrast to emulation, and mimicry, imitative learning requires that the observer take the perspective of the model, understand the model's goal, and reproduce important portions of the model's behavior.
universal grammar -
In nativist theories of language acquisition, the innate grammar that characterizes all human languages
deferred imitation -
Imitation of a modeled act sometime after viewing the behavior
wug test
Jean Berko
State Robert Kail's interpretation of age differences in speed of processing. How is myelination involved?
Kail interpreted his findings as reflecting age-related increases in the amount of processing resources available for the execution of cognitive operations. Knowledge influences speed of processing and, thus, levels of performance on cognitive tasks, but he argued that maturationally based factors are primarily responsible for age-related differences in speed and, therefore, efficiency of processing. On maturationally based change likely involves the myelination of nerves in the associative ("thinking") area of the brain. Myelination of the associative area is not complete until the teen years and beyond.
social information processing
Kenneth Dodge;
Define: metacognition
Knowledge about one's own thought and the factors that influence thinking
Knowledge base
Knowledge base demonstrated that when someone knows a lot about a specific topic, memory span for information in one's area of expertise, but not beyond it, is significantly enhanced.
procedural memory
Knowledge in the long-term store of procedures that are unconscious
Explain the three major interacting classes of variables that Lindberg has suggested should be taken into consideration when evaluating children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility.
Marc Lindberg has suggested three major categories of factors that we should consider in evaluating studies of children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility. The first category in Lindberg's scheme is memory processes, and these concern the different memory operations of encoding, storage, and retrieval. Lindberg refers to the second of his taxonomy as focus of the study, by which he means the type of information that is being assessed. For example, is the interviewer concerned with psychologically and legally central information or is peripheral information. And, finally, one must consider participant factors. Here, development level and the associated social, emotional, and cognitive skills of children are important.
neonatal imitation
Meltzoff & Moore;
Describe changes in memory span from age 2 to adult.
Memory span: the number of (usually) unrelated items that can be recalled in exact order. At the age of 2-year-olds the average memory span is two items; 5-year-olds about four items; 7-year-olds about five items; 9-year-olds about six items. The average memory span for adults is about seven items.
Metacognition
Metacognition the knowledge of one's cognitive abilities. Every type of cognition has a corresponding type of metacognition - that is, metamemory, meta-attention, meta-comprehension, and so on. Someone with high metacogntive awareness should be aware of the cognitive operation he or she is engaged in and perhaps how successful his or her attempts at solving a particular problem are.
social cognitive theory
Michael Tomasello;
Compare and contrast the social-interactionist position on language development with that of the nativist perspective.
Most contemporary theorists who adhere to a social-interactionist perspective believe that the nativists have much of the story right. There is an overwhelming belief that humans are specifically prepared to acquire language, that something akin to universal grammar exists, and that there is a critical period for language. Despite this near consensus, some theorists see the social environment as playing a more important role than some of the more vocal proponents of the nativist camp believe.
Describe the characteristics and functions of infant-directed speech (aka child-directed speech).
Mothers typically talk to their young children using high-pitched tones, exaggerated modulations, simplified forms of adult words, many questions, and many repetitions.It was suggested that this special form of speech is connected with some innate language-transmittal mechanism found in adults--the counterpart to Chomsky's LAD.
Discuss the relationship between motivation and prospective memory in young children.
Motivation plays an important role in when children display prospective memory, as does the length of time they have to wait. Children are more likely to remember items when they are highly interested in the outcome.
emulation -
One individual observes another interacting with an object to achieve a specific goal. The first individual then interacts with the object attempting to attain the same end but does not duplicate the same behavior as the model to achieve the goal. Example: A child watches someone sifting sand through her fingers to get seashells, then tosses sand in the air to find seashells.
Response search -
Once an interpretation has been made, a child must decide what his or her next move is. Children must generate a variety of response alternatives. Do they join the group? If so, by what means? Do they approach the playground bully, walk around him, think of something clever to say, or run away? With age, children have a greater number of more sophisticated options from which to choose which should contribute greatly to behaving in a socially competent fashion.
interpretation -
Once encoded, the social information must be interpreted. What does this information mean? To determine meaning, children must compare this information with what they already know. What does it mean if the child is greeted by smiles? This will depend on what the child knows about the smiles of others in similar situations. "When I approach a group of kids I know who are already playing a game, smiles are usually a sign of welcome. But when Marvin smiles at me, it usually means he's going to trip me the first chance he gets." Children develop rules for interpreting social signals. These rules are probably not conscious, and they are executed in a matter of microseconds.
response evaluation -
Once responses have been generated, they must be evaluated. Does it make sense to approach the bully, hitting him before he hits me, or might one of the other options be wiser? To what extent can children anticipate the consequences of their behavior, selection the response alternative that will be most successful in the current situation?
Describe Bandura's social cognitive theory. Include in your answer a description of the five capabilities (symbolization, forethought, vicarious learning, self-regulation, self-reflection) that contribute to children's learning about their social world and a consideration of how each of these capabilities develops.
One of the most influential theories in developmental psychology during the past 40 years has been Albert Bandura's social learning theory, which Bandura later renamed social cognitive theory to reflect a more mentalistic approach. People learn more about their world by simply watching. Bandura proposed five capabilities that contribute to children's learning about their social world and their place in it, each of which develops:(1) symbolization, (2) forethought, (3) self-regulation, (4) self-reflection and (5) vicarious learning.
How does prenatal exposure to high levels of androgen affect toy choice in childhood?
One study by Berenbaum suggests that exposure to prenatal androgen has a defeminizing effect on toy preferences, particularly in girls. That is, boys who had been exposed to high levels of prenatal androgen (because of overproduction of androgen in the fetus' adrenal glands) spent only somewhat more time playing with masculine toys (than the "control" group of boys with normal androgen levels). In contrast, the androgenized girls demonstrated a strong masculine toy preference (their masculine toy preferences were comparable with those of the boys).
Describe how preschool children organize events in memory. What kind of information tends to not be remembered by young children?
One thing they tend to remember well is recurring events—what typically happens on a day-to-day basis. Substantial research demonstrates that even very young children organize information temporally in a script-like fashion and that such schematic organization for events doesn't change appreciably into adulthood. Young children's tendencies to organize information following familiar scripts seem to result in their tendency not to remember much in the way of specific information. On a camping trip they will remember script like things such as eating dinner and going to bed, but be short on details like scavenging for wood, tent setup, etc.
autobiographical memory
Personal and long-lasting memories that are the basis for one's personal life history
Describe and contrast the following research procedures: "preference for novelty paradigm", "conjugate reinforcement procedure" and "deferred imitation"
Preference for novelty paradigms are tasks in which an infant's preference, usually measured in looking time, for a novel as opposed to a familiar stimulus is used as an indication of memory for the familiar stimulus. Conjugate-reinforcement procedure refers to conditioning procedure used in memory research with infants, in which children's behaviors control aspects of a visual display (i.e. string tied to babies leg makes mobile move when s/he kicks). Deferred imitation is imitation of a modeled act sometime after viewing the behavior.
Summarize the findings regarding children's eyewitness memory, including the role of knowledge, characteristics of the interview, age differences in suggestibility, response to misleading questions, and susceptibility to false memory creation.
Preschool children typically recall only a small proportion of information from an event in answer to free-recall questions. Although young children remember very little information, what they do recall is highly accurate and central to the event -if there are no suggestions or coaching. Children's recollections of stressful and invasive medical procedures are related to their knowledge of the procedures; children who know more about the procedure remember more accurate information and recall less inaccurate information. How children are interviewed can greatly affect what they remember and the accuracy of their recollections. The type of questions asked influences what children remember. Research has shown that people of all ages report more inaccurate information when misleading questions are posed. The general consensus regarding the question of whether children are more suggestible than adults seem to be "yes." Young children are highly susceptible to the suggestion of an adult interviewer, modifying their answers, modifying their answers, it seems, to suit the desires of whomever is interviewing them. Preschool children are even more susceptible to creating false memories than are adults. Additionally, the interviewer's demeanor plays a key role, if they are warm and inviting the child will tend to remember more.
Define and Contrast: production deficiency vs. utilization deficiency
Production deficiency: Children do not produce strategies spontaneously, they can be trained to use them and enhance their performance as a result. The performance of trained younger children rarely reaches the levels of the performance of older children who use strategies spontaneously. Utilization deficiency: Children spontaneously produce a strategy but their task performance does not yet benefit from using the strategy.
Contrast rehearsal memory strategies with organization memory strategies. Describe at least one research study for each.
Rehearsal memory strategy is where a child repeats the target information and organization memory strategy is where the child combines different items into categories, themes, or other units. Rehearsal memory strategy research where children in kindergarten, 2nd, and 5th graders were shown a set of pictures that they were asked to remember. After the presentation of the pictures there was a 15 second delay that allowed the children to prepare to recall the test. An experimenter was trained to identify lip movements and recalled the children mouthing the words associated with the picture. The older the child, the more they rehearsed, which increased their memory and recalled more. 85% of 5th graders tried this, where 10% of kindergartners tried this method. Organization memory strategy Children are given a randomized list of items that can be divided into categories. Children are sometimes given the opportunity to sort items into groups before recall. Recalling items from the same category, clustering, allows children/adults to remember more. However, when instructions are modified, stressing that children should make groups before recalling, even preschoolers comply and demonstrate enhanced levels of memory performance. Let me simplify the research part for rehearsal strategies. Flavell and colleagues looked for the relationship between mouth movement, rehearsal, in sponaneous and instructed settings. Children were seen to have increased rehearsal ability as they age and corresponding memory performance increases. Pg 272-273 (Student Jamye)
imitative learning -
Reproduction of observed behavior to achieve a specific goal. May require an understanding of the goal that the model had in mind, as well as the reproduction of important components of the observed behavior. Example: Child watches an adult open a latch and push a button to open a box to get a piece of candy, and repeats same actions with same results.
Stability refers to maintaining the same rank order with respect to ability over time. How stable is memory ability over time? Present research evidence to support your conclusion.
Research investigating stability requires longitudinal assessment, and such expensive and laborious work has rarely focused on basic cognitive processes, such as memory. Findings from Schneider and his colleagues were that long-term stability is higher for other memory tasks. The correlations over a 2-year period for sentence span, word span, and several measures of story recall were usually quite high. There was relatively high cross-age stability in text recall, with young children who remember more of a story than their peers becoming adults who also show high levels of text recall. Suggesting that the ability to acquire, store, and retrieve text information develops early in childhood and remains relatively stable into adulthood. In contrast, the lower stabilities for sort recall are related to the substantially greater strategic component required for these tasks. Stability is relatively high for tasks involving relatively little in the way of deliberate strategic functioning but lower when strategies play a crucial part in task performance.
What does research suggest about hypnotic age regression?
Research says there is no evidence that hypnotic age regression can succeed in retrieving "repressed," or simply forgotten, memories from childhood, despite many people's claims to the contrary. 21% of hypnotized people correctly identified age regression memories vs. the control who got 80+% correct.
retrospective memory vs. prospective memory
Retrospective memory: remembering something that happened in the past Prospective memory: remembering to do something in the future. Referred to as 'mental time travel,' or anticipating the future and planning for it.
Semantic memory
Semantic memory refers to our knowledge of language, rules, and concepts.
Explain why children, adolescents, and some adults perform so poorly on scientific reasoning problems?
Scientific reasoning: involves generating hypotheses about how something in the world works and then systematically testing those hypotheses. One uses scientific reasoning by identifying the factors that can affect a particular phenomenon and then exhaustively varying one factor at a time while holding the other factors constant. Children, adolescents, and some adults perform so poorly on scientific reasoning because it involves thinking about theories rather than just working with them. Scientific reasoning requires a high level of metacognition. It requires integrating theories with data. When the two agree, there is little problem. When hypotheses and evidence are in conflict, however, problems occur. This presents two problems; people can be theory-bound, ( fit evidence to match the theory), or data-bound, (lack holistic/global view & focus isolated pattern; avoid conflict wit theory).
Distinguish between short-term memory and working memory and describe tasks used to assess them.
Short-term memory holds information temporarily whereas working memory executes operations on information. Tasks used to asses them is the digit-span tasks to asses the capacity of short-term memory. An example of working memory is through research by Siegel and Ryan asking children to supply the final word for incomplete sentences.
Briefly describe Siegler's adaptive strategy choice model.
Siegler proposes that in cognitive development, children generate a wide variety of strategies to solve problems. Depending on the nature of the task and the goals of the child, certain strategies are "selected" and used frequently, whereas others that are less effective are used less often and eventually decrease in frequency. A model to describe how strategies change over time: the view that multiple strategies exist within a child's cognitive repertoire at any one time with these strategies competing with one another for use.
Explain infantile amnesia according to Freud, Piaget, and fuzzy-trace theory. Which of these explanations seems most plausible to you?
Sigmund Freud was the first to speculate on the reason for infantile amnesia, proposing that the events of infancy and early childhood are rife with sexual overtones toward one's mother and are just generally so traumatic that they are actively repressed. Piaget suggested that information is encoded differently during the early and later years of life, which is consistent with observations that the nature of representation changes form infancy to early childhood and then again somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7. The minds that resided in our heads when we were infants are no longer there, replace by minds that process symbols, especially verbal ones. Another alternative is that infantile amnesia is merely a consequence of the child's developing information-processing system. Following the tenets of the fuzzy-trace theory, a developmental shifts in how events are represented in young children and coding lead to memories being more easily forgotten with verbatim memories. Children encode information as verbatim, adults as gist, so over time the verbatim encoded memories are 'forgotten'.
CHAPTER 7: Describe the similarities between information processing theories.
Similarities: Information-processing theories do not focus on stages of development. Cognitive growth is analyzed in terms of age-related changes in the information that children represent. Researchers utilizing information-processing concepts study the processes that children apply to information and the memory limits that constrain the amount of information children can represent and process. Information-processing theories of development emphasize precise analysis of how change occurs. Two critical goals are to identify the change mechanisms that contribute most to development and to specify exactly how these change mechanisms work together to produce cognitive growth.
Define: executive function
The processes involved in regulating attention and in determining what to do with information just gathered or retrieved from long-term memory
Is babbling a component of language or is it simply the infant exercising his/her vocal apparatus? Cite research to support your answer.
Sounds made during babbling vary widely, including both sounds heard in the baby's native language and sounds that are not. Over the course of the first year, babies' babbles come to resemble the sounds they hear around them, indicating that babbling development is based, at least partially, on children reproducing sounds that they hear. Some evidence consistent with this is that deaf children do not engage in true babbling, although they pass successfully through the earlier stages of speech production (Oller & Eilers, 1988; Petitto, 2000) . Study by Holowka and Petitto sought to learn how babbling may be a component of language. Are language centers are primarily located in the left hemisphere of the brain. As we know the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body. Because of this lateralization when we are conversing, or doing language tasks, our mouth openings are greater on the right hand side. When engaged in non-language tasks, like smiling, the smile pulls more to the left, emotional and motoric responses being more controlled by the right hemisphere. To support the idea that babbling was more of a linguistic task Holowka and Petitto the videotaped 10 babies and compared the mouth openings for smiling and babbling behaviors. The results showed openings greater on the right side for babbling showing that babbling is controlled by the left hemisphere, and suggesting a possible linguistic nature
mirror neurons -
Specific neurons that become active when they perform an action and when they watch others perform actions that an individual can make
Define in relation to executive function: selective attention
The ability to focus only on chosen stimuli and not be distracted by other "noise" in the environment
fast mapping -
The ability to learn new words based on very little input
Define in relation to executive function: cognitive flexibility
The ability to shift between sets of rules or tasks
episodic future thought
The ability to simulate specific personal episodes that may potentially occur in the future
What factor was most related to the language proficiency of Chinese and Korean emigrants to the U.S. in the Johnson & Newport study?
The age in which they began speaking the language.
Define: relational mapping
The application of what one knows about one set of elements (the relation of A to B) to relations about different elements (the relation of C to D)
source monitoring
The awareness of the origins of one's memories, knowledge, or beliefs
self-efficacy -
The belief that one can influence one's thoughts and behavior
encoding -
The child must first encode the social stimulus. This requires that the child be properly attentive and adequately perceive the social signal. The child must know what cues are important to encode. For a child entering an already established group, for example, whether he is greeted by a smile or a frown is an important social cue. Less critical are things such as what the other children are wearing or the Kevin needs a haircut.
mimicry -
The duplication of behavior without any understanding of the goal of that behavior. Example: A 2-year-old child steps on a scale, looks at the scale face, and steps off, just like Dad does.
looking glass self -
The idea that our self-concept is a reflection of how other people see and respond to us. Or, 'self-consciousness stands for the representation we hold of ourselves through the eyes of others'
infantile amnesia
The inability to remember events from infancy & early childhood
Describe the multi-store model of the information processing system including the characteristics and function of the sensory store (sensory memory), short-term store (short-term memory), and the long-term store (long-term memory). Trace information through the system.
The multi-store models suggested as theories of memories. These theories assume that information from the external world is initially represented in sensory register or sensory store for each sense modality. These registers can hold large quantities of information but only for a matter of milliseconds. In this initial registration, the information passes through the short-term store, where capacity is smaller but the representations are more durable, lasting for seconds. In the short-term store, we store the information with what we come into contact with the world, and hold onto this information long enough for us to evaluate it. But if we apply some cognitive operation to the information in the short-term store, that information is transferred to the long-term store, where it presumably is retained indefinitely. Then when we retrieve information from our long-term store, we bring that information back to short-term store.
Define in relation to executive function: span of apprehension
The number of items that people can keep in mind at any one time or the amount of information that people can attend to at a single time
Describe gender differences in linguistic acquisition.
The question of gender differences in language acquisition is unanswered. Research suggests that girls might be more vocal than boys early in infancy and that this difference leads to a subsequent advantage in learning a first language. However, other research suggests that whatever small advantage in language acquisition girls do hold is a function of cultural practices, with boys in some cultures displaying the typical "feminine" pattern of faster language acquisition we've come to expect in our own. Boys display more heritability than girls even though girls tend to show more aptitude for linguistic acquisition. Hypothesized that the way girls are talked to vs. boys is why girls show more aptitude.
word spurt -
The rapid increase in word (mostly noun) learning, occurring about 18 months of age.
non-declarative memory
The second general type of memory
Describe the development of a child's sense of self. Include a description of research methods used to determine the child's sense of self in your answer. 424-425 if anyone wants to help phrase this.
The sense of self, or our self-concept, is the way a person defines him or herself. This awareness of oneself has been studied for its significance in cognitive development. To be able to observe if the presence of self-concept, researchers (Bahrick, Moss, & Fadil, 1996; Legerstee, Anderson, & Schaffer, 1998) showed infants a series of videos or pictures of themselves along with pictures/videos of other infants. They looked for differences of attention given to the different pictures/videos. If there is the presence of a sense of self within a child, they should pay less attention to the novel stimuli, other babies, and give more attention to the familiar, themselves. If there is no difference in attention between the stimuli, then it is said there is no concept of self. Infants often have daily exposure to mirrors (Bahrick, 1995) and so by three months of age, they recognize themselves as a familiar sight. (by Student Jamye based on Bjorklund)
What are the three important factors that contribute to developmental and individual differences in children's strategy use.
The three important factors that contribute to developmental and individual differences in children's strategy use is 1) mental capacity, 2) knowledge base, and 3) metacognition.
self-concept -
The way a person defines himself or herself
What distinguishes "instructed learning" as described by Michael Tomasello, et al, from other forms of "learning from instruction."
What distinguishes instructed learning from other aspects of "learning from instruction" is that, in the former, children will reproduce the instructed behavior in the appropriate context to regulate their own behavior. That is, as in imitative learning, children must understand the purpose of the behavior--the adults' purpose when he or she initially taught behavior. Children must internalize the adult's instruction, not just repeat a behavior on demand. Thus, a child who is taught to bounce a ball off the wall and into the wastebasket has learned a complicated trick. However, it is a trick that can be acquired by a monkey, and it is not the same as learning that putting a ball in a basket in certain situation is a goal to a game. Each is learning through instruction. But only the latter is instructed learning.
pidgins vs. creoles
When a group of people with a variety of native languages moves to a foreign land where they are not given the opportunity to participate in the majority culture or to learn the language of their new homeland, they develop a communication system termed a pidgin. Pidgins combine several languages at a rudimentary level and are used to convey necessary information within the group and between the group and its "hosts." Word order is often highly variable, and there is little in the way of a grammatical system. The children of pidgin speakers take the remnants of their parents' language and create a fully developed language in one generation--a language termed a creole. Rather than acquiring language in the typical sense,these children create a language. Although there might not be an easy interpretation of this phenomenon, the creation of a creole by children suggests that they possess an innate grammar and use it to "correct" the fragmented pidgin spoken by their parents and convert it into a true (and new) language.
Robert Siegler
adaptive strategy choice model
Russell Barkley
behavioral inhibition in ADHD
CHAPTER 8: Describe the various "contents" of memory:
declarative, explicit, nondeclarative, implicit, semantic and episodic.
Self-regulation
involves adopting standards of acceptable behavior for ourselves.
Vicarious learning
is the cornerstone of social cognitive theory. Children do not need to receive specific reinforcement for their behavior to learn, rather, they learn much social behavior merely by observing others.
Noam Chomsky;
language acquisition device
Episodic memory
literally, memory for episodes such as what you had for breakfast this morning--can be consciously retrieved. Such memory is sometimes called explicit memory,
Forethought
means that we are able to anticipate the consequences of our actions and the actions of others.
Symbolization
means that we can think about our social behavior in words and images
What is the smallest unit of meaning in a language?
morpheme
Define the following five aspects of language. Give examples.
phonology - the knowledge of how words are pronounced; morphology - the knowledge of word formation; syntax - the knowledge of how words are put together to form grammatical sentences; semantics - the knowledge of the meaning of words & sentences; pragmatics - knowledge about how language can be adjusted to fit different circumstances;
Pressley, et al.;
strategy instruction
Patricia Miller
strategy utilization deficiency
Mental capacity
the strategy use has a cost in mental effort, and young children exert so much of their limited resources executing the strategy that they do not retain sufficient mental capacity to perform other aspects of the task efficiently.
explicit memory
which refers to the fact that it is available to conscious awareness and can be directly assessed by tests of recall or recognition memory.