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- The information-processing approach first emerged in the second half of the 20th century and now represents the dominant field of cognitive development.
- The term information processing is borrowed from computer science and the approach often draws parallels between the way computers work and the way human beings process information.
- A computer's ability to process information is determined by both its hardware and software. Hardware includes the capacity of the computer's memory systems, its ability to process information in parallel and the sped in which it executes basic functions.
- Software components include the specific routines and programs that have been installed to process information for example word processing, creating graphs, drawing pictures and playing games.
- Human information processing is influenced by "hardware" factors such as memory capacity and the speed in which new information enters the cognitive system. It is also determined by "software" such as knowledge and strategies that are available for particular tasks.
- The computational analogy seeks to build a step by step model of how children take in new information and transform it and use it.
- Often such models are described in flowcharts which describes how the information enters and is modified by the cognitive system.
- These models have evolved in processing, making them easier to test experimentally.
- FIGURE 6.1 page
183
Flowchart of a hypothetical information-processing sequence for visual recognition of a cat
Basic processes 1: Attentional Development
- Our perceptual system provides us with an enormous amount of information from the outside world, much more than what what we can interpret at any given moment.
- Ou attentional system helps us cope and make sense of all this information.
- When a mother tells a child to pay attention she is re directing her child to selective attention - whereas the task is to focus only on one stimuli and to stop focussing on competing stimuli (such as the TV).
- Development of selective attention has been studied extensively using tests of incidental learning. In a typical study, children are given pairs of pictures and are told that they need to memorise only one type of picture (eg memorise only the ones with animals) and they can ignore the other pictures. Children are then asked to repeat the target pictures ant he pictures they were asked to ignore.
- Children farewell on incidental memory - that is they remember well pictures they were told to ignore. At around 11 years of age, the amount of incidental information recalled decreases. This means that older children are usually better at redirecting their attention to a particular target and filtering out incidental information or irrelevant distractions.
- These means that we want young children to focus attention on a particular task at school it would be good to remove distractions. On a computer screen, for example, relevant and irrelevant information can be separated spatially or presented in different colours. Repeated prompts to focus only on task-relevant details may also be helpful.
- another important aspect of attention is SUSTAINED ATTENTION. That is the ability to stay on task over a sustained period of time and its particularly important when the child is learning a new task or is trying to solve a difficult problem. Sustained attention in play activities increases with age. Longitudinal studies have shown that measures of children's sustained attention in 1-2 is predictive of attention in early childhood. Such research suggests that it may be possible to identify children who are at risk of attentional developmental disorders at a very early point in their development.
BASIC PROCESSESES II: MEMORY DEVELOPMENT
- Memory is one of the most important information-processing abilities and its involved in every aspect of our child's life.
- The development of memory is important in teh acquisition of academic skills such as learning geography, history or mathematics.
- It is also critical to our emotional and social development.
- Before child can start bonding with a parent they have to remember the parents face, body shape or voice, and to recognize these features every time the parent appears. Our relationships with family and friends are governed by memories of past experiences with those people.
- Three processes of memory:
1) Information needs to be taken into the memory system, a processes referred to as encoding.
2) That information needs to be held in storage over time.
3) Finally, retrieval is the process by which we access information stored in memory.
When we look at memory development we need to examine each of these processes.
Study memory by looking at RECOGNITION and RECALL.
- Infant memory starts at birth an even before (auditory memory).
- Memories of newborns are fragile.
- Operant conditioning techniques used to test memory.
- As children grow they can recall more and more numbers in a sequence.
- Memory strategies become very important - people use them to help them remember something.
MNEMONIC STRATEGIES
Three of the most common ones are:
- rehearsal: repetition of events
- organisation strategy: eg grouping an unfamiliar group in alphabetical order
- elaboration: the use of salient mental images
- many young children do not use these memory strategies due to mediational deficiency (inability to carry out the cognitive operations required to execute the strategy) and production deficiency ( failure to use a mnemonic strategy even though one has the cognitive functions to do so).
- with age, children become more likely to spontaneously employ memory strategies to assist future retrieval.
- the complexity of children's strategies also increases with age.
- research has shown that children rather than relying on on e strategy often use many strategies. Children will try as many as 4 strategies in a simple memory test. Strategy variability in creases with age and is associated with better memory performance.
- adults often use simple strategies like rehearsal when trying to remember a telephone number.
ROLE of GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
* A second important information-processing mechanism that is linked to memory development is the growth of general knowledge about the world. Knowledge and memory are closely related. What we know about a topic influences how well we learn and remember information about that topic.
* This principle starts as soon as 14 years of age. There is evidence that acquired knowledge can affect memory in 14 month olds.
* With age, children's knowledge of everything increases.
* This affects two components of memory that general knowledge affects : CONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY and the EFFECTS OF MEMORY OF EXPERTISE AND CULTURE.
* basic notion that memory does not play like a tape recorder which can capture and replay event that takes place. During encoding and retrieval, people seek to understand and interpret information, often deleting trivial information and incorporating details inferred from general knowledge. This concept has some similarities to Piaget's concept of assimilation of new information into familiar schemes.
* As children get older, memory becomes even more constructive as they become increasingly active information processors.
* If a child has a very strong interest in a particular area of expertise (chess, soccer) he can perform as well or better in memory tests in that subject are against adults who know less about the area.
* Children are more likely to use effective memory strategies in areas they have some expertise. Finally, expertise increases the speed of memory processing . So that the child encodes new information relevant to the expertise domain than non expertise, freeing up cognitive resources to use effective mnemonic strategies.
ROLE OF METAMEMORY
# means knowledge about memory.
# it means knowing general facts about memory (eg that shorter lists are easier to remember than longer lists) but also knowledge about our won memory ( eg whether asking a person's name once you will be able to remember next time).
# studies have shown that memory knowledge may be linked to performance.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF IMPLICIT MEMORY
# We have two components to memory: explicit memory (direct) and implicit (indirect) memory. One popular way to study implicit memory is through repetition priming - a procedure in which previous exposure to a stimulus causes an improvement in subsequent performance, even when there is no conscious awareness of the initial learning episode.