CH7: Cognitive Processes and Academic Skills

What are 3 important memory features that exist as early as 2-3 months old?

Remembering an event from the past

Over time, can’t recall the event

A cue can help to recall a forgotten memory

How does infant and toddler memory improve rapidly?

Becomes more flexible, are able to remember past events even when the associated context has changed

Which parts of the brain are related to memory?

The hippocampus and the frontal cortex

How is the hippocampus related to memory?

Related to the initial storage of information

Develops within the first year but doesn’t mature until 20-24 months

How is the frontal cortex related to memory?

Responsible for retrieving memories, around age 2

What are memory strategies?

Actions that improve remembering

What are 4 examples of memory strategies?

Rehearsal

Organization

Elaboration

Chunking

Describe the rehearsal strategy

Repeating information that must be remembered

Describe the organization strategy

Organizing related information together by using structure

Describe the elaboration strategy

Embellishing information to make it more memorable (adding extra details, linking info to help)

Describe the chunking strategy

Organizing related information into one meaningful group or chunk that improves working memory

What is metacognition?

Thinking about your thinking, being aware and having an understanding of your thought process

How is metacognition related to memory?

When a child chooses a memory strategy, they need to monitor its effectiveness (the ability to select and monitor strategies improves with age)

Involves reanalyzing memory tasks to select better approaches for different tasks and contexts

What is metamemory?

A child’s informal understanding of memory that includes noting when memory works well, and monitoring the effectiveness of memory strategies

Develops in parallel with metacognitive knowledge

Describe metacognitive knowledge

A growing understanding and awareness of all cognitive processes (attention, monitoring, goals, etc.)

What is an important goal of metacognitive knowledge?

Understanding the connection between goals, strategies, monitoring and outcomes

Describe cognitive self-regulation

The ability to identify goals, select effective strategies, and monitoring accurately

What are the 5 main cognitive processes?

Ability to pay attention

Ignore distractions

Be persistent at a task

Be organized

To plan

What are scripts?

Memory structures that describe the sequence in which events occur

How can knowledge distort memory?

Children may distort a specific memory of an experience so that it conforms to existing scripts

Older children have more knowledge to they are sometimes more prone to memory distortions

What is autobiographical memory?

People’s memory of their own experiences and lives, significant events, transitions, and experiences

Why are interactions with others important for autobiographical memory?

Language skills allow for conversation, when talking about past events in details and encouraging children to expand on their description of past events, they have earlier memories of their childhoods by adolescence

What is infantile amnesia?

Forgetting of events from early in life

Most adults remember little/nothing from infancy, remember more events from the age of 3-4

Describe the fuzzy trace theory

Experiences can be stored in memory verbatim or in terms of their basic meaning/gist

Why do adults not remember as much from infancy?

Memories do not consolidate as well in childhood, so they’re more likely to degrade or be lost

What is eye witness testimony?

Sometimes we “remember” what others suggest might have happened in the past

What is the effect of stereotypes and suggestion on memory?

Preschoolers were more likely to recall events that never happened when told stereotypes and given suggestions about an event

How do the results of research on child problem solving contradict Piaget’s views?

They show that even young children show remarkable problem solving skills, in addition to gradually becoming more effective problem solvers with age

What are some features of children’s problem solving?

Failure to encode

Failure to plan ahead

Lack of specific knowledge

Use of various strategies

Heuristics

Collaboration

Describe the failure to encode

Children don’t encode all the important information in a problem

What are encoding processes?

Processes that transform the information in a problem into a mental representation

Describe the failure to plan ahead

Problems often require planning ahead, but children often don’t because they believe they can solve it without a plan, planning is hard work, and expect adults to solve complex problems for them

Describe the lack of specific knowledge

Problems can require knowing critical/specific facts, but children often use generic strategies

What is means-end analysis?

Determining the difference between the current and desired situations, then doing something to reduce the difference

Describe the use of various strategies

As children gain more experience, they use the easier, faster, more accurate, most effective, and less effort strategy out of the many they have learned

What are heuristics?

Rules of thumb, based on personal experience that do not guarantee a solution, but can be helpful in solving a range of problems

They are fast and require little effort

What is analytical problem solving?

More effortful and involves mathematical or logical rules

How does collaboration enhance problem solving?

Beneficial when the other party is more knowledgeable, and when they are both invested and share responsibility.

The less knowledgeable party can learn from their peer to develop their problem solving skills

Why do children have limited scientific skill?

Confounds, misconceptions, and difficulty integrating theory and data

However, even young children can be trained to think more scientifically

How do confounds impact scientific problem solving?

Children and adolescents often devise experiments where variables are confounded, combining them instead of evaluating them independently, so the results are often ambiguous

Therefore they often reach conclusions prematurely, basing them on too little evidence

How do misconceptions impact scientific problem solving?

We often construct mental models to understand the world, but they are often wrong, and these can interfere with scientific thinking

Why do children have difficulty integrating theory and data?

If the results of an experiment do not support their own beliefs, they may discount the results of an experiment

Describe problem focused coping

Focuses on how to solve the issue to get rid of the stressor to lower the associated negative emotions, how to overcome the situation given the circumstances

Used mostly by adults

Describe emotion focused coping

Managing the negative affects, focus on reducing the negative emotions rather than the problem itself

Often feel overwhelmed, angry, worried etc.

More likely to use this coping method due to childhood trauma etc.

What are pre-reading skills?

By age 4 children know the names for about half the letters of the alphabet, knowing letters and letter sounds

Why are pre-reading skills important?

Children who have better pre-reading skills tend to learn to read more easily and readily

What is phonological awareness?

The ability to hear the distinctive sounds of letters

What is word recognition?

Process of identifying a unique pattern of letters

What is reading comprehension?

Process of extracting meaning from a sequence of words

What is decoding?

Ability to identify individual words by sounding out the letters in them

What are the 2 approaches to teaching reading?

Phonics, breaking a word into individual sounds

The whole-language approach, memorizing entire words

Which approach to teach reading is more effective?

Research indicates phonics instruction is essential, children become better readers

What factors contribute to improved comprehension?

Language skills improvement: understand words they decode

Recognizing words: allows more working memory capacity

Working memory: store more of a sentence as they try to understand it

Acquiring more general knowledge of their physical, social, and psychological worlds: allows better understanding

Monitoring their comprehension

Using more appropriate reading strategies

What are factors in developmental improvements in writing?

Children know writing involves placing letters on a page to communicate an idea

Greater knowledge and access to knowledge about topics

Greater understanding of how to organize writing

Greater ease in dealing with the mechanical requirements of writing

Greater revision skills

Describe the knowledge-story telling strategy

Writing down information on a topic as they retrieve it from memory

Describe the knowledge-transforming strategy

Decide what information to include and how to organize it to convey a point to the reader

How to children know and use numbers?

Infants at 4 months can distinguish between small quantities of 2-3

Can also do very simple addition and subtraction, can compare quantities

Process seems to be more perceptual in nature

What proposed systems do infants use to understand numbers?

One precise system for 1-3 objects, and another for larger sets of objects that is more approximate

Describe the one-to-one principle

Understand there can only be one number name for each object that is counted

Number of words matches number of objects

Describe the stable-order principle

Number names must be counted in the same order

Describe the cardinality principle

The last number name differs from the previous ones, in the sense that it denotes the total number of objects (not simply a number name, can describe the quantity of the objects)

How do arithmetic skills develop?

Use many different strategies to add and subtract (fingers) in preschool

In grade 1, increasingly solve problems by counting mentally

By age 8-9, have additional tables committed to memory and retrieve them as a fact

What are some predictors of school success?

SES

Self-control

Eating dinner together

Private schools (confounds)

Parental academic involvement

What is the influence of electronic media on development?

The content of media and how the technology is used influences the impact on development

e.g., positive influence when educational and used effectively