Child Development - Chapter 09.pdf - po ang - Januszek66

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CHAPTER 9

Cognition:

Information

Processing

THE INFORMATION-PROCESSING

APPROACH

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENTION

Sustaining Attention

Deploying Attention

Selective Attention

A TYPICAL D EVELOPMENT : Attention Deficit Hyperactivity

Disorder

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEMORY

Recognition Memory

Recall Memory

Autobiographical Memory

C ONTROVERSY : How Reliable Is Children’s Eyewitness

Testimony?

Brain Development and Memory

THE DEVELOPMENT OF

PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS

Components of Problem Solving

E XAMINING R ESEARCH M ETHODS : Using the Microgenetic

Approach to Study Children’s Problem-Solving

Strategies

R ESEARCH A PPLIED TO E DUCATION : Facilitating Transfer in

the Classroom

The Development of Scientific Thinking

The Executive Function

CHAPTER RECAP

Summary of Developmental Themes

Summary of Topics

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Key Themes in Cognition

Nature/Nurture What roles do nature and nur-

ture play in cognitive development?

Continuity/Discontinuity Is cognitive develop-

ment continuous or discontinuous?

■

Sociocultural Influence How does the socio-

cultural context influence cognitive development?

Individual Differences How prominent are in-

dividual differences in cognitive development?

■

Child’s Active Role How does the child play an

active role in the process of cognitive develop-

ment?

Interaction Among Domains How does cog-

nitive development interact with development in

other domains?

■

T omorrow’s geography test is going to be really tough,” Nate lamented to his friend

‘‘

on the way home from school. “I should have paid more attention in class and kept

up with my assignments. Now I have to study so much!” Normally a good student, Nate

had been preoccupied with the success of his baseball team. Now there was a price to be

paid as he prepared for the next day’s test, and he was decidedly anxious about it. Nate

had made up one “trick” for remembering the states in the Southeast: he strung their

first letters to make the phrase “True aces forget no states” for Tennessee, Alabama,

Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, respectively. And it helped him

to identify some of the states by tying their shapes to things he knew; for example,

Florida really did look as though it had a “panhandle.” But there was so much more to

remember! Maybe he could just repeat the capitals of the states over and over to himself.

One thing he knew for sure: next time he would not save all of his studying for the night

before the test.

N ate, as it turns out, had a pretty good understanding of his mental capabilities.

He knew that paying attention in class was helpful and that certain tech-

niques, such as rehearsal, mental imagery, and other “tricks,” could help him remem-

ber information. He also knew there were limits to what he could accomplish in the

few hours he had to prepare for his exam. In fact, many aspects of Nate’s own think-

ing—attention, memory, and even the fact that he could evaluate his thought capa-

bilities—have been topics of great interest to developmental psychologists. In this

chapter, we continue our examination of cognitive development, this time from an

important alternative viewpoint to the perspectives described in the chapter titled

“Cognition: Piaget and Vygotsky”: the information-processing perspective. First, we

will summarize the major features of this theoretical model. Then we will survey sev-

eral topics that have been studied extensively from the stance of information-

processing theory, including attention, memory, and problem solving.

The Information-Processing Approach

A s we saw in the chapter titled “Themes and Theories,” information-processing

theorists believe that human cognition is best understood as the management

of information through a system with limited space or resources. In the information-

processing approach, mental processing is usually broken down into several compo-

nents or levels of activity. For example, memory processes are often partitioned into

encoding, storage, and retrieval phases. Information is assumed to move forward

through the system, and each stage of processing takes some time (Massaro &

Cowan, 1993; Palmer & Kimchi, 1986).

Many traditional information-processing models are called multistore models

because they posit several mental structures through which information flows

multistore model Information-

processing model that describes a

sequence of mental structures

through which information flows.

311

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Chapter 9

Cognition: Information Processing

Executive control processes

Regulate attention

Maintain appropriate

memory processes

Initiate strategies for

problem solving

Evaluate potential

response

Short-term memory

Storage

Long-term memory

Feeds

into

Environmental

stimuli

(Input)

Sensory register

Holds limited amounts

of information, which is

later forgotten or moved

to long-term memory

Saves information

permanently, using

various cognitive

strategies

Attentio n

Stores information

briefly

Retrieval

Response

(Output)

Source: Adapted from Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968.

sequentially, much as data pass through a computer. One example of this type of

model is shown in Figure 9.1. Most multistore models distinguish between psycho-

logical structures and control processes. Psychological structures are analogous to the

hardware of a computer. The control processes are mental activities that move infor-

mation from one structure to another, much as software functions for the computer.

Suppose someone asks you to repeat a list of words, such as shoe, car, truck, hat,

coat, bus .Ifyou have paid attention to all of the words and, like an efficient computer,

“input” them into your cognitive system, processing will begin in the sensory

the original stimuli, in this case the audible sounds you experienced. Next, the words

may move to the memory stores . Wo r king memory (sometimes called short-term

memory ) holds information for no more than a couple of minutes. Many researchers

consider working memory to be a kind of work space in which various kinds of cog-

nitive tasks can be conducted. If you were to repeat the words over and over to your-

self—that is, rehearse them—you would be employing a control process to retain

information in working memory. You might also use the second memory store, long-

term memory, the repository of more enduring information, and notice that the

items belong to two categories, clothing and vehicles. The executive control oversees

this communication among the structures of the information-processing system. Fi-

nally, when you are asked to say the words aloud, your response system functions to

help you reproduce the sounds you heard moments earlier.

Other theorists in this field have advanced a limited-resource model of the cog-

nitive system that emphasizes a finite amount of available cognitive energy that can

be deployed in numerous ways, but only with certain tradeoffs. Limited-resource

models emphasize the allocation of energy for various cognitive activities rather than

the mental structures themselves. The basic assumption is that the pool of resources

available for processing, retaining, and reporting information is finite (Bjorklund &

Harnishfeger, 1990). In one such model, introduced in the chapter titled “Cognition:

Piaget and Vygotsky,” Robbie Case proposes an inverse relationship between the

amount of space available for operating on information and that available for stor-

age (Case, 1985; Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982). Operations, as we have seen,

FIGURE 9.1

A Schematic Model of

Human Information

Processing

This highly simplified model

includes several cognitive

structures and processes that

many information-processing

theorists believe to be impor-

tant in cognitive development.

As the arrows indicate, infor-

mation often flows in several

directions between various

structures.The goal of informa-

tion-processing models is to

identify those structures and

processes that are at work

when a child responds to his

or her environment.

sensory register Memory

store that holds information for

very brief periods of time in a

form that closely resembles the

initial input.

working memory Short-term

memory store in which mental

operations such as rehearsal and

categorization take place.

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The Development of Attention

include processes such as identifying the stimuli and recognizing relationships

among them; storage refers to the retention of information for use at a later time. If a

substantial amount of mental effort is expended on operations, less space is available

for storage or retention.

In the simple memory experiment we just examined, the effort used to identify

the words and notice the categorical relationships among them will determine the

space left over for storing those words. If we are proficient at recognizing words and

their relationships, storage space will be available. If these tasks cost us substantial ef-

fort, however, our resources will be taxed and little will be left for the task of remem-

bering. Robert Kail’s research (1986, 1991a, 1991b) supports the idea that a central

component of cognitive development is an increase in processing speed with age. As

children grow older, they can mentally rotate images, name objects, or add numbers

more rapidly. More resources then become available for other cognitive tasks.

How do these two general information-processing frameworks, the multistore

model and the limited-resource model, account for cognitive development? Multi-

store models allow for two possibilities. Changes in cognition can stem from either

an increase in the size of the structures—the “hardware”—or increasing proficiency

in employing the “software,” or control processes. For example, the capacity of the

mental structure working memory may increase with age, or, as children grow older,

they may increase their tendency to rehearse items to keep information in working

memory or even push it into long-term memory. Limited-resource models suggest

that what changes during development is processing efficiency. As children become

more proficient in manipulating information, more internal space is freed up for

storage.

The Development of Attention

H ave you ever noticed that sometimes a teenager can spend hours absorbed in a

single activity, such as doing a jigsaw puzzle or playing a video game, whereas

a toddler seems to bound from activity to activity? Most of us have a sense that older

children are better able than younger ones to “pay attention” to a given task. Re-

searchers have documented how children’s attentional processes undergo recogniz-

able changes with development.

Attention has been conceptualized as a process that allows the individual to focus

on a selected aspect of the environment, often in preparation for learning or prob-

lem solving (Kahneman, 1973). Attention represents the first step in cognitive pro-

cessing and, as such, is a critical phase. Unless information enters the system in the

first place, there will be few opportunities to develop memory, concepts, or other

cognitive skills. Children with a poor capacity to attend will have difficulties in learn-

ing, the ramifications of which can be enormous, especially as they enter school. Re-

search evidence corroborates that children who have greater attention spans and

persistence in tasks at ages four to five years have higher intelligence scores and

school achievement by the time they get to second grade (Palisin, 1986). Even at three

months of age, infants who pay greater attention to stimuli have better recognition

memory for them (Adler, Gerhardstein, & Rovee-Collier, 1998).

Sustaining Attention

One of the most obvious developmental trends is the dramatic increase in the child’s

ability to sustain attention on some activity or set of stimuli. Holly Ruff and

Katharine Lawson (1990) observed one-, two-, and three-and-a-half-year-olds while

the children played with an array of six toys. They observed a steady increase with

age in the amount of attention directed to individual toys. On average, one-year-olds

showed focused attention for 3.33 seconds, two-year-olds for 5.36 seconds, and

three-and-a-half-year-olds for 8.17 seconds. Generally, at ages two and three, children

long-term memory Memory

that holds information for ex-

tended periods of time.

limited-resource model

Information-processing model

that emphasizes the allocation of

finite energy within the cognitive

system.

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show longer periods of attention to television and to toys they are playing with than

to highly structured tasks. Between ages three and five years, though, children show

growth in the ability to attend to tasks arranged by an adult (Ruff, Capozzoli, &

We issberg, 1998). The attention span continues to increase throughout the early

school years and adolescence and shows a particularly marked improvement around

age ten years (Milich, 1984; Yendovitskaya, 1971).

Why does sustained attention increase with age? Maturation of the central ner-

vous system is partly responsible. The reticular activating system, the portion of the

lower brainstem that regulates levels of arousal, is not fully mature until adolescence.

Another factor may be the increasing complexity of the child’s interests. Young chil-

dren seem to be intrigued by the physical properties of objects, but because these are

often not too complex, simply looking at or touching objects quickly leads to habitu-

ation. On the other hand, older children are more concerned with creative and var-

ied ways of playing with objects (Ruff & Lawson, 1990). As children actively generate

more possible uses for stimuli, their active engagement with stimuli captivates and

feeds back to influence attention.

KEY THEME

Interaction Among Domains

KEY THEME

Child’s Active Role

Deploying Attention

A second developmental change in attentional processes involves the ability of chil-

dren to control their attention in a systematic manner; that is, they increasingly de-

ploy their attention effectively, such as when they are comparing two stimuli. At

three-and-a-half months of age, shifts of attention from one stimulus to another ap-

pear to be reflexive in nature, but by five to six months of age, they are more deliber-

ate and planned. Changes in the electrical activity of the cortex accompany this

changeover to more controlled attention (Richards, 2000). During the period from

about five to seven months, infants also exhibit a marked increase in the rate with

which they shift attention from one stimulus to another. More rapid shifts probably

reflect the infant’s greater efficiency in processing information from the environ-

ment. Researchers hypothesize that the infant’s ability to inhibit processing of one

stimulus so that the next one can be attended to underlies more rapid shifts (Rose,

Feldman, & Jankowski, 2001a).

The classic studies of Eliane Vurpillot (Vurpillot, 1968; Vurpillot & Ball, 1979) il-

lustrate developmental changes in how older children control their attention. Chil-

dren were shown a picture of two houses, each having six windows, and were asked

to judge whether the houses were identical (see Figure 9.2). As they inspected the

houses, their eye movements were filmed. Preschoolers scanned the windows less

thoroughly and systematically than older children. For example, when the houses

were identical, four- and five-year-olds looked at only about half of the windows

FIGURE 9.2

Comparing Houses

Children were asked to explore

houses to make judgments

about whether they were the

same or different while a

camera photographed their

eye movements. Preschoolers

explored the windows less

thoroughly, efficiently, and sys-

tematically than older children.

Source: Adapted from Vurpillot, 1968

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