Prof. davis / BRIEF CHAPTER SUMMARY – chapter 7
Information-processing theorists view the mind as a complex, symbol-manipulating system through which information flows, often using the metaphor of a computer. One general model of information processing, the store model, assumes that information is stored in three parts of the mental system for processing: the sensory register; working, or short-term, memory; and long-term memory. The first two are limited in capacity, but long-term memory, our permanent knowledge base, is unlimited. In another approach, researchers have used computers to devise connectionist, or artificial neural network, models, which simulate the workings of neurons and their connections. Connectionists view the human cognitive system as a general processing device that gradually attains domain-specific competencies as relevant learning opportunities arise.
Developmental models of information processing include Case’s neo-Piagetian perspective, which starts with Piaget’s stages but attributes change within and between stages to increases in the efficiency with which children use their limited working-memory capacity. It offers an integrated picture of how children’s processing efficiency, practice with strategies, and constructive efforts to reorganize their thinking interact to produce development. Siegler’s model of strategy choice, another developmental model, views children’s cognition from an evolutionary perspective, suggesting that children generate a variety of strategies for solving challenging problems and that, with experience, some strategies are selected and survive, whereas others die off. Like physical characteristics, children’s mental strategies display variation and selection, yielding adaptive problem-solving techniques. This model overcomes deficiencies of the stage approach in accounting for both diversity and continuous change in children’s thinking.
Attention is fundamental to human thinking because it determines which information will be considered in any task. Sustained attention in infancy and toddlerhood, permitting children to develop increasing selectivity of attention, focusing on only the aspects of a situation relevant to their goals, while inhibiting responses to distracting stimuli. Gains in inhibition increase available space in working memory, which, in turn, promotes effective strategy use. With age, children become more capable of planning—thinking out a sequence of events ahead of time and allocating attention accordingly to reach a goal—which involves the coordination of attention with other cognitive processes.
Three strategies enhance memory for new information: rehearsal (repeating the information to oneself), organization (grouping related items), and elaboration (creating a relationship, or shared meaning, between pieces of information from different categories). Elaboration develops by the end of middle childhood and becomes more common during adolescence.
We retrieve information from our long-term knowledge base in three ways, through recognition, recall, and reconstruction. Recognition, the simplest form, is fairly automatic and reaches a near-adult level by the preschool years. Recall—generating a mental representation of an absent stimulus—lags behind recognition and shows much greater improvement with age. Reconstruction is a constructivist approach that involves selecting and interpreting new information in terms of existing knowledge.
Fuzzy-trace theory suggests that when we first encode information, we reconstruct it automatically, creating both a gist—a vague, fuzzy version that preserves essential meaning without details and is useful for reasoning—and a literal, verbatim version. With age, children rely more on gist memory.
Better memory depends in part on a larger knowledge base; children and adults with expert knowledge in an area can rely on automatized recall, which allows them to devote more working-memory capacity to using recalled information to reason and solve problems. Semantic memory—our taxonomically organized, hierarchically structured general knowledge system—grows out of the young child’s episodic memory, or memory for personally experienced events. Both children and adults remember familiar events in terms of scripts, a form of reconstructive memory consisting of a general description of what occurs and when it occurs in a particular situation. Young children also develop another type of episodic memory, autobiographical memory—representations of personally meaningful one-time events. When adults use an elaborative style to prompt children’s autobiographical narratives, children produce more organized and detailed personal stories than when adults use a repetitive style. Although young children are able to recall personally relevant events accurately, they are also suggestible, and may give false information when interviewers use biased procedures.
Metacognition—awareness and understanding of one’s own thoughts—expands greatly in early and middle childhood as children construct a naïve theory of mind—a coherent understanding of people as mental beings. Unlike preschoolers, who view the mind as a passive container of information, older children see it as an active, constructive agent that selects and transforms information. Young children are not yet good at cognitive self-regulation, the process of continually monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes, and redirecting unsuccessful outcomes; parents and teachers can foster this capacity (Note: John Flavell’s work here).
Fundamental discoveries about information processing have been applied to children’s mastery of academic skills, particularly in reading and mathematics. Children’s active efforts to construct literacy knowledge through informal experiences are known as emergent literacy. Over time, children’s language and literacy progress facilitate each other. Phonological awareness—the ability to reflect on and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language—is a strong predictor of emergent literacy knowledge, which is associated with better language and later reading skills. Children learn to read most effectively when taught with a mixture of a whole-language approach, which exposes children to meaningful text, and phonics, which emphasizes the basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds. Similarly, in learning mathematics, children do best with a blend of frequent practice, reasoning about number concepts, and teaching that conveys effective strategies. The capacity to engage in scientific reasoning improves with age, as children develop the ability to distinguish between theory and evidence.
Major strengths of the information-processing approach are its explicitness and precision in breaking down cognitive activities into their components. But information processing has difficulty reassembling these components of cognition into a broad, comprehensive theory of development. Computer models of cognitive processing do not reflect the richness of real-life learning experiences and overlook aspect of cognition that are not linear and logical, such as creativity. Only recently has information-processing research responded to growing interest in the biological bases of cognitive development. Connectionist theories and evolutionary ideas have begun to fill this gap.