Psy 611 Exam 2 Guide
Bjorklund Chapters 7-11
Chapter 7--Executive Function
-developmental changes in speed of processing: children have
myelination of sensory and motor areas like that of adults but it's not until
their teen years that the myelination of the associative area is complete.
-developmental changes in memory span: Increases with age to
reflect an increase in memory capacity. This is sensitive to effects and
knowledge base.
-developmental changes in working memory: Involves both
storage and processing capacity and increases with development. Refer to Figure
7.5 Page 257.
-developmental changes in attention: Sustaining attention
increases with development and is domain specific. It depends on whether or not
the child comprehends the material.
-Selective attention has cultural implications as to what
children attend most to.
-How do each of these areas contribute to the development of
executive function?
-Look at Figure 7.1 on Page 250 for a chart showing the flow
of information through the memory system -Short-term store -Long-term store
-Limited capacity: cognition is domain general, therefore all mental functions
pull from the same limited mental resources -Executive Function/Executive
Control: refers to the processes involved in regulating attention and in
determining what to do with information just gathered or retrieved from
long-term memory.
-Discuss the factors that contribute to the increase in
number, type, and effectiveness of strategies used by children: 3 factors-
limited mental capacity, knowledge base, and meta-attention (levels off at age
8) and meta-memory.
-Span of apprehension: Page 254. Adult- 4 items.
**Describe the continuum of automatic processes vs. effortful processes
**Describe the components of Baddeley's Working Memory model
-Describe evidence that strategies are effortful: Young
children don't process information as readily as older children, so young
children aren't as likely to use strategies spontaneously so they're less likely
to even use strategies. They don't have the mental capacity to learn new
information and use a strategy at the same time. Because of that, using a
strategy doesn't seem like much of a benefit for them. When they get older and
it becomes more automatic rather than take up more mental capacity to come up
with a strategy is when they're more likely to use them. Young children do use
strategies, they just use simpler and less effective ones.
-Describe the development of strategies in different cultures:
In our culture, we use strategies like memorization, however in
non-industrialized countries that might not be as beneficial. German parents
might buy their children more strategy games than Americans. Western children
acquire more strategies from school. However, German children use more memory
strategies than American children.
-How do strategies develop? Many are just tried for something
and if they work they stick but if they don't work they are eventually dropped.
**Production deficiency vs. utilization deficiency
**Siegler's Adaptive Strategy Choice Model
**What is cognitive inhibition? What brain are is implicated?
Describe developmental changes....
-Problem solving: goal-directed behavior and problem solving show up towards the
end of the first year with goal-directed behavior showing up around 8 months.
-Development of reasoning: requires one to make an inference
and draw conclusion from evidence -Analogical reasoning: using knowledge of
relationships between two components to understand the relationship between two
new objects -Scientific reasoning: generate and systematically test hypotheses;
requires evidence to draw a conclusion
Explicit and Implicit memory
-explicit: aware of, tested by recognition, knowledge of
language, rules and concepts (semantic memory). Substantial age differences.
Example: Deferred imitation.
-implicit (nondeclarative) unconscious, unaware. Similar
performance of adults and children.
Research on memories:
**Preference for novelty paradigm
Habituation/dishabituation
Conjugate reinforcement procedures- memory in infants as young
as 3 months across two weeks Deferred imitation tasks - show long term memory of
infants increases gradually across first 2 yrs of life
Example: kick mobile test.
**What is deferred imitation and why is it an indicator of long-term explicit
memory?
Episodic memory
-constructive, children and adults attend to different things.
- children use scripts. Tend to remember routine events,
rather than novel events. This helps children participate in routines.
-Parental role-- help development of event memory by asking
about memories, shape what children pay attention to as important.
Parental differences between boys and girls.
- children have more verbatim recall. Less gist.
Eyewitness memory
-effected by memory processes, type of information assessed,
participant factors
- the younger children have accurate free recall, very
limited, and suggestible. Interviews should be done immediately, as more time
passes, ratio of incorrect answers to correct increases.
-source monitoring
- younger children are more suggestible
- knowledge improves recall accuracy as children become older
Meaning and importance of reconstructive retrieval processes
Verbatim vs. gist -younger children use more
verbatim traces -verbatim traces fade faster
- so, children have more difficulty reconstructing information
- reconstructive memory: is general and specific information
merged. Scripts and schemas.
Incorporate information about events with perceptions, experiences, and
knowledge base.
Types of memory
Sensory memory
- short term memory
-long term memory
-procedural
- declarative - semantic, episodic
Discussion topics:
- episodic memory affected by noise and irrelevant speech
- explicit vs implicit memory for children with autism
Chapter 9--Language
Language is a systematic and conventional use of sounds,
signs, or written symbols for communication or self-expression.
Key components:
A. Symbolic – uses arbitrary symbols that are not
related to the concept they represent
B. Grammatical – uses a system of rules that can
produce communications that are
unique; can express things never before expressed
C. Universal- varies by culture
Five Aspects of Language:
A. Phonology – language
sounds (individual sounds)
~2-4 months: cooing and laughing.
This declines around 9 to 12 months
~9-12 months: one word utterances, also known as the
babbling stage or vocal play
~Phonemic Awareness is included in phonology, which
is an understanding that words consist of separable sounds.
~About at the age of 6 to 9 years old they have the
capacity to say all sound in the language
B. Morphological – combination of sounds into
meaningful units
~structure of words
~Morphemes: the smallest unit of meaning in a
language
~There are Free and Bound morphemes
~Free
Morphemes: Words that can stand alone but also
have meanings alone (Example, fire, run, sad, tree)
-Usually learned first and over simplified
~Bound
Morphemes: Words that cannot stand alone and
they become meaningful when attached to free morphemes (Examples include
prefixes and suffixes, such as -s, -ed, pre-, -ing)
-Around 3 years old begin to use the irregular forms
of verbs correctly.
**wug test*
C. Syntactic development – knowledge of grammatical
rules
~By about 3 years old begin to use more complex
sentences
~Most grammatical rules demonstrated by age five
~Telegraphic speech: using concrete high
information/content words, leaving out the ifs, ands, and buts
D. Semantic development –
learning the meaning of words
~ Developmental stage of vocabulary
-The word spurt: after about 50 words are acquired
(about 12 to 24 months), typically child goes through period of rapid learning
of nouns. (begins to learn 35-45 words
every month after having the base of 50 words.)
-Fast-mapping
***constraints on word learning
-They understand more words than they can produce
themselves
***Differentiate developmental patterns for
productive vs. receptive language
E. Pragmatics – socially appropriate use of language
(turn taking and paying attention to non-verbals, Theory of Mind stuff); how
language can be modified in response to different circumstances
~Rules of conversation
~Speech registers
-"Black English" has its own language rules
~Over-extension: stretching a familiar word over its
meaning (Example, saying doggie for all four legged animals)
~Under-extension: opposite of over-extension
(example, your cat is named Lucy and you see another cat but it isn't named
Lucy so it isn't a cat.
F. Communicative competence: Combination of A
through E (above)
~Other children as well as adults shape early
language development
~Communication and egocentricism
~Meta-communication:
-the ability to moderate your language
-the awareness of correcting speech when needed
(verbal repairs)
-learning to be sensitive to other people during
conservation
III. Some theoretical perspectives of language development
~Behaviorists:
language acquired by conditioning, imitating models
~Nativist perspectives:
Chomsky rejected the idea that language is driven strictly by the
environment
~Children are better at language acquisition because
of their limited cognitive ability
~Social-interactionist: social learning theory you
develop through interactions (ask Adam about a bear example (bear growling))
*Critical period for learning language question*
IV. Bilingualism and second language learning
~Bilingualism may be simultaneous (learn two
languages at the same time) or sequential (learn one after the other)
-May be some early confusion when learning languages
simultaneously, but these disappear by around age 8
-Benefits for bilingualism:
recognize more phonemes, greater sensitivity to cultural values and
speakers of both languages, greater metalinguistic awareness, enhanced executive
control (perhaps seen as early as infancy)
~Semi-lingualism – lack of mastery in both
languages.
V. Gender differences in language acquisition
~Fast language acquisition for girls
-no significant difference
~Cultural factors involved in gender differences
VI. Language and thought –
~Self-talk: working through problems in our head.
-sounding out words in our head or silently reading
"aloud" in our head
Chapter 10--Social Cognition
Social Learning
Social Learning refers to acquiring information from other
individuals.
Social Brain Hypothesis is a theory that humans evolved the
ability to better learn form other members of their species, which resulted in
enhanced skills at both competing and cooperating with one another as well as
rapid acquisition and transmission of material culture.
Forms of Social Learning
-Local enhancement (or stimulus enhancement) occurs when an
individual notices activity at a particular location (for instance, some
chimpanzees cracking nuts at a spot that has plentiful stones), moves to that
location, and in a process of trial and error, discovers a useful behavior (for
instance, cracking nuts with stones, although using other techniques than the
ones observed).
-Mimicry is the duplication of a behavior without any
understanding of the goal of that behavior.
-Emulation (sometimes called goal emulation), true imitation,
or imitative learning, focuses on the action's environmental results instead of
a model's action.
-Teaching (or instructed learning) is when a more
accomplished person instructing a less accomplished person.
Neonatal Imitation is a phenomenon of when infants, within
their first days of life, will copy the facial expressions of an adult.
**Possible explanations for neonatal imitation and its time course
Active intermodal mapping is the ability to integrate
information from two senses.
Social mirroring is when one infant copies the behavior of
another (the mother) to stay “in tune” with one another, serving to foster and
consolidate the social interaction.
A fixed action pattern is an instinctive behavioral sequence
that is indivisible and runs to completion.
Ontogenetic adaptations are responses that play a specific
role in survival of an infant at a certain time that disappear when they are no
longer needed.
Piaget claimed that the earliest form of social learning is
mutual imitation, in which the baby initiates a behavior that is mimicked by the
adult, which in turn activates the baby to continue that behavior.
Deferred imitation is the ability to reproduce a previously
witnessed action or sequence of actions in the absence of current perceptual
support for the action
Rational imitation is when an infant not only understands the
intended goal but also the intentions of the person they were trying to imitate
Social Learning in Chimpanzees.
The enculturation hypothesis proposes that chimpanzees raised with adult
humans engaging them in shared attention, teaching, and using language will
develop some social cognitive abilities more similar to those of human children.
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal
acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.
Social Cognitive Theory
Social cognitive theory posits that portions of an
individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others
within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media
influences.
Reciprocal determinism that a person's behavior both
influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment.
Bandura’s 5 Capabilities
1)
Symbolization means that we
can think about our social behavior in words and images.
2)
Forethought means that we
are able to anticipate the consequences of our actions and the actions of
others.
3)
Self-regulation involves
adopting standards of acceptable behavior for ourselves.
4)
Self-reflection means that
we allows us to analyze our thoughts and actions.
5)
Vicarious learning is the
learning of social behavior through observing others.
Four subprocesses that govern observational learning
1)
attentional processes
2)
retention processes
3)
production processes
4)
motivational processes
Self-efficacy is the extent of one's belief in one's own
ability to complete tasks and reach goals.
Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs that might be
pleasing to imagine instead of evidence that says otherwise.
Social Information Processing
Social information processing processing of information by a
group of people through interactions.
Dodge’s five sequential steps of information processing
1.
Encoding
2.
Interpretation
3.
Response search
4.
Response evaluation
5.
Enactment
The Development of a Concept of Self
Self-concept is a collection of beliefs about oneself.
The first, which typifies infants from birth to about 15 or
18 months of age, has been referred to as the I-self, or the implicit self.
This is contrasted with the me-self, or the explicit self.
Starting at about 15 months of age recognize themselves in
the mirror.
Later 3 year olds can recognize themselves in different
modalities such as videos, mirrors, or photos.
Preschool children concrete idea of self, adolescent abstract
idea of self.
If a child recognizes him or herself they are likely to stare
more or less on pictures of themselves than pictures of others.
By 18 to 24 months of age children can often recognize
themselves in the mirror.
Cognitive Bases of Gender Identity
Gender Identification is the process of incorporating the
roles and values of one’s sex.
Gender constancy is the knowledge that gender remains the
same despite changes in physical appearance.
Gender identity refers to the ability to identify oneself as
male or female and to accurately identify the gender of others.
Gender stability refers to the knowledge that gender remains
stable over time.
Gender consistency refers to the knowledge that gender
remains the same despite changes in behavior or dress.
Chapter 11--Schooling
Cognitive development and reading
1. The role of
phonological processing in identifying words
a. Phonemic awareness –
knowledge that words consist of separable sounds
b. Predicts later reading
skill
c. Begins early, continues
to develop post-preschool; ability to segment phonemes predicts reading ability
d. Phonological recoding –
sounding out words (the “phonics method”
e.
Proficient reading requires move to automatic retrieval of word meaning
Phonemes/Dyslexia in Different Languages -
There are similar brain patterns for speakers with dyslexia. Do equally
poorly on phonological processing, but English and French speakers are the only
that show deficits in reading in a specific study.
- Deep or Shallow Orthography – the ratio of
graphemes you have to know to read. Letters and letter sequences related to the
sounds they represent.
a. Language:
requires skilled language use; however, advanced linguistic skill may not
predict expert reading, at least initially
b. Conventions of print:
reading conventions, such as left to right
c. Knowledge of letters –
early knowledge of letters predicts higher reading scores
d. Linguistic awareness –
phonological processing – Discrimination and making sense of various sounds of
language
e. Phoneme-grapheme
correspondence: mapping spoken sounds to written symbols – knowing what
sounds each letter or combination of letters makes
f. Emergent reading:
“pretend” reading
g. Emergent writing:
“pretend” writing
h. Print motivation –
interest in print and reading
i. Other cognitive
skills (e.g. memory)
A brief overview of learning to read
1. Chall proposed 5 stages in
development of proficient reading
a. 0 – (Preschool) prerequisites of
reading such as learning alphabet
b. 1 –
( Kindergarten and First Grade)first year formal reading instruction;
phonological recoding skills
c. 2 –
(End of Third) fluent reading;
comprehension is still difficult
d. 3 –
(Fourth to Eight) reading to learn
e. 4 – (High School & Beyond)
proficient reading
1. Instruction may be
bottom-up (such as phonics approach) or top-down (such as whole language
approach)
- Most effective to teach bottom up. Top-down
means students may not have the necessary skills.
2. Some instruction in
phonological skills is probably necessary even in top-down instruction
Learning to count -
1. Gelman & Gallistel
suggest developmental sequence of principles
a. One-to-one – each item
in an array associated with one and only one number name
b. Stable-order – number
names must be repeated in stable order
c. Cardinal – the final
number named is the quantity (tenuously attained about age 4)
d. Abstraction – any
collection of entities, physical or nonphysical, can be counted
e. Order-irrelevant –
order in which things are counted is irrelevant
Social Learning aspects of counting – children may think
certain procedures are necessary for counting, that may not truly be necessary.
(Ex. Counting in a certain pattern like left to right, counting in order, etc.)
D. Math disabilities
1.
Children with math disability have poor procedural skills (less mature
strategies) and poorer knowledge of rules of counting; however, many may catch
up with peers by 2nd grade, suggesting a developmental delay rather
than a disability
2.
Also have poor fact retrieval that does not improve with practice and does not
catch up with peers; possibly due to reduced working memory capacity
3.
Math and reading disabilities often co-exist; share inability to efficiently
retrieve information from long term memory