EDUC 1220 Chapter 7, Information Processing 1

Section 1: The Information-Processing Approach

1. The Information-Processing Approach to Development

A.

1. A basic, simplified model of information processing

B. Information-Processing Approach - An approach that focuses on the ways children process information
about their world- how they manipulate information, monitor it, and create strategies to deal with it.
2. Cognitive Resources: Capacity and Speed of Processing Information
A. Developmental changes in information processing are likely influenced by increases in both capacity and
speed of processing. These two characteristics are often referred to as cognitive resources, which are
proposed to have an important influence on memory and problem solving
B. Both biology and experience contribute to growth in cognitive resources
C. Most information-processing psychologists argue that an increase in capacity also improves processing of
information
D. How fast children process information often influences what they can do with that information
E. Researchers have devised a number of ways for assessing processing speed. For example, it can be assessed
through a reaction-time task in which individuals are asked to push a button as soon as they see a stimulus
such as a light.
3. Mechanisms of Change
A. According to Robert Siegler (1998), three mechanism work together to create changes in children's cognitive
skills: encoding, automaticity, and strategy construction
B. Encoding - The mechanism by which information gets into memory
C. Automaticity - The ability to process information with little or no effort
1. Once a task is automatic, it does not require conscious effort. As a result, as information processing
becomes more automatic, we can complete tasks more quickly and handle more than one task at a
time
D. Strategy construction - Creation of new procedures for processing information
E. In addition, Siegler (2007;2005) argues that children's information processing is characterized by self-
modification. That is, children learn to use what they have learned in previous circumstances to adapt their
responses to a new situation. Part of this self-modification draws on metacognition.
F. Metacognition - Cognition about cognition, or "knowing about knowing"
4. Comparisons with Piaget's Theory
A. .
Sames Opposites

Some versions of the information-processing Developmentalists who take an information-

approach are constructivist; they see children processing approach do not see development as
as directing their own cognitive development occurring abruptly in distinct stages with a brief
transition period from one stage to the next

Psychologists identify cognitive capabilities and Individuals develop gradually increasing capacity
limitations at various points in development for processing information, which allows them to
acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills

Describe ways in which individuals do and do Information-processing approach also focuses on

not understand important concepts at different more precise analysis of change and on the
points in life and try to explain how more contributions that ongoing cognitive activity -
advanced understanding grows out of a less such as encoding and strategies - make to that
EDUC 1220 Chapter 7, Information Processing 2

advanced one change

Emphasize the impact that existing

understandings has on the ability to acquire a
new understanding of something

Section 2: Attention
1. What is Attention?
A. Attention - Concentrating and focusing mental resources
B. Selective Attention - Focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that
are irrelevant
C. Divided Attention - Concentrating on more than one activity at the same time.
D. Sustained Attention - The ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time.
Sustained attention is also called focused attention and vigilance.
E. Executive Attention - Involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and
compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances
2. Infancy
A. Orienting/Investigative Progress
1. Attention in the first year of life is dominated by an orienting/investigative process. This process
involves directing attention to potentially important locations in the environment and recognizing
objects and their features.
2. From 3 to 9 months, infants can deploy their attention more flexibly and quickly.
3. Another important type of attention is sustained attention, also referred to as focused attention. New
stimuli typically elicit an orienting response followed by sustained attention. It is sustained attention
that allows infants to learn about and remember characteristics of a stimulus as it becomes familiar.
B. Habituation and Dishabituation
1. This is the process of habituation- decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentation
of the stimulus. Dishabituation is the recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation
2. Infants' attention is so strongly governed by novelty and habituation that when an object becomes
familiar, attention becomes shorter, making infants more vulnerable to distraction
3. Researchers study habituation to determine the extent to which infants can see, hear, smell, taste, and
experience touch. Studies of habituation can also indicate whether infants recognize something they
have previously experienced. Habituation provides a measure of an infant's maturity and well-being.
Infants who have brain damage do not habituate well.
C. Joint Attention
1. Joint Attention - Individuals focusing on the same object or event; requires the ability to track
another's behavior, one person directing another's attention, and reciprocal interaction
2. Early in infancy, joint attention usually involves a caregiver pointing or using words to direct an infant's
attention
3. Joint attention plays important roles in many aspects of infant development and considerably
increases infants' ability to learn from other people
3. Childhood
A. Although the infants' attention is related to cognitive development in early childhood, there are some
important developmental changes in attention during early childhood.
1. The toddler wanders around, shifts attention from one activity to another, and seems to spend little
time focused on any one object or event
2. The preschool child might watch television for a half hour at a time
B. Young children especially make advances in 2 aspects of attention - executive attention and sustained.
C. Control over attention shows important changes during childhood.

Section 3: Memory
EDUC 1220 Chapter 7, Information Processing 3

1. What is Memory?
A. Memory - Retention of information over time.
B. Processes and Types of Memory
1. Short-Term Memory - Limited-capacity memory system in which information is usually retained for up
to 15 to 30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal of the information. Using rehearsal, individuals can
keep the information in short-term memory longer.
2. Long-term Memory - A relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory
3. Working Memory - A mental "workbench" where individuals manipulate and assemble information
when making decisions, solving problems, and comprehending written and spoken language.
a. See Figure 7.4
b. How to reduce working memory load:
i. Presentation speed: slower for littler kids
ii. Over-learning: memorize, almost automatic
iii. External storage: notes, post its, write on hand
4. Working memory is linked to many aspects of children's development. For example, children who have
better working memory are more advanced in reading comprehension, math skills, and problem
solving than their counterparts with less effective working memory.
5. Unintentional v. intentional memory
a. Unintentional: don't try but still remember
b. Intentional: try to remember
C. Information Processing Model (Fig 7.4)
1. Sensory Register: information gained through senses
2. Attention: why we pay attention:
a. New
b. Relevant to something you are currently thinking about
c. Has an emotional importance (salience)
3. Working memory
a. Where we think, limited space (grows as we get older)
b. Chunking: organizing information to take up less space (grouping)
4. Executive functions
a. Helps us block information that is irrelevant
b. Inhibitory control: honing in on relevant things & ignoring unimportant
i. Skroop test
5. Metacognition
a. Being aware of your thought process
b. Metacomprehension
i. Gauging what we know
c. Metamemory
i. What we know about our own memory, how much we can store
6. Long Term Memory = Knowledge
a. Ways to get from short to long: elaboration & coding
D. Age Trends in Information Processing
1. Early Childhood (0-5)
a. Myelination
b. Knowledge starts to build
c. Language
i. Should be exposed to as much language as possible
2. Middle Childhood (6-12)
a. Processing speed
b. Working memory increase
c. Attention increase (peak at age 9)
EDUC 1220 Chapter 7, Information Processing 4

i. By 7 can ignore other stimuli

3. Adolescence (13+)
a. Will be able to process information faster than teacher
E. Constructing Memories
1. Schema Theory
a. Schema Theory - States that when people reconstruct information, they fit into information that
already exists in their minds
b. Schemas - Mental frameworks that organize concepts and information
c. Schemas influence the way we encode, make inferences about, and retrieve information. We
reconstruct the past rather than take an exact photograph of it, and the mind can distort an
event as it encodes and stores impressions of it. Often when we retrieve information, we fill in
the gaps with fragmented memories.
2. Fuzzy Trace Theory
a. Fuzzy Trace Theory - States that memory is best understood by considering two types of
memory representations: (1) verbatim memory trace (precise detail); and (2) fuzzy trace, or
gist(central idea, summary). In this theory, older children's better memory is attributed to the
fuzzy traces created by extracting the gist of information.
i. 1st kind of memories we create are verbatim memory trace, detailed but take up lots of
space
3. When you learn something, make it relevant to yourself
4. Memory Errors: Forgetting what you knew
a. Decay: forget when you don't use it
i. Spiraling (keep repeating what you learned) keeps this from happening
b. Retrieval Failure: something is preventing us from remembering (word on tip of tongue)
c. Interference: 2 types
i. Retroactive: past knowledge interfering with new knowledge (a not b error)
ii. Proactive: new knowledge prevents you from learning something old
5. Memory Errors: remembering something that never happened
F. Content Knowledge and Expertise
1. Our ability to remember new information about a subject does depend considerably on what we
already know about it .
2. Much of the research on the role of knowledge in memory has compared experts and novices. Experts
have acquired extensive knowledge about a particular content area; this knowledge influences what
they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information.
3. Expert V. Novice:

Expert Novice

Have a large store of domain knowledge May base new schema on misinformation

Quickly recognize patterns Intuitive ideas may be incorrect

Uses organized knowledge schemas May hold onto misconceptions

Organizes elaborated & well-practiced

knowledge

Spend time analyzing

D. Making Experts:
1. Spread out learning
2. Ask questions (metacognition)
3. Take good notes
EDUC 1220 Chapter 7, Information Processing 5

4. Use a system for studying

2. Infancy
A. First Memories
1. Infants can remember perceptual-motor information
2. Implicit Memory - Memory without conscious recollection; memory of skills and routine procedures
that are performed automatically.
3. Explicit Memory - Conscious memory of facts and experiences
4. Researchers find that babies do not show explicit memory improves substantially until the second half
of the first year.
B. Infantile Amnesia
1. Most adults can remember little if anything from the first 3 years of their life. This is called infantile, or
childhood, amnesia.
2. One reason older children and adults have difficulty recalling events from their infant and early child
years is that during these early years the prefrontal lobes of the brain are immature; this area of the
brain is believed to play an important role in storing memories for events.
3. Childhood
A. One reason children remember less than adults is that they are far less expert in most areas, but their
growing knowledge is one likely source of their memory improvement
B. Memory Span
1. Unlike long-term memory, short-term memory has a very limited capacity. One method of assessing
that capacity is the memory-span task.
2. Short-term memory increases during childhood
C. Strategies
1. Rehearsal is just one of the strategies that can sometimes aid memory, although rehearsal is a better
strategy for short-term memory than long term memory.
2. Organization
a. Organizing is a strategy that older children typically use, and it helps them to remember
information.
3. Elaboration
a. Involves engaging in more extensive processing of information. When individuals engage in
elaboration, their memory benefits. Thinking of examples is a good way to elaborate
information.
4. Imagery
a. Creating mental images is another strategy for improving memory. However, using imagery to
remember verbal information works better for older children than for younger children.
b. However, mental imagery can help young schoolchildren to remember pictures
D. Reconstructive Memory and Children as Eyewitnesses
1. Children's memories, like those of adults, are constructive and reconstructive.
2. Reconstruction and distortion are nowhere more apparent than in clashing testimony given by
eyewitnesses at trial. A special concern is susceptibility to suggestion and how this can alter memory.

Section 4: Thinking
1. What is thinking?
A. Thinking - Manipulating, and transforming information in memory, usually to form concepts, reason, think
critically, and solve problems
2. Infancy
A. Categories group objects, events, and characteristics on the basis of common properties
B. Concepts are ideas about what categories represent, or said another way, the sort of thing we think category
members are.
C. Some researchers have found that infants as young as 3 months of age can group together objects with
similar appearance
EDUC 1220 Chapter 7, Information Processing 6

D. Jean Mandler argues that these early

E. Categorizations are best described as perceptual categorization. That is, the categorizations are based on
similar perceptual features of objects, such as size, color, and movement, as well as parts of objects, such as
legs for animals.
F. Further advances in categorization occur in the second year of life.
3. Childhood
A. Critical Thinking - Thinking reflectively and productively, and evaluating the evidence.
1. Ask not only what happened but how and why
2. Examine supposed "facts" to determine whether there is evidence to support them
3. Argue in a reasoned way rather than through emotions
4. Recognize that there is sometimes more than one good answer or explanation
5. Compare various answers and judge which is the best answer
6. Evaluate what other people say rather than immediately accepting it as the truth
7. Ask questions and speculate beyond what is known to create new ideas and new information
B. One way to encourage students to think critically is to present them with controversial topics or both sides
of an issue to discuss.
C. Three strategies used by FCL that encourages reflection and discussion are as follows:
1. Implementing online consultation
2. Having children teach children
a. Reciprocal Teaching - Students take turns leading small-group discussions
3. Using adults as role models
D. Research evaluation of the FCL approach suggests that it benefits the students' understanding and flexible
use of content knowledge, resulting in improved achievement in reading, writing, and problem solving
E. Scientific Thinking
1. Like scientists, children ask fundamental questions about reality and seek answers to problems that
seem utterly trivial or unanswerable to other people.
2. Children are more influenced by happenstance events than by an overall patter, and children tend to
maintain their old theories regardless of the evidence.
3. Children also have difficulty designing experiments that can distinguish among alternative causes.
Instead, they tend to bias the experiments in favor of whatever hypothesis they begin with.
F. Solving Problems
1. Problem Solving involves finding an appropriate way to attain a goal
2. Using Rules to Solve Problems
a. During early childhood, the relatively stimulus-driven toddler is transformed into a child capable
of flexible, goal-directed problem solving. One element in this change is children's ability to form
representations of reality.
b. With age, children also learn better rules to apply to problems
i. See Figure 7.13
3. Using Analogies to Solve Problems
a. An analogy involves correspondence in some respects between things that are dissimilar. Even
very young children can draw reasonable analogies under some circumstances and even use
them to solve problems.
b. Analogical problem solving often involves tools more abstract.
4. Using Strategies to Solve Problems
a. Good thinkers routinely use strategies and effective planning to solve problems
b. Most children benefit from generating a variety of alternative strategies and experimenting with
different approaches to a problem, discovering what works well, when, and where. This is
especially true for children form the middle elementary school grades on, although some
cognitive psychologists stress that even young children should be encouraged to practice varying
strategies.
EDUC 1220 Chapter 7, Information Processing 7

Section 5: Metacognition
1. What is Metacognition?
A. Metamemory - Knowledge about memory
2. The Child's Theory of Mind
A. Theory of Mind - Awareness of one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others
B. Developmental Changes
1. 18 Months to 3 Years of Age
a. Children begin to understand 3 mental states:
i. Perceptions
ii. Emotions
iii. Desires
b. 2-3 year olds understand the way that desires are related to actions and to simple emotions.
c. One of the landmark developments in understanding others' desires is recognizing that someone
else may have different desires from one's own.
2. 3 to 5 Years
a. Between the ages of 3 to 5, children come to understand that the mind can represent objects
and events accurately or inaccurately. The realization that people can have false beliefs - beliefs
that are not true - develops in a majority of children by the time they are 5 years old.
3. 5 to 7 years of age
a. It is only beyond the preschool years that children have a deepening appreciation of the mind
itself rather than just an understanding of mental states. For example, they begin to recognize
that people's behaviors do not necessarily reflect their thoughts and feelings.
b. Five and six year olds understand that human sources may have different experiences, but they
still think there is an objective truth
4. 7 years and beyond
a. Although most research on children's theory of mind focuses on children around or before their
preschool years, there are important developments in the ability to understand the belief and
thoughts of others
C. Individual Differences
1. As in other developmental research, there are individual differences in when children reach certain
milestones in their theory of mind.
2. Executive function, which describes several functions (such as inhibition and planning) that are
important for flexible, future-oriented behavior
3. There may also be some gender differences in talking about the mind
D. Theory of Mind and Autism
1. Another individual difference in understanding the mind involves autism. Autism can usually be
diagnosed by the age of 3, and sometimes earlier.
2. Children with autism show a number of behaviors different from children their age, including deficits
in social interaction and communication as well as repetitive behaviors or interests.
3. It is important to consider individual variations in autistic children and particular aspects of theory of
mind.
4. A further important consideration in thinking about autism and theory of mind is that autistic
children's difficulty in understanding other's beliefs and emotions might not be due solely to theory of
mind deficits but to other aspects of cognition, such as problems in focusing attention or some general
intellectual impairment.
3. Metacognition in Childhood
A. Metamemory improves in middle and late childhood. As they progress through the elementary school years,
children make more realistic judgments about their memory skills and increasingly understand the
importance of memory cues.