Term
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Information Processing Perspective
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Definition
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•Analogy of the mind as a computer
•Information flows through a limited-capacity system of mental hardware and software
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–Hardware is the brain and nervous system
–Software refers to mental rules and strategies
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Term
Information Processing Perspective
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Definition
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•Views the mind as a complex, symbol-manipulating system through which information flows
•Information is encoded and retained in symbolic form
–Don’t encode and store all information
–Select to attend to, encode only what is crucial/relevant
–Form a mental representation of the information (e.g., verbally, pictorially, olfactorily)
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Term
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Definition
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Sensory store is where sights, sounds, etc (raw sensory data) are represented directly and held
•Separate store for each sense
•Large amounts of information
•Held for a very limited time
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(remember when you stared at a very brightly colored object, and then closed your eyes. You would see an “after image” for a less than a second; this is reflective of the sensory store)
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Term
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Definition
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The working or short-term memory is our
temporary store
•actively operate on a limited amount of information
•holds about 7 + or – 2 “chunks” of information (5-7 pieces)
•(demonstrate capacity and “chunking”)
•information is lost if nothing is done with it
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Long-term memory is our permanent store
•capacity is vast
•relatively permanent
•Control processes or executive functions
•Involved in
–planning
–monitoring what is attended to
–what is done with the information
•Metacognition refers to knowledge of one’s cognitive abilities and processes related to thinking
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Term
| Attention (between sensory store and STM |
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Definition
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•Attention is fundamental -- determines the information that will be considered
•Attention increases with development; becomes more sustained
–Better at deliberately focusing on aspects relevant to goal
–Ignore irrelevant information (inhibition)
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Term
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Definition
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–Ability to control internal and external distracting stimuli
•Examples of external distracting stimuli?
•Examples of internal distracting stimuli?
–Prevents attention straying to alternative thoughts
Young children don’t have enough
attentional resources:
–To inhibit task-irrelevant information
–As a result greater amounts of task-irrelevant information go into STM, which then
•Reduces memory space
•Prevents successful execution of strategies
–Young children are not good at monitoring their task performance
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Term
| Retaining information (what’s going on in STM) |
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Definition
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•Deliberate mental activities increase with age
–Increases likelihood of holding information in STM
–Enhances transfer of information to LTM where it may be retrieved
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Term
| Strategies (use of, changes with development): Rehearsal |
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Definition
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•Rehearsal is repeating information to retain it
–Older children (beginning at about age 5-6) use rehearsal more efficiently
–Younger children have limited capacity to do this
–How effective do you think this is?
–Is it limited by capacity of STM?
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Term
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Strategies (use of, changes with development) :organization
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Definition
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•Organization
–Remembering information by grouping it into meaningful “chunks” or related categories
–Improves memory drastically
–Young children can be trained to do this
•Experience with materials that form clear categories helps them organize more effectively, notice the strategy, and apply under less obvious task conditions
–Preschoolers do not yet use semantic organization
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Term
| Strategies (use of, changes with development) : Elaboration |
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Definition
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•Elaboration
–Creating a relationship between two or more pieces of information that are not members of the same category
–Connecting to the “new” information makes it more
•Meaningful
•Easier to place in LTM
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Term
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Definition
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•Elaboration-- late-developing skill that usually appears at about age 11-12
–Once children discover this technique, it so effective that tends to replace other strategies
–Children’s working memories must expand before they
•translate items into symbols
•think of a relationship between them at the same time
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Term
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Definition
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•Once information is in LTM it retrieved in one of three ways
–Recognition
•noticing that a stimulus is the same or similar to one previously experienced
•simplest form of retrieval-- material to be remembered is present to serve as its own retrieval cue
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Term
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Definition
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•Recall
–Free-recall
•more challenging--requires generating a mental image of absent stimulus; not prompted by specific cues
•may be only a few cues or none at all beyond context in which the information was previously experienced
–Cued-recall
•Appears before 1 year of age if memories are strongly cued
–Older children recall information more accurately and completely
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Term
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Definition
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•Reconstruction
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–When given complex material to remember the following occur
•Condensations
•Additions
•Distortions appear
–Because we store interpretations, not copies of “reality
•Children’s reconstructive processing studied by asking them to recall prose materials
•School-age children become better at drawing inferences about actors and actions
–They add information to help make sense of it, increasing the coherence of reconstructed information
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Term
| Relationship between knowledge and memory |
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Definition
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•Once thought adults’ capacity for recall was greater than children’s because
–Greater memory capacity
–Greater general knowledge
•Some children have much information about specific domain
–They are “experts”
–Knowledge in specific area makes new, related information more meaningful
•Easier to store and retrieve
•When children are given problems in areas where they know more than adults, they show better recall
–For example, chess-playing children have better memory for chess positions than non-chess playing adults
•Knowledge must be quite broad and well structured before it facilitates memory performance
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Term
| Reconstructive nature of memory |
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Definition
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•Remember when reconstruction occurs, there are
–Condensations
–Additions
–Distortions
•Becomes very important in children’s eyewitness testimony
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Term
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Definition
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•Young children (before the age of 5) recall few precise details
•Generally accurate, central to event
•Prompting yields more correct and incorrect facts
•How suggestible are child witnesses?
–Younger than 9-10 very susceptible to memory distortions (suggestibility)
–Come to believe events created by suggestion
–Must be plausible
•Implications for the legal testimony
–Rare for children under 5 to testify
–6-10 called as witnesses
–Interviewers must
•Use nonleading questions
•Limit number of times interviewed
•Tell children that saying “I don’t know” is better than guessing
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Remain friendly
and patient
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