Psyc 2350 - Chapter 7 & 8

Front 1

Define cognition

Back 1

Cognition - the activity of knowing and the processes through which knowledge is acquired and problems are solved.

Front 2

Define the method known as Piaget's clinical method

Back 2

Clinical method - a flexible question and answer technique used to discover how children think about problems.

Front 3

What are Piaget's four stages of cognitive development?

Back 3

1. Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years) deal with the world directly through their perceptions (senses) and actions (motor skills)

2. Preoperational (2-7 years) has now developed the capacity for symbolic though but is not yet capable of logical problem solving

e.g. Children cant grasp the concept of conservation, that certain properties of an object or substance do not change simply because they appear to do so. e.g.water being poured into different shaped glasses (volume is the same).

3. Concrete Operations (7-11 years) - more logical than preschoolers, they use the trial-and-error approach to problem solving and do well on problems involving concrete objects.

e.g. mentally adding or subtracting objects

4. Formal Operations (11-12 years and older) adolescents are now able to think more abstractly and hypothetically than school age children e.g. they can define justice abstractly in terms of fairness

Front 4

Define object permanence

Back 4

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way).

(out of mind out of sight)

Front 5

At what age if object permanence mastered (according to piaget)

Back 5

At the 6th stage of sensorimotor (18-24 months):

By 18-24 months, infants are capable of mentally representing such invisible moves and conceiving of the object in its full location. Object of permanence fully mastered at this point

Front 6

What is the concept of reversibility?

Back 6

Reversibility - the process of mentally undoing or reversing an action (e.g. with the child and the transferring of water to a taller glass)

One of the contributers to success on conservation tasks, the other is centration (the tendency to center attention on a single aspect of the problem).

Front 7

What are the two contributors to success on conservation tasks?

Back 7

Decentration and Reversibility

(being able to focus on more than one single aspect of the problem, and understanding how to reverse an action)

Front 8

What is the concept of centration

Back 8

Preoperational thinkers engage in centration - the tendency to center attention on a single aspect of the problem. (e.g. only height, when comparing glasses)

One of the contributers to success on conservation tasks, the other is reversibility - being able to understand the reverse of an action.

Front 9

Preschoolers lack the idea of conservation. What is meant by this?

Back 9

Lack of Conservation - Preschoolers dont yet understand the conservation, the idea that certain properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered.

Front 10

Define egocentrism, in the perspective of a preschooler

Back 10

Egocentrism - Piaget's theory is a preschoolers tendency to view the world solely from their own perspective and to have difficulty recognizing other points of view.

They basically believe that everyone knows what they know (If i see something then everyone must see it) or (if i know the box of crayons has tiny cars so will everyone else)

Front 11

Define the concept of seriation

Back 11

Elementary age children are now capable of the logical operation of seriation - enables them to arrange items mentally along a quantifiable dimension such as length or weight. Thus they perform this seriation task quickly and correctly. e.g. arranging a bunch of sticks from shortest to longest.

Front 12

Define the concept of transitivity

Back 12

Concrete-operational thinkers (i.e. elementary school age) also master the related concept of transitivity, which describes the necessary relations among elements in a series. E.g. If john is taller than mark, and mark is taller than sam, who is taller john or sam. JOHN! :)

Front 13

What is animism?

Back 13

The belief that a supernatural power organizes and animates the material universe.

Front 14

What is the difference between personal fable and imaginary audience?

Back 14

1. imaginary audience - phenomenon involves confusing your own thoughts with those of a hypothesized audience for your behavior. E.g. They are all thinking im a slob!

2. Personal fable - a tendency to think that you and your thoughts and feelings are unique. If the imaginary audience is a product of the inability to differentiate between self and other, the personal fable is differentiating too much.

i.e. First love - no one has EVER felt this way.i.e. Rules dont apply to me, i can speed and still live

Front 15

What was Piaget's perspective on the formal operational thinker?

Back 15

Piaget’s perspective on formal operational thinker (i.e. adolescent)is that they can now think logically about ideas, which cannot be seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched.

Formal Operational Thought is more hypothetical and abstract.

Front 16

What did David Elkind propose that formal operational thought leads to?

Back 16

David Elkind proposed that formal operational thought leads to adolescent egocentrism - difficulty differentiating ones own thoughts and feelings from those of other people.

The adolescents reflects an enhanced ability to reflect about ones own and others thoughts, Elkind identified two types of adolescent egocentrism: 1. imaginary audience, 2. personal fable

Front 17

Is there growth beyond formal operations? Define postformal thought

Back 17

It appears so....

Postformal Thought - several intriguing ideas have been proposed about stages of cognitive development that may lie beyond formal operations - ways of thinking that are more complex than those of the formal operational stage.

Front 18

In Postformal stages of development, adults are more likely to engage in relativistic thinking. Define relativistic thinking and contrast with absolutist thinking.

Back 18

Adults are more likely to engage in relativistic thinking - or understanding that knowledge depends on its context and the subjective perspective of the knower.

Whereas an absolutist assumes the truth lies in the nature of reality, and that there is only one truth

The relativist assumes that his starting assumptions influence the “truth” discvoered and that a problem can be viewed in multiple ways.

Front 19

Another thought with postformal stages of development is dialectical thinking. Define.

Back 19

dialectical thinking - or detecting paradoxes and inconsistencies among ideas and trying to reconcile them.

Front 20

What was Piaget's contribution to work on develop?

Back 20

Piaget showed us that infants and children are active in their own development, that from the start they seek to master problems and to understand the incomprehensible by using the processes of assimilation and accommodation to resolve their cognitive disequilibrium.Most scholars believe that Piaget was largely right in his basic description of cognitive development.

Front 21

What are 4 common criticisms to Piaget's work on development?

Back 21

1. Underestimating young minds. Piaget seems to have underestimated the cognitive abilities of infants and young children, although he emphasized that he was more interested in understanding the sequences of changes than the specific ages at which they occur.

Piaget may have failed to distinguish between competence and performance. Piaget may have been quick to assume that children who failed one of his tests lacked competence.

Piaget overemphasized the idea that knowledge is an all-or-nothing concept.

2. Wrongly claimed that broad stages of development exist. According to Piaget, each new stage of cognitive development is a coherent mode of thinking applied across a range of problems.

Individuals are actually inconsistent in their performance on different tasks that presumably measure the abilities defining a given stage.

Transitions between stages are not swift and abrupt, as most of Piaget’s writings suggest, but are often lengthy (over several years) and subtle.

3. Failed to adequately explain development. Piaget did a better job describing development than of explaining how it comes about.

4. Giving limited attention to social influences on cognitive development. Critics believe Piaget paid too little attention to how children's minds develop through their social interactions with more competent individuals and how they develop differently in different cultures.

Front 22

What was Vygotsky's Theory of Cognitive Development?

Back 22

Culture and society played a pivotal role in Vygotsky’s theory.

Culture and Social experiences affect how we think, not just what we think

Knowledge depends on social experiences

Front 23

Compare Piaget and Vygotsky in terms of their view on how children learn?

Back 23

To Piaget: the child’s level of cognitive development determines what he can learn

To Vygotsky: learning in collaboration with more knowledgeable companions drives cognitive development.

Front 24

Compare and Contrat Vygotskys Socioculture View and Piaget's Cognitive Developmental View

Back 24

Front 25

What was Vygotsky's perspective in terms of guided participation?

Who had a similar perspective and what was it called?

Back 25

guided participation - by actively participating in culturally relevant activities with the aid and support of their parents and other knowledgeable guides

scaffolding - Jerome Bruner had a similar concept to guided participation: that parent provide scaffolding for their childrens development; that is the more skilled person gives structured help to a less skilled learner but gradually reduces the help as the less-skilled learner becomes more competent

Front 26

What is the zone of proximal development?

Back 26

zone of proximal development - the gap between what a learner can accomplish independently and what she can accomplish with the guidance and encouragement of a more-skilled partner

Skills within the zone are ripe for development and are the skills at which instruction should be aimed

Front 27

What is the information processing approach to memory?

Back 27

The computer was the model for information processing approach to human cognition, which emphasizes the basic mental processes involved in attention, perception, memory, and decision making.

Front 28

What are the three memory stores in the simple information processing framework proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin?

Back 28

1. Sensory register - The ever-so-briefly (seconds at most) holds abundance sensory information that swirls around us

2. Short-term memory - holds a limited amount of information, perhaps five to seven items for a short period of time.

3. Long-term memory - believed to be a relatively permanent and seemingly unlimited store of information.

Front 29

What is the sensory register?

Back 29

One of the three memory stores.

1. sensory register - the ever-so-briefly (seconds at most) holds the abundance sensory information that swirls around us

Front 30

What is long-term memory?

Back 30

The third memory store.

3. Long term memory - believed to be a relatively permanent and seemingly unlimited store of information

Front 31

What is the short-term memory store?

Back 31

2. Short-term memory - holds a limited amount of information, perhaps five to seven items for a short period of time

Front 32

What are four things that must be completed in order to learn and remember something?

Back 32

1. encode - you must encode the information: get it into the system. If it nevers gets in , it will never be recorded.

2. consolidation - you must process and organize the information in a form suitable for long term storage

3. storage - refers to holding the information in a long term memory store.

4. retrieval - the process of getting information out when it is needed (last step of the memory process)

Front 33

What is the different between recall and pure recall?

Back 33

Pure Recall Memory - requires active retrieval without the use of cues.

Recall Memory - can also be "cued" memory, in which cues are provided to HELP recall.

Front 34

What is recognition?

Back 34

You dont need to actively retrieve information, you just need to recognize it among options (e.g. multiple choice test)

Front 35

Contract implicit vs explicit memory

Back 35

Implicit memory - including what is called procedural memory - occurs unintentionally, automatically and without awareness (e.g. knowing how to walk and open doors)

Explicit Memory - also called declarative memory, involves deliberate, effortful recollection of events

Front 36

Contract parallel processing vs serial processing

Back 36

Serial Processing - is carrying out operations in a sequence (such as texting and driving, you cant really do them at the same time) (or solving a math problem, following a series of steps)

Parallel Processing - carrying out multiple cognitive activities simultaneously (for example, listening to a lecture and taking notes at the same time).

Front 37

What is perservation error, and at what age group is this typically seen?

Back 37

Preservation error - is continuing to use the same strategy that was successful in the past despite the strategy's CURRENT LACK of success.

e.g. a young child may have lost a toy that they usually find under the couch. They'll keep looking there even if they have already noticed its not there.

Front 38

What is the Method of Loci?

Back 38

In basic terms, it is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualization to organize and recall information.

It is an "imaginal technique" where when desiring to remember a set of items the the subject literally walks through these loci and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguising feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is then achieved by walking through loci.

Front 39

Contrast the rehearsal vs elaboration vs organization memory strategies

Back 39

Rehearsal - is just repeating the items one is trying to learn. (even 4 year olds rarely use this)

Organization - classifying items into meaningful groups (usually starts at about age 9 or 10)

Elaboration - involves actively creating meaningful links between items to be remembered (e.g. a a picture has a horse and an apple, so you create a story between the two)

Front 40

What was the Chi Study and what powerful influence did it illustrate on memory?

Back 40

The Chi Study (1978) provided a dramatic illustration on the powerful influence of knowledge base on memory.

Chi recruited children who were experts in chess. The children dominated on the chess compared to adults, however, when testing for memory of a sequence of digits, the adults recalled more than the children.

In their areas of expertise, children appear to develop highly specialized and effective strategies of information processing.

Front 41

What is autobiographical memory?

Back 41

Autobiographical memories - espisodic memories of personal events, are essential ingredients of present and future experiences as well as our understanding of who we are.

Front 42

What is infantile amnesia?

Name one theory for the cause of this amensia

Back 42

Infantile (or childhood) amnesia - adults have few autobiographical memories of events that occurred during the first few years of life - memories from the first few years of life seem to fall into a large black hole from which there is no return.

One theory is the fuzzy trace theory - that since children tend to store memories verbatim, it is unstable and likely to be lost over long periods of time.

Front 43

What is the fuzzy trace theory?

Back 43

A theory to explain infantile amnesia.

Some researchers have tried to explain childhood amnesia in terms of fuzzy-trace memory - children store verbatim and general accounts of an event separately. Verbatim information is unstable and likely to be lost over long periods. i.e. it is easier to remember the “gist” of an event.

Due to lack of sufficient working memory to encode events, language skills, a sense of self, or encoding only the verbatim details of what happened rather than a “fuzzy trace” the events of our early childhood do not seem to undergo the consolidation needed to store robust memories of this time.

Front 44

What are four events that may influence autobiographical memories:

Back 44

1.personal significance - in reality this has almost no effect on ones ability to recall the event (what is important at one point of your life, will not be at another)

2. distinctiveness - has been consistently associated with events and experiences recalled. e.g. something crazy happening at summer camp one year.

3. emotional intensity - events associated with highly positive or highly negative emotions are recalled better than events that were experienced in the context of more neutral emotions

4. Life Phase of Event - e.g. 15-20, because of critical phases of life, e.g. getting married, graduating college, etc.

Front 45

Although most research indicates that older adults learn material more slowly and less well than middle age and younger adults, what are five other tasks that should be considered?

Back 45

1. Timed Tasks - on average older adults are slower. So older people are hurt by time limits

2. Unfamiliar or Artificial Content - older adults fare especially poorly compared to younger adults when material is unfamiliar.

3. Unexercised SKills - older adults are likely to be at a disadvantage when they are required to use learning and memory skills that they rarely use in daily life.

4.Recall versus Recognition - older adults are likely to be more deficient on tasks requiring recall memory than on tasks requiring only recognition.

5. Explicit Memory Tasks - older adults seem to have more trouble with explicit memory that require more mental effort

Front 46

In terms of metamemory, where do older adults stand, compared to younger adults?

Back 46

1. Older adults seem to know just as much as younger adults, in regards to which memory tasks are hardest

2. Metamemory seems largely intact across lifespan, however, older adults seem to doubt their memory more, possibly because of ageism?

Front 47

In terms of memory strategies, where do older adults stand, compared to younger adults?

Back 47

Older adults use strategies that work for them, however, an important part of the problem is when older adults are asked to deliberately memorize something - they have issues with retrieval. e.g. “tip of the tongue” episodes

Front 48

In terms of working memory, where do older adults stand, compared to younger adults?

Back 48

Working memory capacity increases during childhood, adolescence and peaks at age 45, then begins to decline

Front 49

Define SOC (selection, optimization and compensation)

Back 49

Researchers have proposed the SOC Framework (selection, optimization and compensation) to understand how older adults may cope with and or compensate for their diminishing cognitive resources.

Front 50

What are the three processes involved in the SOC Framework?

Back 50

1. Selection - focus on a limited set of goals and the skills most needed to achieve them

2. Optimization - practice those skills to keep them sharp

3. Compensation - develop ways around the need for other skills.