Chapter 4 Cognitive Development Part 1

• Human Growth Development
• Voortgezet speciaal onderwijs

Cognitive Development

Information-Processing Theory

• Although stage models such as Piaget's once prevailed as the way developmental psychologists characterized the development of thinking abilities, information-processing models of cognitive development and research in the cognitive sciences have commanded much more attention from developmental researchers in the last few decades.

• Memory researchers make a distinction between the constructs of short-term memory and working memory.
• Short-term memory typically refers to the passive storage of information.
• Working memory encompasses updating or manipulating information as it is being held in a temporary store. 

• A simple assessment of short-term memory would be asking someone to remember a list of numbers or a list of words.
• A working memory task would require someone to manipulate information such as presenting someone with a list of digits and then asking them to recall them in reverse order 

Example for short- term memory

Imagine that you are at a party and a cute guy or girl comes up to you and gives you their number. mentally you make a quick note in your head so you will not forget that number.

Example of Working Memory

A child is using their Working Memory as they recall the steps of a recipe while cooking a favorite meal.

Do you think children use working memory or short-term memory more, Or is it equal?

Working Memory and Academic Performance

• Working memory capacity is related to performance on academic tasks, with the correlation between working memory capacity and performance on a variety of academic tasks ranging from .50-.70nand longitudinal research indicating that working memory predicts performance on reading and math tasks. 

Working Memory and Academic Performance (Cont.)

• The relationship between working memory and mathematics performance was stronger at earlier ages, decreasing in older children as they acquired a more extensive knowledge-based of mathematics.  
• Realizing that the amount of information anyone can hold in memory at once is limited and that the younger the child is, the more limited the capacity, teachers need to evaluate the memory demands of classroom tasks.

Allocation and Control of Attention

• The voluntary control of attention and the ability to filter out irrelevant information also increases with age.
• How might developmental increases in resistance to distraction increase performance on memory span tasks-and cognitive performances more generally? 

        - As the ability to inhibit distracting thoughts increases, more of the short-term capacity is available for the task the child is focusing on

Executive Function

-Developing researchers, educators, and clinicacns have began talking about how various basic cognitive capacities interacts to influence a wide range of performancses.
- They utilize the term executive function to refer to the higher level cognition necessary for conscious control of actions and thoughts in pursuit of goal-directed behavior.

Strategies

• Strategies are effortful, controllable, goal-directed activities designed to increases performance on a task 

• Most of the research on the development of strategic competence in children has been conducted by researchers studying basic memory.
• One of the most common strategies used by children to remember information is rehearsal, a strategy of repeating information in order to recall functional short-term memory capacity.

• A rehearsal strategy that more advanced learners can apply to this task is known as a cumulative rehearsal.
• In this strategy, the learner says the list items over and over in order of presentation.
• Preschoolers and early elementary age children use a strategy called a labeling strategy.
• Children commonly shift to cumulative rehearsal by the end of the grade school years and this shift is associated with better recall.