-
Lifespan approach to development
Cognitive development
Argues that dvlpmental changes continue beyond young adulthood - We continue to change & adapt throughout our entire lives
-
Own-race bias
Memory in infants
Ppl's tendency to identify members of their own ethnic grp relatively accurately vs. members of another ethnic grp - Babies show this: white babies can tell diff btwn 2 White facaes but not btwn 2 asian faces
-
Conjugate reinforcement technique
Memory in infants
A mobile hangs above a young infant's crib w/a ribbon connected to its ankle & mobile so when infant kicks the mobile moves - NV measure to assess infant memory
- Appealing to 2-6mo olds
- Response = foot kick; reinforcement = mvmt of the mobile
- Clever way to "ask" infants if they remember how to activate the mobile
- Demonstrates LT retention shows a steady, linear improvement during 1st 18mo of life--cog ability/improvement is taking off
- Disproves idea that infant memory is extremely limited--shows infants can remember actions even after substantial delay
- Infant & adult memory influenced by many of same factors: context effects, eyewitness testimony, spacing effect, levels of processing effect
-
Spacing effect
Memory in infants
Students learn most effectively if their practice is distributed over time vs. learning material all at once - Infants also learn better w/this
- Shows infant & adult memory influenced by many of same factors
-
Childhood amnesia
- Children's LTM
- Autobiographical memory
- Ppl typically don't describe events that occurred in own lives b4 2-3yrs old
- Controversial subj
- We know 2yr olds freq describe an event that occurred several weeks/months ago so they must be able to store verbal memories for substantial periods of time
- Infants have memories qualitatively similar to memories of adults
- LTM becomes reasonably strong when kids are abt 2-mo
- Infantile amnesia: children under 2yrs don't have well-org'd sense of who they are so they'll have difficulty encoding & retrieving series of events connected w/themselves
-
Source monitoring
Children's LTM
Process of trying to decide which memories/beliefs are real & which are simply imagined - Remembering when & where you heard something
- Kids under 7 have more difficulty distinguishing btwn reality & fantasy
- Make most errors when imagine how it'd feel to do something so convince themselves they actually did it
- Sometimes children recall they performed a task when actually performed by another person w/whom they'd been collaborating--memory of thinking abt project transforms into memory of actually completing project
- Esp poor in children if questioned long time after original event
- Much less accruate than adults
- Can be easily confused when you suggest things to them
-
Memory strategies
- Intentional, goal-oriented activities we use to improve our memories
- Recall memory requires active use of memory strategies which aren't dvlpd until middle childhood
- Children have poor recall b/c can't use memory strategies effectively
- Young children may not realize they're helpful vs. older children typically realize they are & often use variety of them so they can recall w/reasonable accuracy
- Rehearsal, organizational strategies (categorizing & grouping), imagery
- Children w/more sophisticated metacog abilities report using memory strategies & likely to use them effectively
- Utilization deficiency
-
Utilization deficiency
Memory strategies
Some young children may not use the strategies effectively so strategies may not improve their recall - Don't use appropriate strategies when they need to--don't realize usefulness
-
Prospective memory
LTM in elderly
Remembering to do something in future - Older adults have difficulty on many of these tasks--generally make more errors than young adults
- Relies heavily on working memory & ppl need to keep reminding themselves to do the task (older adults show decline in working memory)
- Perform relatively accurately when there's an enviro cue to remind them--sometimes even more accurately than young adults [take medicine on daily basis] (compensate w/past experience)
- Prob in working memory could lead to errors in prospective memory
-
Cognitive slowing
Age diff's in memory
Slower rate of responding on cog tasks - Can account for some age-related diff's in memory
- Can't fully explain why elderly function well on some other memory tasks
-
Theory of mind
Metamemory in children
Ppl's ideas on how their minds work & their beliefs abt other ppl's thoughts
-
Memory self-efficacy
Metamemory in elderly
Beleif their own potential to perform well on memory tasks - Think it's important to keep dvlping their memory & likely to perform well
- VS. following stereotype that memory decline is inevitable
-
Habituation
Language in infants
Occurs after a stimulus has been presented freq - The response rate gradually decr & then remains low
- Study of infants' capacity for speech perception: sucked on rubber nipples to produce specific phoneme -> sound becomes too boring & not worth hard work of sucking
-
Cooing
Language production in infancy
Sounds that involve vowels such as "oo" - Dvldpd by 2mo
-
Babbling
Langugage production in infancy
Vocalization that uses both consonants & vowels, often repeating sounds in a series - ["Dadda"]
- By 6mo
- Starts to sound like native lang approx 10mo--imitate phonemes they're hearing
-
Child-directed speech
Adults' language to infants
The lang spoken to children - Adults tend to make lang acquisition somewhat simpler by adjusting their lang when speaking w/kids
- Uses repetition, simple vocab & syntax, slow pace, high pitch, exaggerated changes in pitch, exaggerated facial expressions
- Originally called motherese
- Help young lang learners understand meaning & structure of lang
- Depressed mothers don't use most of this -> disadvantage to children
-
Motherese
Adults language to infants
Previously used for child-directed speech but gender biased - Tone we speak to babies in--soft & melodic
- Goal: speak slowly & articulate so they understand the words, use context [hand signals, cues in enviro]
- Helps kids pick up lang b/c tailored to what they need
-
Fast mapping
Language in children
Using context to make reasonable guess abt a word's meaning after just 1-2 exposures - Helps children learn new words
- Demonstrates context is also critically important for young children
- Children w/large vocab esp skilled in this
- Vocab growth rapid if child is read to & caregivers describe activities together
- Like spreading activation--using context to infer meaning
- Relates to schemas
-
Overextension
Language in children
Use of a word to refer to other objs in addition to obj adults would consider appropriate - Objs shape/function important in determining these--but sometimess word usage can wander away from original meaning
- Sometimes occurs when child doesn't yet know correct word for unfamiliar item or confused abt exact diff's btwn 2 concepts
- VS underextension
-
Underextension
Language in children
Using a word in a narrower sense than adults do - [Apply name 'doggie' only to the family pet]
- VS overextension
-
Overregularization
Language in children
Tendency to add most customary morphemes to create new forms of irregular words ["I felled"] - After children learn many words w/regular plurals & past tenses they progress to more advanced understanding of morphology & can sometimes create own reg forms ['mouses,' 'runned']
- Later they learn many words have reg plurals & past tenses but some have irreg forms ['mice,' 'ran']
- PDP framework: 1 explanation for this--says lang system keeps a tally of morpheme patterns for forming past tenses & since '-ed' is most common children generalize this ending to new verbs which forms inappropriate past tenses
- Rule & memory theory: another explanation for this--gradually replace overregularized words w/appropriate ones
-
Rule-and-memory theory
Language in children
1 explanation for overregularization - Children learn a general rule for past tense verbs which specifies they must ad '-ed'
- But they also store in memory past tenses for many irreg verbs (only most common)
- Children who remember an irreg form will consistently use it rather than apply default '-ed' & as they gather more expertise abt lang they gradually replace overregularized words w/appropriate ones
- We have all these generalized rules for how phonemes work but also have memories that help us remember the rules for irreg/unique rules/words
|
|
