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Chapter 8

Information Processing

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Sixteenth Edition

JOHN W. SANTROCK KIRBY DEATER-DECKARD JENNIFER E. LANSFORD

Because learning changes everything.®

Learning Goals

Explain the information-processing approach.

Define attention and outline its developmental changes.

Describe what memory is and how it changes.

Characterize thinking and its developmental changes.

Define metacognition and summarize its developmental changes.

The Information-Processing Approach 1

The information-processing approach analyzes how individuals encode information, manipulate it, monitor it, and create strategies for handling it.

Like the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, the approach focuses on how children think.

The Information-Processing Approach 2

A computer metaphor can illustrate how the information-processing approach can be applied to development.

The hardware limits the amount of data the computer can process—its capacity—and its speed.

The software limits the kind of data that can be used as input and the ways data can be manipulated.

Children’s cognitive development results from their ability to overcome processing limitations by executing basic operations, expanding capacity, and acquiring new knowledge and strategies.

Cognitive Resources: Capacity and Speed of Processing Information 1

Developmental changes are likely to be influenced by increases in both capacity and speed of information processing.

These are referred to as cognitive resources because they have an important influence on memory and problem solving.

Both biology and experience contribute to growth in cognitive resources.

Cognitive Resources: Capacity and Speed of Processing Information 2

How quickly we process information influences what we can do with that information.

One method of assessment is using a reaction-time task:

The speed at which tasks are completed improves dramatically across the childhood years.

The developmental change in processing speed has been shown to predict increases in working memory capacity and complex reasoning skills.

Mechanisms of Change 1

Certain mechanisms of change play an important role in advances in cognitive development:

Encoding: the process by which information gets into memory.

Automaticity: the ability to process information with little or no effort.

Strategy construction: the creation of new procedures for processing information.

Example: reading strategy.

Mechanisms of Change 2

Children’s information processing is characterized by self-modification.

They apply what they learned previously in adapting their responses to new situations.

Metacognition, knowing about knowing, assists in this self-modification.

Comparisons with Piaget’s Theory

Like Piaget, information processing sees children as directing their own cognitive development and identifies cognitive capabilities and limitations at various points in development.

Unlike Piaget, the approach does not see development as occurring in distinct stages.

Children gradually develop the ability to process information.

The information-processing approach also focuses on more precise analysis of change and on the contributions made by ongoing cognitive activity.

Attention

Attention is the focusing of mental resources.

Children allocate their attention in different ways.

Selective attention: focus on one aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant.

Divided attention: focus on more than one activity.

Sustained attention: maintaining attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time.

Executive attention: planning actions, giving attention to goals, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress, and dealing with new or difficult circumstances.

Attention in Infancy 1

An orienting/investigation process dominates attention in the first year of life.

It involves directing attention to potentially important locations in the environment and recognizing objects and features.

Closely linked are habituation and dishabituation.

Habituation: decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations.

Dishabituation: recovery of responsiveness after a change in stimulation.

Attention in Infancy 2

Joint attention: two or more individuals focus on the same object or event.

It is frequently observed by the end of the first year.

Infants begin to direct adults’ attention to objects.

This increases infants’ ability to learn from other people.

Joint attention is also associated with the development of self-regulation.

Joint attention requires:

the ability to track another’s behavior, such as following a gaze;

one person directing another’s attention; and

reciprocal interaction

Figure 1 Gaze Following in Infancy.

A mother and her son engage in joint attention. What about this photograph tells you that joint attention is occurring?

XiXinXing/age fotostock

Attention in Childhood

The child’s ability to pay attention improves significantly during the preschool years.

Especially, children make advances in executive attention and sustained attention.

Control over attention continues to show important changes during middle and late childhood.

What is salient, or obvious, most grabs the preschooler’s attention; but after the age of 6 or 7, children start to pay more attention to features relevant to a task or problem.

The ability to control and sustain attention is related to school readiness and academic success.

Attention in Adolescence

Sustained and executive attention are important aspects of adolescent cognitive development.

An increase in executive attention supports the increase in effortful control required to effectively engage in complex academic tasks.

One trend involving divided attention is multitasking.

A major influence is availability of multiple electronic media.

Multitasking expands the information adolescents attend to and forces the brain to share processing resources.

Other intrusive distractions can come from competing thoughts in the individual’s mind.

Memory 1

Memory is the retention of information over time.

Encoding, storage, and retrieval are the basic processes required for memory.

Failures can occur in any of these processes.

Figure 2 Processing Information in Memory.

The following content is arranged like a table.

Encoding	Storage	Retrieval
Getting information into memory.	Retaining information over time.	Taking information out of storage.

As you consider the many aspects of memory in this chapter, think about the organization of memory in terms of these three main activities.

Memory 2

Short-term memory: retention of information for up to 30 seconds without rehearsal of the information.

Individuals can retain information longer using rehearsal.

Long-term memory: relatively permanent and long-lasting.

Working memory: where individuals manipulate and assemble information when making decisions, problem solving, and comprehending language.

Working memory is linked to many aspects of children’s development.

Figure 3 Working Memory.

In Baddeley’s classic working memory model, working memory is like a mental workbench where a great deal of information processing is carried out. Working memory consists of three main components: the phonological loop and visuospatial working memory serve as assistants, helping the central executive do its work. Input from sensory memory goes to the phonological loop, where information about speech is stored and rehearsal takes place, and visuospatial working memory, where visual and spatial information, including imagery, are stored. Working memory is a limited-capacity system, and information is stored there for only a brief time. Working memory interacts with long-term memory, using information from long-term memory in its work and transmitting information to long-term memory for longer storage. Most recently, Baddeley added an “episodic buffer” component to help explain how information about the timing and location of memories gets stored and used.

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Constructing Memories 1

Schema theory: people mold memories to fit information that already exists in their minds.

Schemas: mental frameworks that organize concepts and information.

Schemas influence the way people encode, make inferences about, and retrieve information.

Often gaps are filled in when memories are retrieved.

Unlike the way computers operate, we reconstruct the past, and our minds can distort an event as they encode and store impressions of it.

Constructing Memories 2

Fuzzy trace theory states that memory is best understood with two types of representations:

Verbatim memory trace: precise details of the information.

Gist: the central idea of the information.

Young children tend to store and retrieve verbatim traces; then during the elementary school years, they begin to use gist more.

Gist contributes more to improved memory and reasoning because fuzzy traces are more enduring and less likely to be forgotten than verbatim traces.

Constructing Memories: Content Knowledge and Expertise

Our ability to remember new information about something depends on what we already know about it.

Experts have acquired extensive knowledge about a particular content area.

This knowledge influences what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information.

This in turn affects their ability to remember, reason, and solve problems.

Figure 4 Memory for Numbers and Chess Pieces.

Notice that when 10- and 11-year-old children and college students were asked to remember a string of random numbers that had been presented to them, the college students fared better. However, the 10- and 11-year-olds who had experience playing chess (“experts”) had better memory for the location of chess pieces on a chessboard than college students with no chess experience (“novices”) (Chi, 1978).

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Memory in Infancy 1

Infants as young as 3 months of age show early stages of memory development.

Especially, infants can remember perceptual-motor information.

Implicit memory: memory without conscious recollection.

Explicit memory: conscious memory of facts and experiences.

Infants do not show explicit memory until after 6 months.

Figure 5 The Technique Used in Rovee-Collier’s Investigation of Infant Memory.

In Carolyn Rovee-Collier’s experiment, infants as young as 2½ months of age retained information from the experience of being conditioned.

Courtesy of Dr. Carolyn Rovee-Collier

Memory in Infancy 2

Most adults can remember little, if anything, from the first three years of their life—a phenomenon known as infantile, or childhood, amnesia.

Immaturity of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex of the brain plays a role.

Most of young infants’ conscious memories appear to be fragile and short-lived.

By the end of the second year, long-term memory is more substantial and reliable.

Figure 6 Age-Related Changes in the Length of Time Over Which Memory Occurs

The following content is arranged like a table.

Age Group	Length of Delay
6-month-olds	24 hours
9-month-olds	1 month
10- to 11-month-olds	3 months
13- to 14-month-olds	4 to 6 months
20-month-olds	12 months

Source: Bauer, P. (2009). Learning and memory: Like a horse and carriage. In A. Needham & A. Woodward (Eds.), Learning and the infant mind. New York: Oxford University Press.

Figure 7 Key Brain Structures Involved in Explicit Memory Development in Infancy

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Memory in Childhood 1

Children’s memory improves considerably after infancy.

Especially, they can remember a great deal if they are given appropriate cues and prompts.

Their growing knowledge is one likely source of their memory improvement.

Other sources of improvement include the increased use of gist, changes in memory span, and the use of strategies.

Memory span increases with age.

Speed of information processing and rehearsal of information are both important aspects.

Figure 8 Developmental Changes in Memory Span.

In a classic study, memory span increased by about three digits from 2 years of age to 7 years of age (Dempster, 1981). By 12 years of age, memory span had increased on average another one and a half digits.

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Memory in Childhood 2

Certain strategies benefit children’s long-term retention of information.

If children organize information when they encode it, their memory benefits.

Memory also benefits from elaboration, which involves engaging in more extensive processing of information.

Creating mental imagery is another way to improve memory; but using imagery to remember verbal information works better for older children than for younger children.

Memory in Childhood: Teaching Strategies

In teaching, another good strategy is to encourage children to understand the material that needs to be remembered.

Two other strategies have been proposed:

Repeat with variation on the instructional information, and link early and often.

Embed memory-relevant language when instructing children.

Reconstructive Memory and Children as Eyewitnesses

Memories are constructive and reconstructive.

Children have schemas for all sorts of information, and these affect how they encode, store, and retrieve information.

Several factors influence the accuracy of their memory.

There are age differences in children’s susceptibility to suggestion.

There are individual differences in susceptibility.

Interviewing techniques can produce substantial distortions in children’s reports about highly salient events.

Memory in Adolescence

Memory span increases during adolescence.

Working memory also increases.

These improvements in adolescence and young adulthood appear to be due to shifts in neural functioning in specific brain regions.

Figure 9 Developmental Changes in Working Memory.

Note: The scores shown here are the means for each age group, and the age also represents a mean age. Higher scores reflect superior working memory performance (Swanson, 1999).

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Thinking

Thinking: manipulating and transforming information in memory to reason, reflect, think critically, evaluate ideas and solve problems, and make decisions.

Thinking in Infancy

Concepts—cognitive groupings of similar objects, events, people, or ideas—are key aspects of infants’ cognitive development.

It is unclear how early concept formation begins.

Infants’ early categorizations are best described as perceptual categorization.

Categories are based on similar perceptual features of objects, such as size, color, movements, and parts.

Not until about seven to nine months do infants form conceptual categories.

Figure 10 Categorization in 9- to 11-Month-Olds.

These are the type of stimuli used in the study that indicated 9- to 11-month-old infants categorized birds as animals and airplanes as vehicles even though the objects were perceptually similar (Mandler & McDonough, 1993).

Thinking in Childhood: Executive Function 1

Executive function: a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex.

Executive function involves managing one’s thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and to exercise self-control.

In early childhood, executive function involves advances in cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, goal setting, and delay of gratification.

Advances are linked to school readiness.

Parents and teachers play important roles.

Thinking in Childhood: Executive Function 2

Certain key dimensions of executive function appear to be the most important for children’s cognitive development and school success:

self-control/inhibition;

working memory; and

flexibility

Some research suggests executive function is a better predictor of school readiness than general IQ.

Critical Thinking 1

Critical thinking: thinking reflectively and productively, and evaluating the evidence.

Ask not only what happened but how and why.

Examine supposed “facts” to determine whether there is evidence to support them.

Argue with reason rather than emotion.

Recognize there may be more than one good answer.

Compare various answers and judge which is best.

Evaluate what people say.

Ask questions and speculate beyond what is known.

Critical Thinking 2

Mindfulness is an important aspect of thinking critically.

It involves being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life’s everyday activities and tasks.

Children who engage in mindfulness can improve a number of cognitive and socioemotional skills.

Mindfulness training can be implemented in schools by using age-appropriate activities that increase children’s reflection on moment-to-moment experiences.

Scientific Thinking

Like scientists, children ask fundamental questions about reality and seek answers to questions that seem trivial or unanswerable.

They place a great deal of emphasis on causal mechanisms.

Children are more influenced by coincidence than an overall pattern, however.

They often maintain their old theories regardless of evidence.

Too often, the skills scientists use are not routinely taught in schools.

Solving Problems: Using Rules

Problem solving involves finding an appropriate way to attain a goal.

With age, children learn to develop rules and learn better rules to apply to problems.

One element in this is their developing ability to form representations of reality.

As children learn more about what is relevant to a problem and learn to encode the relevant information, they are better at using rules in problem solving.

Figure 11 The Type of Balance Scale Used by Siegler (1976).

Weights could be placed on pegs on each side of the fulcrum; the torque (the weight on each side times the distance of that weight from the fulcrum) determined which side would go down.

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Solving Problems: Using Analogies and Strategies

An analogy involves correspondence in some respects between things that are dissimilar.

Even young children can draw reasonable analogies under some circumstances and use them to solve problems.

They can easily forget, however, that an object is being used as a symbol of something else and instead treat it as an object in its own right.

Good thinkers routinely use strategies and planning.

Children’s selection of effective strategies in solving math and memory problem appears to improve from the third grade to the seventh.

Thinking in Adolescence

A very important cognitive change in adolescence is improvement in executive function.

Especially, adolescents are better able to monitor and manage their cognitive resources.

Cognitive changes in adolescence also allow improvement in critical thinking:

increased speed, automaticity, and capacity of information processing;

greater breadth of content knowledge in a variety of domains;

increased ability to construct new combinations of knowledge; and

a greater range and more spontaneous use of strategies and procedures for obtaining and applying knowledge.

Thinking in Adolescence: Decision Making 1

Adolescence is a time of increased decision making.

Older adolescents are described as more competent in decision making than younger adolescents.

Adolescents are more competent than children.

Adolescents are more likely to generate different options, examine a situation from a variety of perspectives, anticipate consequences, and consider the credibility of sources.

Decision making is far from perfect.

Like most people, adolescents make better decisions when calm.

Thinking in Adolescence: Decision Making 2

Adolescents’ willingness to engage in risky behavior depends on the social context.

More risky decisions are made when alcohol, drugs, or other temptations are readily available.

The presence of peers makes risky decisions more likely.

Adolescents need more opportunities to practice and discuss realistic decision making.

Thinking in Adolescence: Decision Making 3

Dual-process model: decision making is influenced by two systems, one analytical and one experiential, that compete with each other.

In the experiential system, getting the gist that the context is dangerous can cue personal protective values.

Adolescents who have higher impulse control are less likely to show risky behavior.

Some experts argue adolescents benefit from both analytical and experiential systems.

Metacognition

Metacognition is cognition about cognition, or “knowing about knowing.”

It involves several dimensions of executive function, such as planning, evaluation, and self-regulation.

It helps people perform cognitive tasks more effectively.

Metamemory: knowledge about memory.

It involves both general knowledge about memory and knowledge about one’s own memory.

The Child’s Theory of Mind 1

Theory of mind: awareness of one’s own mental processes and the mental processes of others.

From 18 months to 3 years, children begin to understand three mental states:

perceptions;

emotions; and

desires

The Child’s Theory of Mind 2

Children aged 2 to 3 years understand that desires are related to actions and simple emotions.

A key development is the understanding that others’ desires may differ from their own.

Between 3 and 5 years, children come to understand that the mind can represent objects and events accurately or inaccurately.

Awareness of false beliefs—beliefs that are not true—develops by age 5 in most children.

Figure 12 Developmental Changes in False-Belief Performance.

False-belief recognition dramatically increases from 2½ years of age through the middle of the elementary school years. In a summary of the results of many studies, 2½-year-olds gave incorrect responses about 80 percent of the time (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). At 3 years, 8 months, they were correct about 50 percent of the time, and after that, gave increasingly correct responses.

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Figure 13 The Sally and Anne False-Belief Task.

In the false-belief task, the skit above in which Sally has a basket and Anne has a box is shown to children. Sally places a toy in her basket and then leaves. While Sally is gone and can’t watch, Anne removes the toy from Sally’s basket and places it in her box. Sally then comes back and the children are asked where they think Sally will look for her toy. Children are said to “pass” the false-belief task if they understand that Sally looks in her basket first before realizing the toy isn’t there.

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The Child’s Theory of Mind 3

Only beyond the preschool years do children begin to understand that behaviors do not necessarily reflect thoughts or feelings.

They move from understanding beliefs can be false to realizing the same event can be open to multiple interpretations.

There are individual differences in the ages when children reach certain milestones.

Executive function, involving goal-directed behavior and self-control, is linked to development of a theory of mind.

Figure 14 Ambiguous Line Drawing

Metacognition in Childhood

By age 5 or 6, children usually know that familiar items are easier to learn, that short lists are easier to remember, that recognition is easier than recall, and that forgetting becomes more likely over time.

In other ways, their metamemory is limited.

They tend to have an inflated opinion of their memory abilities; and they have little appreciation for the importance of cues to memory.

Their abilities improve considerably by age 11 to 12.

Metacognition in Adolescence

Adolescents have an increased capacity to monitor and manage cognitive resources to meet the demands of a learning task.

This increased metacognitive ability results in improved cognitive functioning and learning.

Adolescents also have a better meta-level understanding of strategies.

There is considerable variation, however.

Some adolescents are quite good at using metacognition to improve their learning, while others are far less so.

Review

Explain the information-processing approach.

Define attention and outline its developmental changes.

Describe what memory is and how it changes.

Characterize thinking and its developmental changes.

Define metacognition and summarize its developmental changes.

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Figure 3 Working Memory. - Text Alternative

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The central executive has two double-headed arrows toward visuospatial working memory, long-term memory, and the phonological loop. The phonological loop undergoes rehearsal. The input via sensory memory points toward visuospatial working memory and the phonological loop.

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Figure 4 Memory for Numbers and Chess Pieces. - Text Alternative

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The horizontal axis represents the random numbers and chess pieces. The vertical axis represents the number of items recalled and ranges from 0 through 15 in increments of 5. The data are as follows:

Radom numbers: children with chess experience, 6; college students without chess experience, 9.

Chess pieces: children with chess experience, 8; college students without chess experience, 6. Please note the data is approximate.

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Figure 7 Key Brain Structures Involved in Explicit Memory Development in Infancy - Text Alternative

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The hippocampus is a curve-shaped part inside the brain. The cerebral cortex is above the frontal lobe and extends up to the occipital lobe. It is a tan-colored area with wrinkles and folds.

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Figure 8 Developmental Changes in Memory Span. - Text Alternative

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The horizontal axis represents the age (years), ranging from 0 to adults in increments of 2. There is a line break between 12 and adults in the horizontal axis. The vertical axis represents the digit span, ranging from 0 to 8 in increments of 2. The curve begins from (2, 2) and ends at (adults, 7).

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Figure 9 Developmental Changes in Working Memory. - Text Alternative

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The data are as follows: Semantic association: age 8, 1.33; age 10, 1.70; age 13, 1.86; age 16, 2.24; age 24, 2.60. Digit/Sentence: age 8, 1.75; age 10, 2.34; age 13, 2.94; age 16, 2.98; age 24, 3.71. Mapping/Directions: age 8, 3.13; age 10, 3.60; age 13, 4.09; age 16, 3.92; age 24, 4.64. Visual Matrix: age 8, 1.67; age 10, 2.06; age 13, 2.51; age 16, 2.68; age 24, 3.47.

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Figure 11 The Type of Balance Scale Used by Siegler (1976). - Text Alternative

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The text below reads, Rule 1: if the weight is the same on both sides, predict that the scale will balance. If the weight differs, predict that the side with more weight will go down. Rule II: if the weight is greater on one side, say that that side will go down. If the weights on the two sides are equal, choose the side on which the weight is farther from the fulcrum. Rule III: Act as in Rule II, except that if one side has more weight and the weight on the other side is farther from the fulcrum, then guess. Rule IV: proceed as in Rule II, unless one side has more weight and the other more distance. In that case, calculate torques by multiplying weight times distance on each side. Then predict that the side with the greater torque will go down.

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Figure 12 Developmental Changes in False-Belief Performance. - Text Alternative

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The horizontal axis represents age (months), ranging from 30 to 100 in increments of 10. The vertical axis represents percentage correct, ranging from 0 to 100 in increments of 20. A curve begins from (30, 15) rises and ends at (87, 100).

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Figure 13 The Sally and Anne False-Belief Task. - Text Alternative

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The first illustration shows Sally arranging thinks in a basket and Anne is standing before Sally. The second illustration shows Anne standing behind Sally at a distance and both of them facing the same direction and raising their right hand. The third illustration shows Anne arranging things in a box. The fourth illustration shows Sally looking at the box and a question mark symbol is given above her head.

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