Chpater 8 Lipespan and development, Lecture notes of Psychology

Download Chpater 8 Lipespan and development and more Lecture notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity!

Anchiy/ShutterStock.com

Think about everything you have learned and experienced up to this point in your life. Like most

people, you probably have a rich and varied set of memories relating to your family, friends, school, work,

and life. You rely on these memories every day: They provide you with a solid grounding in who you are,

where you have been, and where you hope to go. Now imagine that every one of these memories is

gone. It’s hard to imagine, but this is what happened to Su Meck at the age of 22. One minute, she was

making macaroni and cheese in the kitchen and lifting her young son up in the air, and in the next minute,

the ceiling fan had dislodged and struck Su in the head (De Vise, 2011). She awoke a week later with no

memories of her past. None. She did not know herself, let alone her husband and two young children. She

had to start over. According to her husband, “She was Su 2.0. She had rebooted.... It was literally like she

had died. Her personality was gone” (McGrory, 2013).

Memory and Information

Processing

8.1 Conceptualizing Memory Implicit and Explicit Memory Neural Bases of Memory Problem Solving

8.3 The Child Memory Development Autobiographical Memory Problem Solving

8.2 The Infant Uncovering Evidence of Memory Problem Solving

8.4 The Adolescent Strategies Basic Capacities Metamemory and Knowledge Base

8.5 The Adult Developing Expertise Autobiographical Memory Memory and Aging Problem Solving and Aging

233

8.1 Conceptualizing Memory 235

needed. People say they have successfully remembered something when they can retrieve it from long-term memory. Retrieval can be accomplished in several ways. If you are asked a multiple- choice question about when the Constitution was ratified, you need not actively retrieve the correct date; you merely need to recognize it among the options. This is an example of recognition memory. If, instead, you are asked, “When was the Constitution ratified?” this is a test of recall memory ; it requires active retrieval without the aid of cues. Between recognition and recall memory is cued recall memory , in which you would be given a hint or cue to facilitate retrieval (for example, “When was the Constitution ratified? It is the year the French Revolution began and rhymes with wine.”). Most people find questions requiring recognition memory easier to answer than those requiring cued recall, and those requiring cued recall easier than those requiring pure recall. This holds true across the life span, which suggests that many things people have apparently encoded or learned are “in there someplace” even though they may be difficult to retrieve without cues. Breakdowns in remembering may involve difficulties in ini- tial encoding, storage, or retrieval. Useful as this model has been, modifications and alternative models have been proposed as research has uncovered more and more about memory processes. A more comprehensive model is illustrated in (^) ■ Figure 8.1. It shows, for example, that short-term memory is more complex than originally conceived. For one,

These processes include synaptic consolidation, which occurs in the minutes or hours after initial learning, and system consolida- tion, which takes place over a longer period of time (Dudai, 2004). The processes of consolidation are facilitated by sleep (Barham et al., 2016; Marshall & Born, 2007; Rasch & Born, 2013) and dis- rupted by stress (McGaugh & Roozendaal, 2002). Consolidation is also assisted when we can relate new material with prior knowledge, a process reflected in patterns of brain activity measured during sleep (Hennies et al., 2016). In particular, when sleep spindles— those spikes of neural activity observed during REM sleep—are denser, there seems to be greater retention of new learning that is associated with prior knowledge (Hennies et al., 2016). In the absence of consolidation, the information would not make the leap from the first step of encoding to the third step of storage. Storage , of course, refers to holding information in a long-term memory store. Memories fade over time unless they are appropriately stored in long-term memory. Research has also made it clear that storing memories is a constructive process and not a static recording of what was encoded. As Mary Courage and Nelson Cowan (2009) describe it, “human memory does not record experience as a video camera would, but rather as an histo- rian would: as a dynamic and inferential process with reconstruc- tions that depend on a variety of sources of information” (p. 2). Finally, for the memory process to be complete, there must be retrieval —the process of getting information out when it is

■ Figure 8.1^ A comprehensive model of memory. The central executive manages the important busi- ness of the short-term memory store. The bottom three boxes show the three types of short-term memory: phonological, visual-spatial, and the episodic buffer, which integrates the other two types of short-term memory.

Sensory register (huge amount of information from environment; very brief duration)

Working (short-term) memory (small amount of information; limited duration)

Central executive The “supervisor” Controls attention and flow of information

Attention

Some information moves to LTM for storage

Consolidation

Some information may be retrieved from LTM

Long-term memory (large quantity of information; unlimited duration)

Phonological loop Auditory information

Episodic buffer Integrates auditory and visual information; retains chronological order

Visual–spatial sketchpad Visual and spatial information

236 C h A pTer eIGhT Memory and Information Processing

can be further divided into semantic memory for general facts and episodic memory for specific experiences. Most memory experts agree that explicit memories, whether they are semantic general knowledge or the specific personal memories that make up episodic memories, are deeply entwined with language. To further clarify the two types of explicit memory, an example of episodic memory might be remembering that you were home sick when you heard on the news that a major earthquake had struck Nepal on April 25, 2015, killing more than 8,000 people. Semantic memory might be knowing that Nepal is situated between India and China or that its capital is Kathmandu. The first example illustrates memory for a specific event, whereas the second example reflects general knowledge about the world. Implicit memory is a different beast. Learners are typically unaware that their memory is being assessed with implicit “tests.” Consider one of the most famous case studies of memory, that of Henry Molaison, who was known in the scientific literature only by his initials H.M. until his death at age 82 in 2008. At the age of 27, Henry had much of the hippocampus removed from both sides of his brain as part of an effort to control his severe seizures (see Shah, Pattanayak, & Sagar, 2014; Squire, 2009). What his neurosurgeon did not realize at the time was that Henry would suffer from catastrophic memory loss for the remaining 55 years of his life. In particular, Henry experienced anterograde amnesia : He was no longer able to form new memories; indeed, a book written about this case is titled Permanent Present Tense (Corkin, 2013). Henry could not remember what he had eaten for dinner or watched on television just minutes earlier, nor could he learn new words or remember new people. Despite this devastating loss of ability to form new episodic memories, Henry showed evidence of implicit memory (Lloyd & Miller, 2014). To test this, Henry was presented with a mirror tracing task in which he was asked to trace a diagram by looking only at his hand reflected in the mir- ror, which makes this rather challenging and requires practice to perfect the drawing. Henry did not recall repeatedly practic- ing this task, yet his performance improved over the course of three days, indicating some retention of this procedural task (see ■ Figure 8.3 ).^ He^ had^ acquired^ memory^ for^ the^ procedure^ without any awareness of doing so. Many forms of amnesia, like the one

most cognitive researchers distinguish between passive and active forms of short-term memory and use the term working memory to refer to short-term memory being used to achieve a goal. Working memory is akin to a mental “scratch pad” that temporarily stores information while actively operating on it (Baddeley, 2012). It is what is being manipulated in one’s mind at any moment. As you know, people can juggle only so much information at once without some of it slipping away or “falling out” of working mem- ory. To illustrate working memory, look at the following seven numbers. Then look away and add the numbers in your head while trying to remember them:

7 25 6 1 4 7

Most likely, having to actively manipulate the numbers in working memory to add them disrupted your ability to rehearse them to remember them. People who are fast at adding numbers would have better luck than most people, because they would have more working-memory space left for remembering the items (Byrnes, 1996). Alan Baddeley (1986, 2001, 2012) has proposed a four- component model of working memory to try to address the limitations in this area in the Atkinson and Shiffrin model. In particular, research showed that a single short-term memory store just was not sufficient, because verbal and visual memories seem to be stored separately (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). As illustrated in Figure 8.1, this expanded view of short-term memory consists of a central executive , which directs attention and controls the flow of information; it is the supervisor of the working-memory system. In addition, there are three types of short-term memory storage:

• Phonological loop, which briefly holds auditory information such as words or music
• Visual-spatial sketchpad, which holds visual information such as colors and shapes
• Episodic buffer, which links auditory and visual information

The episodic buffer was added to this model when research showed that some memories are not visual or verbal per se, but instead serve to connect visual and verbal information and facili- tate long-term storage of episodic memories (memories of events). In the next section, we’ll explore these episodic memories in greater detail.

Implicit and explicit Memory

Memory researchers have concluded that the long-term memory store responds differently depending on the nature of the task (Schneider, 2015). They distinguish between implicit memory (also called nondeclarative memory), which occurs unintention- ally, automatically, and without awareness, and explicit memory (also called declarative memory), which involves deliberate, effortful recollection of events (see (^) ■ Figure 8.2 ). Explicit memory is tested through traditional recognition and recall tests (such as a course’s final exam with multiple-choice and essay questions) and

■ Figure 8.2^ Types of long-term memory.

Skills, Priming procedures, habits

Other (e.g., classical conditionings, habituation)

Episodic (events)

Autobiographical

Semantic (facts, general knowledge)

Long-term Memory

Explicit (declarative)

Implicit (nondeclarative)

238 C h A pTer eIGhT Memory and Information Processing

knowledge of the mathematical operation of subtraction. You will then transfer this stored information to working memory so that you can use your subtraction “program” (1789 minus 1776) to derive the correct answer. Notice that processing information successfully requires both knowing what you are doing and making decisions. This is why researchers have added executive control processes to the memory model. These control processes run the show, guid- ing the selection, organization, manipulation, and interpretation of information throughout. Stored knowledge about the world and about information processing guides what is done with new information. Cognitive psychologists now recognize that information processing is more complex than this model or similar models suggest (Bjorklund, 1997). For example, they appreciate that people, like computers, engage in parallel processing , carrying out multiple cognitive activities simultaneously (for example, listening to a lecture and taking notes at the same time) rather than performing operations in a sequence (such as solving a math problem by carrying out a series of ordered steps). They also appreciate that different processing approaches are used in different domains of knowledge. Still, the information- processing approach to cognition has the advantage of focusing attention on how people remember things or solve problems, not just on what they recall or what answer they give. A young child’s performance on a problem could break down in any number of ways: The child might not be paying attention to the

Research suggests that implicit memory develops earlier in infancy than explicit memory (Lloyd & Miller, 2014; Schneider, 2015). Explicit memory improves as the hippocampus becomes more mature during the second half of the first year (Nelson, Thomas, & de Haan, 2006). Further, the two types of memory follow different developmental paths. Explicit memory capacity increases from infancy to adulthood, then declines in later adult- hood. By contrast, implicit memory capacity changes little; young children often do no worse than older children and elderly adults often do no worse than younger adults on tests of implicit memory (Schneider, 2015; Schneider & Bjorklund, 1998). Research on implicit memory shows that young and old alike learn and retain a tremendous amount of information from their everyday experi- ences without any effort.

problem Solving

Think back to our example of the history professor who seems to want you to remember when the U.S. Constitution was rati- fied (1789, in case this did not get into your long-term memory store). Now imagine that you are asked how many years passed between this event and the signing of the Declaration of Inde- pendence (1776, remember?). This is a simple example of problem solving , or use of the information-processing system to achieve a goal or arrive at a decision (in this case, to answer the question). Here, too, the information-processing model describes what happens between stimulus and response. The question will move through the memory system. You will need to draw on your long-term memory to understand the question, then you will have to search long-term memory for the two relevant dates. Moreover, you will need to locate your stored

■ Figure 8.4^ The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, located in the medial ("middle") temporal lobe of the brain. Scientists believe that the hip- pocampus is responsible for consolidation and formation of explicit memo- ries. Just next to the hippocampus is the amygdala, which is involved in forming emotionally charged memories. Other parts of the brain, namely the basal ganglia and cerebullum, are important in the formation of procedural memories.

Cerebrum

Basal ganglia

Corpus callosum

Thalamus Hypothalamus Amygdala

Hippocampus Cerebellum

Advances in brain imaging have allowed researchers to “see” memory and problem solving by looking at patterns of blood flow in different regions of the brain. The yellow portions in this image show increased areas of blood flow as the person was remembering the image of a face. NIMH Laboratory of Brain and Cognition

8.2 The Infant 239

and they can retain what they have learned for days or even weeks (Rovee-Collier & Cuevas, 2009b).

Operant Conditioning To test long-term memory of young infants, Carolyn Rovee- Collier and her colleagues devised a clever task that relies on the operant conditioning techniques introduced in Chapter 2 (see Rovee-Collier & Cuevas, 2009b). When a ribbon is tied to a baby’s ankle and connected to an attractive mobile, the infant will shake a leg now and then and learn very quickly (in minutes) that leg kicking brings about a positively reinforcing consequence: the jiggling of the mobile. To test infant memory, the mobile is presented at a later time to see whether the infant will kick again. To succeed at this task, the infant must not only recognize the mobile but also recall that the thing to do is to kick. Before we review the research findings, what type of memory do you believe this task assesses? Consider whether infants are deliberately and effort- fully remembering something or are unintentionally and auto- matically learning and remembering a connection between their kicking and the movement of the mobile. This task is tapping into implicit or procedural memory. When given two 9-minute training sessions, 2-month-olds remember how to make the mobile move for up to 2 days, 3-month-olds for about 1 week, and 6-month-olds for about 2 weeks (Rovee-Collier & Cuevas, 2009b). Using a modification of this task for older infants, Rovee-Collier and her colleagues (see Hartshorn et al.,

1998. have shown that by 18 months, infants can remember for at least 3 months—rather impressive! Further, the researchers

relevant aspects of the problem, might be unable to hold all the relevant pieces of information in working memory long enough to do anything with them, might lack the strategies for trans- ferring new information into long-term memory or retrieving information from long-term memory as needed, might simply not have enough stored knowledge to understand the problem, or might not have the executive control processes needed to manage the steps in solving a problem. If researchers can iden- tify how information processes in the younger individual differ from those in the older person, they will gain much insight into cognitive development. Many processes involved in memory and problem solving improve between infancy and adulthood and then decline some- what in old age, although this pattern is not uniform for all pro- cesses or all people. Our task in this chapter is to describe these age trends and, of greater interest, to try to determine why they occur.

Checking Mastery

1. What steps are required in order to learn, remember, and recall material?
2. What is the difference between implicit and explicit memory?
3. Why are recognition tasks generally easier than recall tasks?

Making Connections

1. Consider your own memory profile. On what types of memory tasks and under what conditions is your memory good, and conversely, which types of tasks and conditions challenge your memory?
2. In creating a memory assessment, how would you tap into someone’s implicit memories as opposed to their explicit memories?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Explain how researchers are able to assess the memory capabilities of infants.
• Outline the characteristics of infant memory.
• Describe the types of information that infants are likely to remember.

8.

The Infant

You have already seen that infants explore the world thoroughly through their senses. But are they remembering anything of their experiences?

Uncovering evidence of Memory

Assessing infant memory requires some ingenuity because infants cannot tell researchers what they remember. Several methods have been used to uncover infants’ memory capabilities. Here we consider habituation, operant conditioning, object search, and imitation techniques before examining infants’ abilities to recall previously presented information.

habituation

One method to assess memory uses habituation, a simple and often overlooked form of learning introduced in Chapter 6. Habituation—learning not to respond to a repeated stimulus— might be thought of as learning to be bored by the familiar (for example, eventually not hearing the continual ticking of a clock or the drip of a leaky faucet) and is evidence that a stimulus is rec- ognized as familiar. From birth, humans habituate to repeatedly presented lights, sounds, and smells; such stimuli are recognized as “old hat” (Rovee-Collier & Barr, 2010). Indeed, as we noted in Chapter 5, fetuses demonstrate through habituation that they can learn and remember prior to birth (see Leader, 2016). It is clear that newborns are capable of recognition memory and prefer a new sight to something they have seen many times. As they age, infants need less “study time” before a stimulus becomes old hat,

8.2 The Infant 241

later. Children who were 18 months or younger at the time of their ER visit were unable to verbally recall aspects of their visits after a 6-month delay, but children 20 months or older were able to do so. Children who were at least 26 months old at the time of their ER visit could retain information and answer verbal questions about their experiences for at least 2 years following the event. In addi- tion, children as young as 2 years can benefit from simple verbal reminders about previously experienced events (Imuta, Scarf, & Hayne, 2013). It’s clear that language helps memory performance.

problem Solving Infants, like children and adults, face problem-solving tasks every day. For example, they may want to obtain an object beyond their reach or to make a toy repeat the interesting sound it produced earlier. Can infants overcome obstacles to achieve desired goals? It appears they can. In one study, infants were presented with an object out of their reach; however, by pulling on a cloth with one hand, they could drag the object to within reach (Willats, 1990). Although 6-month-olds did not retrieve the object, 9-month-olds solved this problem. Even the younger infants were success- ful when given hints about how they might retrieve the object (Kolstad & Aguiar, 1995). In situations where solving the prob- lem requires coordination of both hands, success does not occur until later in childhood (Birtles et al., 2011). By 14 months of age, infants have figured out that adults are often useful sources of information in problem-solving situations (Csibra & Gergely, 2009; Kovács et al., 2014). As they get older, infants increasingly pay attention to the cues provided by adults and they increasingly

of actions at age 9 months predicts their productive language skills at 16 months, showing a connection between performance on an early memory task and performance on a more complex memory task, in this case, words produced or remembered at 16 months (Sundqvist et al., 2016). As infants age, they demonstrate recall or deferred imitation over longer periods. By 6 months, infants can defer their imita- tion of an action over a longer delay and can recall the order of a simple sequence of events (Bauer, 2007). By age 2, events can be recalled for months, and recall is more flexible—less bound by the specific cues present at the time of learning (see Lukowski & Bauer, 2014). Patricia Bauer (1996; Bauer et al., 2000) and her colleagues have shown sequences of actions to infants of different ages and then asked them to imitate what they saw—for example, putting a teddy bear in bed, covering him with a blanket, and reading him a story. Infants as young as 13 months can reconstruct a sequence of actions for as long as 3 months afterward. Older infants (16 and 20 months) can store and retrieve events for 12 months after exposure (Bauer et al., 2000, 2011). Much like children and adults, infants remember best when they have repeated exposures to what they are to remember, when they are given plenty of cues to help them remember, and when the events they must remember occur in a meaningful or logical order. By age 2, infants have become verbal and can use words to reconstruct events that happened months earlier. In one study, for example, researchers interviewed young children about emer- gency room visits for accidents the children had between about 1 and 3 years of age (Peterson & Rideout, 1998). Interviews were conducted soon after the ER visits and 6, 12, 18, or 24 months

■ Figure 8.5^ An illustration of Piaget’s ‘A-not-B’ task.

1. Object in view
2. Object in view
3. Object under cloth

A-Not-B Error Phenomenon

5. Object under other cloth
   3. Infant finds object
6. Infant searches for object under first cloth

242 C h A pTer eIGhT Memory and Information Processing

Changes in Basic Capacities? Because the nervous system continues to develop in the years after birth, it seems plausible that older children remember more than younger children do because they have a better “computer”—a larger or more efficient information-processing system. We can rule out the idea that the storage capacity of long-term memory impairs memory performance in infants and young children. There is no consistent evidence that capacity changes much across the life span and, indeed, young and old alike probably have more room for storage than they could ever use (Cunningham, Yassa, & Egeth, 2015). If long-term storage capacity does not contribute to developmental differences in memory, then what about the encoding and consolidation processes needed to move informa- tion into long-term storage? Encoding begins with the sensory registration of stimuli from the environment. As we learned in Chapter 6, the sensory sys- tems are working fairly well from a very early age and undergo only slight improvements during the first year. But although the senses themselves are functioning well, there is evidence that the encoding of this information improves over the first several years of life as the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobes mature (see Ghetti & Lee, 2014). It is also clear that the memory con- solidation process undergoes developmental change. Of course, information that is not encoded in the first place is not going to be consolidated and stored. But separate from the changes in encod- ing, consolidation and storage of memories show improvement over infancy and childhood that seem to correspond to matu- ration of the hippocampus within the medial temporal lobes as well as other parts of the brain believed to be centrally involved in consolidation of memories. We also know that the speed of mental processes improves with age, as neurons become myelin- ated, and this allows older children and adults to simultaneously perform more mental operations in working memory than young children can (Cowan, 2016; Ghetti & Lee, 2014). As basic mental

solicit help by pointing, reaching, or otherwise letting the adult know that assistance is needed. Simple problem-solving behaviors improve considerably over the first 2 years of life and then, as you will see shortly, flourish during childhood.

Making Connections

1. Uncle Jed says there is no way a baby can learn or remem- ber anything. His position is that babies just eat, sleep, cry, and poop. What three key pieces of evidence might you use to convince Uncle Jed that there is something going on inside the infant’s head in terms of learning and memory?
2. Would you characterize infants’ memory as robust or fragile? What factors influence the robustness of infants’ memory?

Checking Mastery

1. How can researchers assess memory abilities of preverbal infants?
2. At what age do infants begin to show reliable recall for events?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Discuss and evaluate the four major reasons why memory improves over childhood.
• Describe autobiographical memory, provide an example, and list contributing factors.
• Use evidence to evaluate the accuracy of children’s eyewitness memory.
• Explain changes in problem-solving ability throughout childhood.

8.

The Child

The 2-year-old is already a highly capable information processor, as evidenced by the rapid language learning that takes place at this age. But dramatic improvements in learning, memory, and problem solving occur throughout the childhood years as children learn everything from how to flush toilets to how to work advanced math problems.

Memory Development

In countless situations, older children learn faster and remember more than younger children do. For example, 2-year-olds can repeat back about two digits immediately after hearing them, 5-year-olds about four digits, and 10-year-olds about six digits. And second-graders not only are faster learners than kindergartners but also retain infor- mation longer. Why is this? Here are four major hypotheses about why learning and memory improve (see Schneider, 2011):

1. Changes in basic capacities. Older children have higher- powered “hardware” than younger children do; neural advances in their brains have contributed to more working- memory space for manipulating information and an ability to process information faster.
2. Changes in memory strategies. Older children have better “software”; they have learned and consistently use effective methods for putting information into long-term memory and retrieving it when they need it.
3. Increased knowledge of memory. Older children know more about memory (for example, how long they must study to learn things thoroughly, which kinds of memory tasks take more effort, and which strategies best fit each task).
4. Increased knowledge of the world. Older children know more than younger children about the world in general. This knowledge, or expertise, makes material to be learned more familiar, and familiar material is easier to learn and remem- ber than unfamiliar material.

244 C h A pTer eIGhT Memory and Information Processing

retrieval strategies can also influence how much is recalled. Indeed, retrieving something from memory can often be a com- plex adventure when solving problems, such as when you try to remember when you went on a trip by searching for cues that might trigger your memory (“Well, I still had long hair then, but it was after Muffy’s wedding, and.. .”). In general, young chil- dren rely more on external cues or behavioral actions for both encoding and retrieving information than do older children (Schneider & Pressley, 1997). Thus, young children may need to put their toothbrushes next to their pajamas so that they have a physical reminder to brush their teeth before they go to bed. With repetition, older children can remember to brush their teeth as part of their evening routine, in the absence of having a physical reminder. In many ways, command of memory strategies increases over the childhood years, but the path to effective strategy use is characterized more by noticeable jumps than by steady increases (Schneider, 2015).

Increased Knowledge of Memory? The term metamemory refers to knowledge of memory and to monitoring and regulating memory processes. It is knowing, for example, what your memory limits are, which memory strategies are more or less effective for you, and which memory tasks are more or less difficult for you. It is also noting that your efforts to remember something are not working and that you need to try something different. Sounds like this could be useful knowl- edge for a student to possess! More broadly, metamemory is one aspect of metacognition , or knowledge of the human mind and of the range of cognitive processes. Your store of metacognitive knowledge might include an understanding that you are better at learning a new language than at learning algebra, that it is harder to pay attention to a task when there is distracting noise in the background than when it is quiet, and that it is wise to check a pro- posed solution to a problem before concluding that it is correct. When do children first show evidence of metacognition? If instructed to remember where the Sesame Street character Big Bird has been hidden so that they can later wake him up, even 2- and 3-year-olds will go stand near the hiding spot, or at least look or point at that spot; they do not do these things as often if Big Bird is visible and they do not need to remember where he is (DeLoache, Cassidy, & Brown, 1985). By age 2, then, children understand that to remember something, you have to work at it. Researchers have found that 3-year-olds understand the difference between thinking about an object in their heads and experienc- ing it in reality and that 4-year-olds realize behavior is guided by beliefs (Flavell, 1999). These findings indicate that metacognitive awareness is present at least in a rudimentary form at a young age but there continue to be significant improvements throughout childhood. Are increases in metamemory a major contributor to improved memory performance over the childhood years? Children with greater metamemory awareness demonstrate better memory ability, but several factors influence the strength of this relationship (Geurten, Catale, & Meulemans, 2015; Schneider, 2015). Researchers are most likely to see a connec- tion between metamemory and memory performance among older children and among children who have been specifically

Finally, the strategy of elaboration involves actively creating meaningful links between items to be remembered. Elaboration is achieved by adding something to the items, in the form of either words or images. Creating and using a sentence such as “the apple fell on the horse’s nose” could help you remember two of the items in Figure 8.6. Elaboration is especially helpful in learning foreign languages. For example, you might link the Spanish word pato (pronounced pot-o) to the English equivalent duck by imagining a duck with a pot on its head. Children who can elaborate on the relationship between two items (for example, generating similar and different features of the items) have improved retention of these items (Howe, 2006). Memory or encoding strategies develop in a fairly predictable order, with rehearsal emerging first, followed by organization, and then by elaboration. Children do not suddenly start using strategies, however, and even once they have demonstrated knowledge of a strategy, they do not consistently apply it in all situations. Initially, children have a mediation deficiency , which means they cannot spontaneously use or benefit from strategies, even if they are taught how to use them. Children with mediation deficiencies seem unable to grasp the concept of the strategy. This type of strategy deficiency is not common (Schneider, 2015). More typical is a production deficiency , in which children can use strategies they are taught but do not produce them on their own. A third problem is a utilization deficiency , in which children spontaneously produce a strategy but their task performance does not yet benefit from using the strategy. Why would children who use a strategy fail to benefit from it? One possibility is that using a new strategy is mentally taxing and leaves no free cognitive resources for other aspects of the task (Pressley & Hilden, 2006). Once using the strategy becomes routine, then other components of the task can be addressed simultaneously. Whatever the reason for utilization deficiencies, they reflect a child–task inter- action; that is, it is not task difficulty per se, but how difficult a task is for a particular child that matters (Bjorklund et al., 2009). Using effective encoding strategies such as rehearsal, organi- zation, and elaboration to learn material is only half the battle;

This young girl is searching for a toy that she put away months ago when asked to clean up her room. What strategies might she use to help her recall the toy’s location? Sappington Todd/Getty Images

8.3 The Child 245

Consider, though, some research by Nelson Cowan and his colleagues (2015). They tested college students as well as 7-, 9-, and 12-year-olds with two sets of materials, one consisting of famil- iar English language letters and another consisting of symbols from a language unfamiliar to the participants. Older children and the young adults performed better than younger children with both the familiar letters and the unfamiliar symbols, suggest- ing that memory improvements over this age span are not solely attributable to greater knowledge base. Thus, the older children performed better even when they were tested under conditions that eliminated any advantage they might have from increased knowledge of the world. What should we conclude, then, about changes in memory across childhood?

revisiting the explanations We can draw four conclusions about the development of learning and memory:

1. Older children are faster information processors and can juggle more information in working memory. Maturation of the nervous system leads to improvements in consolidation of memories. Older and younger children, however, do not dif- fer in terms of sensory register or long-term memory capacity.
2. Older children use more effective memory strategies in encoding and retrieving information. Acquisition of memory strategies reflects qualitative rather than quantitative changes.
3. Older children know more about memory, and good metamemory may help children choose more appropri- ate strategies and control and monitor their learning more effectively.
4. Older children generally know more, and their larger knowl- edge base may provide some boost to their ability to learn and remember. A richer knowledge base allows faster and more efficient processing of information related to the domain of knowledge. Is one of these explanations of memory development better than the others? Darlene DeMarie and John Ferron (2003) tested whether a model that includes three of these factors—basic capac- ities, strategies, and metamemory—could explain recall memory

asked to remember something (DeMarie & Ferron, 2003; Schneider & Bjorklund, 1998). Not only is task experience impor- tant, but the nature of the task is also rel- evant. Awareness of memory processes benefits even young children on tasks that are simple and familiar and where connec- tions between metamemory knowledge and memory performance are fairly obvious (Schneider & Sodian, 1988). Yet children who know what to do may not always do it, so good metamemory is no guarantee of good recall (Geurten et al., 2015). It seems that children not only must know that a strategy is useful but also must know why it is useful in order to be motivated to use it and to benefit from its use. Metamemory is also influenced by children’s language skills and by their general knowledge about mental states and their roles in behavior—what is known as theory of mind (Lockl & Schneider, 2007; and see Chapter 13 for definition and discussion). The links between metamemory and memory performance, although not perfect, are strong enough to suggest the merits of teaching children more about how memory works and how they can make it work more effectively for them.

Increased Knowledge of the World?

As we have seen, 10-year-olds remember more than 2-year-olds do, but then 10-year-olds know more than 2-year-olds do. An indi- vidual’s knowledge of a content area to be learned, or knowledge base , as it is called, clearly affects learning and memory perfor- mance. Think about the difference between reading about a topic that you already know well and reading about a new topic. In the first case, you can read quickly because you are able to link the information to the knowledge you have already stored. All you really need to do is check for any new information or information that contradicts what you already know. Learning about a highly unfamiliar topic is more difficult (“It’s Greek to me”). Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the powerful influ- ence of knowledge base on memory was provided by Michelene Chi (1978). She demonstrated that even though adults typically outperform children on tests of memory, this age difference could be reversed if children have more expertise than adults. Chi recruited children who were expert chess players and compared their memory skills with those of adults who were familiar with the game but lacked expertise. On a test of memory for sequences of digits, the children recalled fewer than the adults did, dem- onstrating their usual deficiencies. But on a test of memory for the locations of chess pieces, the children clearly beat the adults (■ Figure 8.7 ). Because they were experts, these children were able to form more and larger mental chunks, or meaningful groups, of chess pieces, which allowed them to remember more. When child experts were compared with adult experts, there were no dif- ferences in performance (Schneider et al., 1993). Knowledge in a content area probably allows you to make better use of the limited capacity of working memory.

■ Figure 8.7^ Effects of expertise on memory. Michelene Chi found that child chess experts outperformed adult chess novices on a test of recall for the location of chess pieces (although, in keeping with the usual developmental trend, these children could not recall strings of numbers as well as adults could).

4

5

6

7

8

10

Number of items recalled Adult chess novices

10-year-old chess experts

9

Chess pieces Numbers

Imtmphoto/Dreamstime.com

8.3 The Child 247

recall (answers to open-ended questions) and nonverbal recall (identification of photos of the items used in the activity) of the unique event. Their nonverbal recall improved across the age groups but was good at all ages. Verbal recall was poor and largely dependent on the simpler verbal skills present at the time of encoding rather than the more developed verbal skills present at the time of recall. Although a relative lack of verbal skills during the first few years of life may limit what we are able to recall from this period, other research suggests that it does not completely block us from later attaching verbal labels to our preverbal memories (Bauer et al., 1998).

3. Level of sociocultural support. Although toddlers may have limited verbal skills, their parents presumably do not. There are large individual differences in toddler–parent “conversa- tions” about past events (see Fivush, 2014). An examination of mother–toddler conversations about past events shows that some mothers provide rich elaborations of these events, whereas others do not, in the course of conversing with their toddlers (Fivush, 2014). Years later, adolescents whose mothers had been more elaborative during their early mother–toddler conversations have stronger autobiographical memories than adolescents whose mothers were less elaborative (Jack et al., 2009). It may be that regular rehearsal, in this case in the form of a parent repeating the story, is the sociocultural context needed to ensure long-term recall of an early event. Consider again the children who participated in the “magic shrinking machine” study. They were asked about the event 6 years later (Jack, Simcock, & Hayne, 2012). Only those whose parents had talked with them about the experience sustained any long-term recall of the event.
4. Sense of self. We need to consider that infants and toddlers lack a strong sense of self and as a result may not have the necessary ‘pages’ on which they can write memories of per- sonally experienced events (Howe, 2014; Reese, 2014). With- out a sense of self, it is difficult to organize events as “things that happened to me.” Indeed, young children’s ability to rec- ognize themselves in a mirror is a good predictor of children’s ability to talk about their past (see Howe, 2014).
5. Verbatim versus gist storage. Some researchers have tried to explain childhood amnesia in terms of fuzzy-trace theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 2014; 2015). According to this explana- tion, children store verbatim and general accounts of an event separately. Verbatim information (such as word-for-word recall of a biology class lecture) is unstable and likely to be lost over long periods (Leichtman & Ceci, 1993); it is easier to remem- ber the gist of an event (for example, recall of the general points covered in a biology lecture) than the details (Brainerd & Reyna, 2014; 2015). With age, we are increasingly likely to rely on gist or fuzzy memory traces, which are less likely to be forgotten and are more efficient than verbatim memory traces in the sense that they take less space in memory (Brainerd & Gordon, 1994; Klaczynski, 2001). Children pass through a transition period from storing largely verbatim memories to storing more gist memories, and the earlier verbatim memo- ries are unlikely to be retained over time (Howe, 2000).
6. Neurogenesis. Finally, some intriguing research with mice suggests that neurogenesis, the birth of new cells, in the

hippocampus early in life ‘refreshes’ our memory store (Akers et al., 2014; Frankland & Josselyn, 2016). That is, new cells and new memories displace older cells and older memories. After birth, the period with the highest rate of neurogenesis is infancy, so perhaps this is why memories from infancy are largely nonexistent. More research is needed before we con- clude that this is a legitimate cause of childhood amnesia. Whether it is neurogenesis, insufficient 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 (Bauer et al., 2007).

Scripts As children engage in routine daily activities such as getting ready for bed or eating at a fast-food restaurant, they construct scripts or general event representations (GERs) of these activities (Nelson, 1986; 2014). Scripts or GERs represent the typical sequence of actions related to an event and guide future behaviors in similar settings. For instance, children who have been to a fast-food restau- rant might have a script like this: You wait in line, tell the person behind the counter what you want, pay for the food, carry the tray of food to a table, open the packages and eat the food, gather the trash, and throw it away before leaving. With this script in mind, children can act effectively in similar settings. Children as young as 3 years use scripts when reporting familiar events (Hudson & Mayhew, 2009; Nelson, 1997). When asked about their visit to a fast-food restaurant the day before, children usually report what happens in general when they go to the restaurant rather than what specifically happened during yesterday’s visit (Kuebli & Fivush, 1994). As children age, their scripts become more detailed. Perhaps more important than age, however, is experience: Children with greater experience of an event develop richer scripts than children with less experience (DeMarie, Norman, & Abshier, 2000).

Children develop scripts in memory for routine activities, such as visiting a fast-food restaurant, that guide their behavior in these situations. Directphoto.org/Alamy Stock Photo

248 C h A pTer eIGhT Memory and Information Processing

Children’s scripts affect how they form memories of new experiences as well as how they recall past events. For example, when presented with information inconsistent with their scripts, preschoolers may misremember the information so that it better fits their script (Nelson & Hudson, 1988). Four-year-old Damian may have a script for birthdays that includes blowing out candles, eating cake, and opening presents. Although his brother is sick on his birth- day and eats applesauce instead of cake, Damian later recalls that they all ate cake before opening presents. This demonstrates that memory is a reconstruction, not an exact replication (Hudson & Mayhew, 2009). This, in turn, has significant implications for eyewitness memory (or testimony), or the reporting of events wit- nessed or experienced—for example, a child’s reporting that she saw her little brother snitch some candy before dinner. Children are increasingly asked to report events that have happened in the context of abuse cases or custody hearings. Application 8.1 explores the accuracy of children’s memory in these sorts of situations.

problem Solving

Memories are vital to problem-solving skills. To solve any problem, a person must process information about the task, as well as use stored information, to achieve a goal. Thus, working memory is a critical component of problem solving. How do problem-solving capacities change during childhood? Piaget provided one answer

Children may be asked to provide informa- tion in situations with high stakes outcomes, such as custody hearings, sexual abuse cases, and a variety of criminal investigations (see Howe & Knott, 2015). To what extent can we “trust” a child’s memory for events related to these situations? When asked generally about events (“Tell me what happened at Uncle Joe’s house”), preschoolers recall less information than older children, but the recall of both groups is accurate (Goodman et al., 2014). Those children with stronger vocabulary skills are able to provide more information about an event than their peers with weaker vocabulary skills (Chae et al., 2014; 2016). The use of general prompts (such as “What happened next?” or “Tell me more about that.. .”) can elicit additional recall of information. Specific questions (“Was Uncle Joe wearing a red shirt?”) can also elicit more information, but accuracy of recall begins to slip, especially as the questions become more directed or leading (“Uncle Joe touched you here, didn’t he?”).

Preschool-age children, more so than older children and adults, are suggestible; they can be influenced by information implied in direct questioning and by relevant information intro- duced after the event (Schaaf, Alexander, & Goodman, 2008). Perhaps it is unfortunate, then, that pre- schoolers, because they initially offer less infor- mation in response to open-ended questions, may be asked a larger number of directed questions than older children. They are also frequently subjected to repeated questioning, which increases errors in reporting among chil- dren (Bjorklund, Brown, & Bjorklund, 2002). Although repeated questioning with general, open-ended questions can increase accuracy, repeated questioning with directed or closed questions can decrease accuracy. For example, in a study with 5- and 6-year-olds, researchers “cross-examined” children about events that occurred on a field trip to a police station dur- ing which the children saw a jail cell and police car and were fingerprinted and photographed

(Zajac & Hayne, 2003). After a delay of 8 months, children’s memories were probed using irrelevant, leading, and ambiguous ques- tions like those you might hear in a courtroom. Many children “cracked” under the pressure as evidenced by backing down and changing their answers in response to the questioning. Fully one out of three children changed all their answers, and most changed at least one answer. So although children can demonstrate accurate recall when asked clear and unbiased questions, this study shows that young children’s memory for past events can quickly become muddied when the questioning becomes tough. Fortunately, protocols for interviewing young children have evolved to incorporate greater understanding of how memory devel- ops and how it functions (see Goodman et al., 2014). These retrieval protocols may improve the collection of eyewitness testimony, but memory remains highly dependent on charac- teristics of the individual as well as the context of the event.

ApplICATION 8.

Children’s Memory as Eyewitnesses

to this question by proposing that children progress through broad stages of cognitive growth, but information-processing theorists were not satisfied with this explanation. They sought to pinpoint more specific reasons why problem-solving prowess improves so dramatically as children age. Consider the problem of predicting what will happen to the bal- ance beam in (^) ■ Figure 8.9 when weights are put on each side of the fulcrum, or balancing point. The goal is to decide which way the bal- ance beam will tip when it is released. To judge correctly, you must take into account both the number of weights and their distances from the fulcrum. Piaget believed that concrete-operational thinkers can appreciate the significance of either the amount of weight or its distance from the center but will not grasp the inverse relationship between the two factors. Only when they reach the stage of formal

■ Figure 8.9^ The balance beam apparatus used by Robert Siegler to study children’s problem-solving abilities. Which way will the balance beam tip? Source: Siegler, R. S. (1981). Developmental sequences within and between concepts, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 46 , (2, Serial No. 189). Copyright © 1981. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

250 C h A pTer eIGhT Memory and Information Processing

using, and when. Like a good car mechanic, the teacher would be able to pinpoint the problem and encourage less use of faulty strate- gies and rules and more use of adaptive ones. Much remains to be learned about how problem-solving strategies evolve as children age, and why. However, the rule-assessment approach and overlap- ping waves theory give a fairly specific idea of what children are doing (or doing wrong) as they attack problems and illustrate how the information-processing approach to cognitive development pro- vides a different view of development than Piaget’s account does.

Although parents in the midst of reminding their adolescent sons and daughters to do household chores or homework may wonder whether teenagers process any information at all, learning, mem- ory, and problem solving continue to improve considerably during the adolescent years. Research on episodic memory shows that the performance of young teens (11–12 years) is quite similar to that of children, and both groups do markedly worse than young adults (Brehmer et al., 2007). Clearly, then, there is room for improve- ment during adolescence. How does this improvement occur?

Strategies

First, new learning and memory strategies emerge. It is during adolescence that the memory strategy of elaboration is mastered (Schneider & Pressley, 1997). Adolescents also develop and refine advanced learning and memory strategies highly relevant to school learning—for example, note-taking and underlining skills. They make more deliberate use of strategies that younger children use unconsciously (Bjorklund, 1985). For example, they may deliberately organize a list of words instead of simply using the organization or grouping that happens to be there already. And they use existing strategies more selectively. For example, they are adept at using their strategies to memorize the material on which they know they will be tested and at letting go of irrelevant infor- mation. To illustrate, Patricia Miller and Michael Weiss (1981) asked children and adolescents to remember the locations of ani- mals that had been hidden behind small doors and to ignore the

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Compare the typical adolescent’s memory capabilities to those of the typical child. 8.4 • Explain why adolescents demonstrate stronger memory abilities than children.

The Adolescent

Checking Mastery

1. What are two reasons why older children have improved memories relative to younger children?
2. How do scripts or GERs relate to memory?
3. What is the “take-home” message of the overlapping waves theory of problem solving?

Making Connections

1. You are a first-grade teacher, and one of the first things you notice is that some of your students remember a good deal more than others about the stories you read to them. Based on what you have read in this chap- ter, what are your main hypotheses about why some children have better memories than other children the same age?
2. You have been called in to interview a young child who may have witnessed a shooting. Given the research on children’s memory, how will you gather information from your young witness?
3. If you are typical, then you probably have few, if any, memories from the period of your infancy and even toddlerhood. Why can’t we remember the early events of our lives?

household objects hidden behind other doors. As (^) ■ Figure 8. shows, 13-year-olds recalled more than 7- and 10-year-olds about where the animals had been hidden, but they remembered less about task-irrelevant information (the locations of the household

Adolescents are more aware than children that they need to use strategies such as note-taking to help with encoding and retrieval of information to be remembered. Joanne Harris/Dreamstime.com

8.4 The Adolescent 251

objects). Apparently, they are better able to push irrelevant infor- mation out of working memory so that it does not interfere with task performance (Lorsbach & Reimer, 1997). So, during elemen- tary school, children get better at distinguishing between what is relevant and what is irrelevant, but during adolescence they advance further by selectively using their memory strategies only on the relevant material. If it is not going to be on the test, forget it!

Basic Capacities

In addition to these changes in memory strategies, basic capaci- ties continue to increase during adolescence. As discussed earlier in this chapter, adolescents have greater functional use of their working memory because maturational changes in the brain allow them to process information more quickly and to simultaneously process more chunks of information. Younger teens (13 years) with greater working memory perform better on a variety of aca- demic subjects (Alloway, Banner, & Smith, 2010), perhaps because greater working memory is associated with better reading skills (Alexander & Fox, 2011; Titz & Karbach, 2014). Interestingly, weaker working memory is associated with impulsivity and adoles- cent alcohol use (Khurana et al., 2013). Improving working mem- ory may help strengthen academic skills as well as nonacademic decision-making. Fortunately, there is evidence that training pro- grams can improve working memory among teenagers, including those born with extremely low birth weight (Lohaugen et al., 2011).

Metamemory and Knowledge Base

There is little to say about knowledge base other than that it con- tinues to expand during adolescence. Therefore, adolescents may do better than children on some tasks simply because they know more about the topic.

Metamemory and metacognition also improve. In general, adolescents are more skilled than children at adjusting their learning strategies to different purposes (e.g. studying versus skimming) and better able to judge when a task is likely to be ‘easy’ versus ‘hard’ (Paulus et al., 2014; Weil et al., 2013). About 80% of twelvth-graders report that they monitor their memory and learning strategies. But only 50–60% report that they think in advance to develop an effective plan for a difficult task or think back after completing a task to evaluate what worked or did not work (Leutwyler, 2009). Teenagers who have received explicit training on metacognitive skills from their teachers show improvements in learning outcomes (Williams et al., 2002). This suggests that it may be important to teach not only content but also how to monitor one’s understanding of content acquisition (Farrington et al., 2012). Successful metacognition can be seen in adolescents who choose the strategy of elaboration over rote repetition when they realize that the former is more effective (Pressley, Levin, & Ghatala, 1984). Adolescents are also fairly accurate at monitoring whether or not they have allocated adequate study time to learn new material, and they allocate more study time to information judged to be difficult. This regulation of study time shows aware- ness of the task demands as well as their own strengths in light of the task’s difficulty (Lai, 2011). Interestingly, when pressed for time, college students devote more study time to easy items (Dunlosky & Ariel, 2011; Metcalfe, 2009). Apparently, they decide it is futile to work on the difficult material when they do not have adequate time, so they spend their time on what seems most likely to pay off. Hopefully, you can see the implication of this for your own studying: Set aside enough time to study all the material; otherwise, you may end up in a time crunch reviewing only the easy material. When time is available, students proceed from the material they judge to be easy to the more difficult material. For more tips on how to improve your memory, which may help you perform better on your next test, visit Engagement 8.. Before leaving this section, it is interesting to note that use of metacognition during cognitive tasks varies by gender and socioeconomic background (Leutwyler, 2009). Adolescent girls consistently report using more metacognitive strategies than adolescent boys. This may help explain why girls earn higher grades in school than boys, a finding that we will explore in greater detail in Chapter 10. And students from higher socio- economic backgrounds report more use of metacognitive strategies than their lower socioeconomic peers. Families with higher socioeconomic status may have more resources, such as books in the home, and may talk more explicitly about effective learning strategies. Growth in strategies, basic capacities, knowledge base, and metacognition probably also helps explain the growth in every- day problem-solving ability that occurs during the adolescent years. Teenagers perfect several information-processing skills and become able to apply them deliberately and spontaneously across a variety of tasks.

5

3

2

0

Number of items recalled

2nd-graders (age 7.5 yr)

5th-graders (age 10.25 yr)

8th-graders (age 13.5 yr)

2.80 2.

Relevant items Irrelevant items

4

■ Figure 8.11^ Adolescents are better able than children to concentrate on learning relevant material and to ignore irrelevant material.

Source: Miller, P. H. & Weiss, M. G. (1981). Children’s attention allocation, understanding of attention and performance on the incidental learning task, Child Development, 52 , 1183–1190. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.