Information, Memory, and Thinking

Information, Memory, and Thinking

The information •processing approach emphasizes that children manipulate infor­mation, monitor it, and strategize about it. Central to this approach arc the processes of memory and thinking. According to the information-processing approach, chil­dren develop a gradually increasing capacity for processing information, which allows them to acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills (Halford, 2008).

Behaviorism and its associative model of learning was a dominant force in psy­chology until the 1950s and 1960s, when many psychologists began to acknowledge that they could not explain children's learning without referring to mental processes such as memory and thinking The term cognitive psychology became a label for approaches that sought to explain behavior by examining mental processes. Although a number of factors stimulated the growth of cognitive psychology, none was more important than the development of computers. The first modern computer, developed by John von Neumann in the late 1940s, showed that inanimate machines could perform logical operations. This suggested that some mental operations might be carried out by computers, possibly telling us something about the way human cogni­tion works. Cognitive psychologists often draw analogies to computers to help explain the relation between cognition and the brain (Robinson-Riegler 8r Robinson-Riegler, 2008). The physical brain is compared with the computers hardware, cognition with its software. Although computers and software aren't perfect analogies for brains and cognitive activities, nonetheless, the comparison contributed to our thinking about the child's mind as an active Information-processing system.

Cognitive Resources: Capacity and Speed of Processing Information

As children grow and mature, and as they experience the world, their information-processing abilities increase. These changes are likely influenced by increases in both capacity and speed of processing (Frye, 2004). These two characteristics are often referred to as cognitive resources, which are proposed to have an important influence on memory and problem solving.

Both biology and experience contribute to growth in cognitive resources. Think about how much faster you can process information in your native language than in a second language. The changes in the brain we described in Chapter 2 provide a biological foundation for increased cognitive resources. As children grow and mature, important biological developments occur both in brain structures, such as changes in the frontal lobes, and at the level of neurons, such as the blooming and pruning of connections between neurons that produces fewer but stronger connections (Kuhn. 2008; Nelson. 2009). Also, as we discussed in Chapter 2. myelinatiom (the process that covers the axon with a myelin sheath) increases the speed of electrical impulses in the brain  Myelination continues through childhood and adolescence (Spear. 2007).

Mod information-processing psychologists argue that an increase in capacity also improves processing of information (Mayer, 2008). For example, as children's in formation-processing capacity increases, they likely can hold in mind several dimensions of a topic or problem simultaneously, whereas younger children are more prone to focus on only one dimension. Adolescents can discuss how the varied experiences of the Founding Fathers influenced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Elementary-age children are more likely to focus on simple facts about the founders' lives.

What is the role of processing speed? How fast children process information often influences what they can do with that information. If an adolescent is trying to add up mentally the cost of items he is buying at the grocery store, he needs to be able to compute the sum before he has forgotten the price of the individual items. Children's speed in processing information is linked with their competence in think­ing (Bjorklund. 2005). For example, how fast children an articulate a series of words affects how many words they can store and remember. Generally, fast processing is linked with good performance on cognitive tasks. However, some compensation for slower processing speed can be achieved through effective strategies.

Researchers have devised a number of ways for assessing processing speed. For example, it can be assessed through a reaction-lime task in which individuals are asked to push a button as soon as they sec a stimulus such as a light. Or individuals might be asked to match letters or numbers with symbols on a computer screen.

There is abundant evidence that the speed with which such tasks arc completed improves dramatically across the childhood years (Kail, 2007; Luna & others, 2004; Mabbolt & others. 2006). Processing speed continues lo improve in early adoles­cence. For example, in one study, 10-ycar-olds were approximately 1.8 times slower at processing information than young adults on such (asks as reaction time, letter matching, mental rotation, and abstract matching (Hale. 1990). Twelve-year-olds were approximately 1.5 times slower than young adults, but 15-year-olds proc­essed information on the tasks as fast as the young adults. Also, a recent study  8- to 13 year-old children revealed that processing speed increased with age, and further that the developmental change in processing speed increased in working memory. There is controversy about whether the increase In processing speed is due to experience or biological maturation. Experience dearly plays an important role. Think how much faster you could process the answer to a simple arithmetic problem as an adolescent than as a child. Also think about how much faster you can process Information in your native language than in a second language. The role of biological maturation likely involves myelinalion.

Mechanisms of Change

According to Robert Stegler 11998), three mechanisms work together to create changes in children's cognitive skills: encoding, automaticity, and strategy construction.

Encoding is the process by which information gets stored in memory. Changes in children's cognitive skills depend on increased skill at encoding relevant infor­mation and ignoring irrelevant information. For example, lo a 4-year-old, an s in cursive writing is a shape very different from an s (hat is printed. But a 10-year-old has learned to encode the relevant fact that both arc the letter s and to ignore the irrelevant differences in their shape.

Automaticity refers to the ability lo process information with little or no effort. Practice allows children to encode increasing amounts of information automatically. For example, once children have learned lo read well, they do not think about each letter in a word as a letter; instead, they encode whole words. Once a task is auto­matic, ii docs not require conscious effort. As a result, as information processing becomes more automatic, we can complete tasks more quickly and handle more than one task at a lime (Mayer, 2008; Schraw. 2006). Imagine how long it would take you to read this page if you did not encode words automatically but instead focused your attention on each letter in each word.

Strategy construction is the creation of new procedures for processing informa­tion. For example, children's reading benefits when they develop the strategy of slop­ping periodically to take stock of what they have read so far. Developing an effective repertoire of strategies and selecting the best one to use on a learning task is a critical aspect of becoming an effective learner (Pressley, 2007; Pressley 8t Harris, 2006).

In addition to these mechanisms of change, children's information processing is characterized by self -modification  That is, children learn to use what they have learned in previous circumstances to adapt their responses lo a new situation. For example, a child who is familiar with dogs and cats goes to the zoo and sees lions and tigers for the first time. She then modifies her con­cept of "animal" to include her new knowledge. Part of this self-modification draws on metacognition, which means "knowing about knowing". One example of metacognition is what children know about the best ways to remember what they have read. Do they know that they will remember what (hey have read better if they can relate it to their own lives in some way? Thus, in Siegler's application of information processing to development, children play an active role in their cognitive development when they develop metacognitive strategies.

MEMORY

MEMORY

Memory is the retention of information over lime. [Educational psychologists study how information is initially placed or encoded into memory, how it is retained or stored after being encoded, and how it is found or retrieved for a certain purpose later. Today, educational psychologists emphasize that it is important not to view memory in terms of how chil­dren add something to it but, rather, to underscore how children actively construct their memory (Schacter, 2001).

The main body of our discussion of memory will focus on encoding, storage, and re­trieval. Encoding is the process by which information gels into mem­ory. Storage is the retention of information over time. Retrieval means taking informa­tion out of storage. Let's now explore each of these three important memory activities in greater detail.

Encoding

In everyday language, encoding has much in common with attention and learning. When a student is listening to a teacher, watching a movie, listening to music, or talking with a friend, he or she is encoding information into memory. Six concepts related to encoding are attention, rehearsal, deep processing, elaboration, constructing images, and organization.

Attention: concentrating and focusing mental resources.

Rehearsal: The concious repetition of information over time to increase the length of time information stays in memory.

Deep Processing Following the discovery that rehearsal is not an efficient way to en­code information for long-term memory.  Fergus Craik and Robert Lockharl (1972) proposed that we can process information at a variety of levels. Their theory, levels of processing theory, states that the processing of memory occurs on a continuum from shallow to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory. The sensory, or physical, features of stimuli are analyzed first at a shallow level. This might involve detect­ing the lines, angles, and contours of a printed word's letters or a spoken word's frequency, duration, and loudness. At an intermediate level of processing, the stimulus is recognized and given a label. Then, at the deepest level, infor­mation is processed semantically, in terms of its meaning. Researchers have found that individuals remember infor­mation better when they process it at a deeper level (Otten, Henson, & Kugg, 2001).

Elaboration: The extensiveness of information processing involves in encoding.

Constructing images: Allan Paivio believes that memories are stored in one of two ways: as a verbal code or as an image code. Paivio says that the more detailed and distinctive and image code, the better you memory of the information will be.

Organization: The more you present information in an organized way, the easier your students will remember it. This is especially true if you organize information hierarchically or outline it Also, if you simply encourage students to organize information, they often will re­member it belter than if you give them no instructions about organizing (Mandler, 1980). Chunking is a beneficial organizational memory strategy that involves grouping, or "packing," information into "higher-order" units that can be remembered as single units. Chunking works by making large amounts of information more manageable and more meaningful.

Storage

After children encode information, ihey need to retain, or store, the information. Among the most prominent aspects of memory storage are the three main stores, which corre­spond to three different time frames: sensory memory, working (or short-term) mem­ory, and long-term memory.

Memory's Time Frames Children remember some information for less than a sec­ond, some for about half a minute, and other information for minutes, hours, years, even a lifetime. The three types of memory that vary according to their time frames are sensory memory (which lasts a fraction of a second to several seconds!; short-term memory (also called working memory; lasts about 30 seconds), and long-term memory (which lasts up to a lifetime).

Sensory Memory Sensory memory holds information from the world in its original sensory form for only an instant, not much longer than the brief time a student is ex­posed to the visual, auditory, and other sensations.

Students haw a sensory memory for sounds for up to several seconds, sort of like a brief echo. However, their sensory memory for visual images lasts only for about one-fourth of a second. Because sensory information lasts for only a fleeting moment, an im­portant (ask for the student is to attend to the sensory information that is important for learning.

Short-Term Memory Short-term memory is a limited-capacity memory system in which information is retained for as long as 30 seconds, unless the information is re­hearsed or otherwise processed further, in which case it can be retained longer. Com­pared with sensory memory, short-term memory is limited in capacity but relatively longer in duration. Its limited capacity intrigued George Miller (1956), who described this in a paper with a catchy title: "The Magical Number Seven. Plus or Minus Two." Miller pointed out that on many tasks, students are limited in how much information they can keep track of without external aids. Usually the limit is in the range of 7 ± 2 items.

MEMORY

MEMORY
Memory is far more than simply bringing to mind information encountered at some previous time. Whenever the experience of some past event influences someone at a later time, the influence of the previous experience is a reflection of memory for that past event. It is easy to see the role of memory in the case of a student who attends a lecture and later brings to mind what was taught. It may be less obvious that memory still plays a role even when the person does not ‘remember’ the lecture or the information, but merely uses information from the lecture, possibly without thinking about the lecture itself or the specific information at all.

There are even more subtle and less obvious effects of memory. If the same student later develops an interest (or a marked disinterest) in the topic of the lecture, that interest may reflect memory for the earlier lecture, even though the student might not be able to recall having ever attended a lecture on that topic. Memory plays a role to the degree that the student’s attitudes about the topic were influenced by the lecture. In the same vein, memory plays a role whether or not we intended to learn during the ‘past event’. In reality, comparatively little of our time is spent trying to ‘record’ events for later remembering; most of the time we are simply getting on with life. But past events only have to influence our thoughts, feelings or behaviour to provide evidence of our memory for them.

Just as memory is not dependent upon an intention to record events, it also plays a role regardless of our intention to recall or draw upon those past events. Many of the influences of past events are unintentional; indeed, they may even be quite counter to our intentions (e.g. Jacoby, Woloshyn & Kelley, 1989).

Memory

Memory
It is a retention of: ·learned associations ·stored information ·skills

Basic Memory Processes
1.encoding: a)visual codes b)acoustic codes c)semantic codes d)the dual-coding theory suggests that information is remembered better when it is represented in both a visual and semantic code
2.storage: a) sense organ memory b) short term memory c) long term memory:
i)episodic (memories of specific events)
ii)procedural (the memory of how to do things)
iii)semantic (generalized knowledge about the world)
3.retrieval: a)recall b)recognition

Explicit and Implicit memory:
·explicit memory are the processes through which people try to remember something, such as details of ones last holiday - you have subjective temporal awareness of the information ·relies on the medial temporal lobes ·implicit memory is the unintentional recollection and influence of prior experiences. It operates automatically and without conscious effort – you have no awareness of the source ·relies on cerebellum, amygdala ·learning usually requires repetition ·learnt relatively slowly

The Three Levels of Memory
1. Sensory memory: ·allows comparison of stimulus with LTM to assign significance. -echoic (auditory) or iconic (visual) -fade/ loss time about 0.5 secs

2. Short-term (primary/ working) memory:
·item entering STM will be lost in about 18 seconds (Brown-Peterson procedure) unless rehearsal/ repetition which is typically verbal ·conscious of store contents ·capacity of about 7 ± 2 items ·can increase by chunking of information to allow one entry to cover several items ·chunking by imposing meaning or rule ·may be several subsystems: -recent auditory input -recent visual input -recent speech/ motor output etc. ·verbal in left hemisphere ·visual in right hemisphere ·information coded visually fades more quickly ·transfer of selected STM contents to LTM, remainder lost ·retrieval is effortless and error free
·affected by: ·primacy ·latency
·serial position – items in the middle of a list are more likely to be lost

3. Long-term (secondary memory)
·not conscious of store ·may be limitations on retrieval i.e. ‘available’ but not ‘accessible’ ·requires consolidation: once information is stored in LTM, it must be left undisturbed for a few minutes ·may be speeding by caffeine ·major disruption (ECT/ head injury) induces retrograde amnesia ·coding is mainly visual, semantic, acoustic ·information stored systematically irrespective of presentation:
1.Declarative memory (explicit): a)lexical memory: own stored vocabulary b)episodic memory: events c)semantic memory: facts
2.Procedural memory (implicit): a)motor skills b)perceptual skills c)intuitive cognitive skills
3.Perceptual Representation System (PRS): a)perceptual identification of objects and perceptual priming i.e. the enhancement of such identification through experience e.g. recognizing a style of painting

Retrieval
·recall appears to be organized according to applied strategies such as semantic clustering ·recognition alone indicates storage but incomplete retrieval i.e. bypass retrieval ·in learning word lists, mnemonic devices include forming new associations to words ·several associations to each word appear to enhance learning/ retrieval ·when a person’s internal state can aid or impede retrieval, memory is called state-dependent ·when memory can be helped or hindered by similarities in environmental context, it is termed context-dependent

Models of memory
Dual memory theory
·Atkinson and Shifferin (1971)
·information enters STM and is maintained by rehearsal, or lost by displacement
·information is transferred through the rehearsal buffer to LTM

Levels-of-Processing theory - Craik and Lockhart (1972)
·an item entering memory system is analyzed in the three stages:
1.perceptual level
2.phonetic level
3.semantic level
·each level of processing leaves a memory trace, and the deeper the level of processing the stronger the trace and the more durable the memory
·it can be aided by:
·Maintenance rehearsal – simply repeating an item over and over
·Elaborative rehearsal – involves thinking about how new material relates to information already stored in memory
·memory is enhanced more by elaborative rather than maintenance rehearsal

Transfer-Appropriate Processing
·suggests that the critical determinant of memory is how the encoding process matches up with what is ultimately retrieved. e.g. students do better at MCQ exams if they studied for an MCQ exam
Parallel Distributed Processing
·suggests that new experiences change people’s overall knowledge base, and every unit of knowledge is ultimately connected with every other unit
·the connections become stronger as they are experienced together more frequently

Information Processing
·suggested that in order for information to become firmly embedded in memory, it must pass through three stages of mental processing:
1.sensory memory 2.short-term memory 3.long-term memory

Long-term potentiation (LTP)
·the long-lasting increase in the efficiency of a single set of synapses
·postulated that it could be the substrate for associative learning
·depends on the activation of NMDA receptors in the hippocampus

Constructive memory
·is often used for complex material
·memory is not a tape recorder - we actively process information to understand it
·inferences are drawn and added to the story
·social stereotypes are used
·we tend to fit information to our existing schemata
·information which does not fit is either discarded or distorted and constructed to fit

Forgetting
·rapid loss of most acquired material initially
·two hypotheses:
1.interference theory:
·forgetting is determined by activity between learning and recall ·forgetting is item dependent - a piece of information may actually displace other information, or a piece of information makes storing or recalling other information more difficult ·new information learned in interim period impairs recall ·in the case of short-term memory, rehearsal prevents displacement by continually re-entering the same information into short-term memory
·retroactive interference: ·the learning of new material can interfere with the recall of older information
·proactive interference: ·old learning likely to impair (rather than facilitate) subsequent learning
·primacy effect: first words learned are retained better, as they have already entered LTM
·latency effect: last words learned are remembered better if tested immediately after presentation, since they are still retained in STM

2.decay theory: ·forgetting is time dependent ·BZDs taken after learning a word list improve its subsequent recall, perhaps by partly suppressing registration of new information ·repression as motivated forgetting is intuitively plausible but difficult to demonstrate
The neurophysiology of memory
Short term memory ·depends on electrical activity of neurons and functional alteration in synapses ·continuing activity hypothesis ·dynamic engram: a closed network of neurons corresponding to a single memory trace

Long term memory ·interneural hypothesis: ·results from structural changes of the neural circuit: ·increased neuroglial cells ·more branching of dendrites ·changes in synapses ·structural changes lead to formation of a structural engram ·intraneural hypothesis: ·postulates that invidividual memories are embodied in individual coded macromolecules (peptides, RNA)

·limbic system is essential for LTM: ·anterior cingulate gyrus ·hippocampus ·septal nuclei ·hypothalamus ·non-specific thalamic nuclei ·anterior thalamic nucleus ·amygdaloid nucleus ·mammillary bodies ·hippocampus: ·bilateral damage results in anterograde amnesia ·damage to posterior hypothalamus, mammillary bodies and terminal portions of fornices give rise to Korsakoff type of memory deficit ·neocortex: ·learning and memory functions are diffuse in many areas of cortex ·memory impairment depends on amount of tissue destroyed rather than its site

Neurochemistry of memory
Cholinergic system
·medial septum and diagonal band of broca project to the hippocampus ·nucleus basalis of Meynert projects to the amygdala and widely to the neocortex ·basal forebrain lesion can cause amnesia; 3 clinical syndromes:
1.Alzheimer’s disease
2.Korsakoff’s disease
3.amnesia with anterior communicating artery aneurysm
·the anticholinergic drug HYOSCINE causes amnesia
·cholinergic agonists such as ARECHOLINE, PYSOSTIGMINE, CHOLINE, and LECITHIN have been reported to improve memory

Adrenergic system
·decrease in MPHG in CSF of Korsakoff’s syndrome (McEntee and Mair, 1978) ·neuronal loss in locus coeruleus in Alzheimer’s disease ·enhancement of LTM when NA was applied to hippocampus

Serotinergic system
·ACh release is under inhibitory 5-HT tone ·5-HT inhibition or destruction of 5-HT cells increases ACh release in cortex, hippocampus and striatum ·m-chlorophenylpiperazine (mCPP), a 5-HT1C agonist impairs cognition ·ONDANSETRON, a selective 5-HT3 receptor antagonist improves cognition in animals

Opioid peptides
·high concentration in the limbic system ·enkephalins and endorphins interfere with memory formation when the experience is associated with a painful stimulus - they decrease the emotional component of the painful experience associated with learning
Ribonucleic acid (RNA)
·implicated in memory transfer ·interference with RNA synthesis impedes learning; facilitation of synthesis enhances learning
Amnesic syndrome (anterograde amnesia)
·due to two possibilities:
1.inability to transfer from STM to LTM; able to retrieve from LTM but no new memories; can show intact STM in digit span
2.retrieval deficit rather than encoding problem

Reconstructive memory
·demonstration that eye-witness accounts distorted by biased questioning ·serial reproductions of narrative show shortening and more coherent with elision of detail ·episodic memory shows effort after meaning.