Slide 1
Information Processing
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 2
Information Processing
• The Information Processing Approach
• Attention
• Memory
• Thinking
• Metacognition
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 3
The Information-Processing Approach
What Is the Information-Processing
Approach?
• Focuses on ways people process
information about their world
– Manipulate information
– Monitor it
– Create strategies to deal with it
– Effectiveness involves attention, memory,
thinking
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Slide 4
The Information-Processing Approach
Computers and Human Information
Processing
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Fig. 7.1
Slide 5
The Information-Processing Approach
Simplified Model of Information
Processing
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Fig. 7.2
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The Information-Processing Approach
Mechanisms of Change
Encoding
Mechanism by which
information gets into memory
Automaticity
Ability to process information
with little or no effort
Strategy
Construction
Discovering new procedure for
processing information
Metacognition
Cognition about cognition, or
“knowing about knowing”
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The Information-Processing Approach
Comparisons With Piaget’s Theory
Piaget
Information Processing
• Constructivist
• Cognitive capabilities
and limits at points in
development
• Development occurs
abruptly in distinct
stages
• Constructivist
• Cognitive capabilities
and limits at points in
development
• Individuals develop
gradually increasing
capacity for informationprocessing
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 8
The Information-Processing Approach
Speed of Processing Information
• Assessed using reaction time tasks
• Changes in speed processing
– Improves dramatically through childhood and
adolescence
– Changes due to myelination or experience?
– Decline begins in early adulthood; continues
in middle and late adulthood
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Slide 9
The Information-Processing Approach
The Relation of Age to Reaction
Time
Fig. 7.3
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Slide 10
Does Processing Speed Matter?
• Linked with competence in thinking
• For many everyday tasks, speed is
unimportant
• Efficient strategies can compensate for
slower reaction times and speed
• Slower processing may be responsible
for linking IQ and mortality
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Slide 11
What Is Attention?
• Focusing of mental resources
• Three ways attention can be allocated
– Sustained attention
– Selective attention
– Divided attention
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Slide 12
Attention
Types of Attention
Sustained
Attention
State of readiness to detect and
respond to small changes
occurring at random times in
environment; also called vigilance
Selective
Attention
Focusing on specific aspect of
experience that is relevant while
ignoring others
Divided
Attention
Concentrating on more than one
activity at a time
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Slide 13
Attention
Infancy
• Newborns can detect contours and fixate
• 4-month-olds have selective attention
• Processes closely linked to attention
– Habituation: decreased responsiveness to
stimulus after repeated presentations
– Dishabituation: recovery of a habituated
response after change in stimulation
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Slide 14
Attention
Childhood and Adolescence
• Most research on selective attention
• Cognitive control of attention shows changes
– Preschooler attends to external salient stimuli
– Child of 6 to 7 attentive to relevant information
– Ability to shift attention increases with age;
allows for more complex task involvement
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Slide 15
Attention
Adulthood
• Older adults may not be able to focus on
relevant information as effectively as
younger adults
• Less adept at selective attention
• Older adults (50-80) performed worse in
the divided attention condition than two
younger groups
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Slide 16
Memory
What Is Memory?
• Retention of information over time
• Allows humans to span time in
reflection over life’s activities
• Memory has imperfections
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Slide 17
Memory
Processes of Memory
Fig. 7.4
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Memory
Constructing Memories
• Schema theory
– Many reasons why memories are inaccurate
– People construct and reconstruct memories;
mold to fit information already existing in mind
– Schemas: mental frameworks that organize
concepts and information; affect encoding and
retrieval
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Slide 19
Memory
False Memories
• New information such as questions or
suggestions can alter memories
• Concerns about
– Implanting false memories in eyewitnesses
– Accuracy of eyewitness testimonies at trials
• Culture and gender linked to memory
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Slide 20
Memory
Infancy
• First Memories
– Rovee-Collier infant memory experiments
• Implicit memory: memory without conscious
recollection; skills and routine done
automatically
• Explicit memory: conscious memory of
facts and experiences; doesn’t appear until
after 6 months
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Slide 21
Memory
Infancy
• Infantile Amnesia
– Adults recall little or none of first three years
– Also called childhood amnesia
– Due to immaturity of prefrontal lobes in brain;
play important role in memory of events
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Slide 22
Memory
Childhood Memory
• Considerable improvement after infancy
• Short-term memory — memory span for up to
15 to 30 seconds without rehearsal
• Working memory — kind of mental workbench
for manipulating and assembling information
– Make decisions, solve problems
– Comprehend written and spoken language
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Slide 23
Memory
Childhood Memory
• Long-term memory — relatively permanent
and unlimited type of memory
• Children as eyewitnesses
– Age differences in susceptibility
– Individual differences in susceptibility
– Interviewing techniques can cause distortions;
determines if child’s testimony is accurate
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Slide 24
Memory
Working Memory Model
Fig. 7.8
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Slide 25
Memory
Long-Term Memory Strategies
• Activities to improve information processing
• Rehearsal — repetition
• Organizing — trying to group related
information
• Imagery — creating mental images
• Elaboration — engaging in more extensive
processing of information
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Slide 26
Memory
Imagery and Memory of Verbal
Information
Fig. 7.9
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Slide 27
Memory
Fuzzy Trace Theory
• Memory best understood by considering
two types of memory
– Verbatim memory trace: precise details
– Gist: central idea of information
• Knowledge
– Influences what people notice and how they
organize, represent, interpret information
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Slide 28
Memory
Working Memory and
Processing Speed
• Working memory performance peaked at
45 years of age, and declined at 57 years
of age
• Decline affected both new and old
information
• Working memory linked to
– Reading and math achievement
– Processing speed
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Slide 29
Memory
Explicit Memory
• Part of long-term memory; declarative memory
– Episodic memory—retention of information about
where and when of life’s happenings
– Semantic memory—one’s knowledge about world
• Fields of expertise
• General academic knowledge
• “Everyday knowledge”
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Slide 30
Memory
Aging and Explicit Memory
• Younger adults have better episodic memory
than older adults
• Older adults remember older events better
than more recent events; take longer to
retrieve semantic information
– Older the semantic memory, the less accurate it is
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Slide 31
Memory
Memory for Spanish as a Function of
Age Since Spanish Was Learned
Fig. 7.11
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Slide 32
Memory
Aging and Implicit Memory
• Memory of skills and routines, also called
procedural memory
• Less adversely affected by aging than
explicit memory
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Slide 33
Memory
Source Memory
• Ability to remember where something was
learned
• Contexts of
– Physical setting
– Emotional setting
– Identity of speaker
• Failures increase with age in adult years;
relevancy of information affects ability
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Slide 34
Memory
Prospective Memory
• Remembering to do something in the future
• Age-related declines depend on task
– Time-based tasks decline more
– Event-based tasks show less decline
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Slide 35
Memory
Influences on the Memory of
Older Adults
•
•
•
•
•
Physiological and psychological factors
Health
Beliefs, expectations, and feelings
Education, memory tasks, assessment
Memory training
– Method of loci
– Chunking
– Increasing attention
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Slide 36
Memory
Memory, Age, and Time of Day
Tested (A.M. or P.M.)
Fig. 7.12
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Slide 37
Metacognition
What Is Metacognition?
• Knowledge about when and where to use
particular strategies
• Metamemory—knowledge about memory
• Theory of mind—thoughts about how
mental processes work
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Slide 38
Metacognition
The Child’s Theory of Mind
• Ages 2 to 3 — begin to understand
– Perceptions
– Desires
– Emotions
• Age 5 — realization of false beliefs
• Middle and late childhood — mind seen
as active constructor of knowledge
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Slide 39
Developmental Changes In
False Belief Performance
Fig. 7.14
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Slide 40
Metacognition
Metamemory in Children
• Limited in children
• Preschoolers have
– Inflated opinion of memories
– Little appreciation for importance of memory cues
• Understanding of memory abilities and skill in
evaluating performance improves
considerably by 11 to 12 years of age
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Slide 41
Metacognition
Metacognition in Adolescence and
Adulthood
• Adolescents more likely than children to
manage and monitor thinking
• Middle age adults have accumulated a
great deal of metacognitive knowledge
• Older adults tend to overestimate memory
problems they experience on daily basis
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