Cognition
Chapter 13
Cognitive Development
Throughout the Lifespan
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
Introduction
lifespan approach to development
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Infants
early research underestimated infants' memory
abilities
Attention Patterns
Methodology - looking time
own-race bias
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Infants
Attention Patterns
Sangrigoli and de Schonen
•
•
•
photos of White and Asian women's faces shown to White
babies
present one photo (either White or Asian woman)
repeatedly until looking time decreases
present pair of photos—familiar/unfamiliar White women
or familiar/unfamiliar Asian women
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Infants
Attention Patterns
Sangrigoli and de Schonen
•
•
•
looking time for unfamiliar White woman longer than
familiar White woman
no difference for familiar/unfamiliar Asian women
Further questions?
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Infants
Recognizing Mother
visual recognition – post-natal
mother's voice - prenatal
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Infants
Conjugate Reinforcement
Carolyn Rovee-Collier and colleagues
nonverbal measures of memory
conjugate reinforcement technique—mobile, ribbon,
kicking
• baseline, spontaneous kicking
• acquisition phase
• number of kicks produced following delay
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
Conjugate Reinforcement
Technique
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
Memory in Infants
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Infants
Conjugate Reinforcement
Carolyn Rovee-Collier and colleagues
(continued)
older infants—press lever to run train
steady linear improvement during first 18 months of life
context effects
interference
spacing effect
levels of processing
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Working Memory
memory span 2y - 2, 9y - 6
three working memory components
relationship to school performance
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Long-Term Memory
Good by 20 months
2 year-olds can recall events a few months old
excellent recognition but poor recall
Recall improves after about 9y
Myers and Perlmutter (1978)
object recognition and recall
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Long-Term Memory
1. Autobiographical memory and early childhood
childhood amnesia
infant memory
deferred imitation
lack of well-organized sense of who they are
difficulty encoding and retrieving
reminders
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Long-Term Memory
2. Children's source monitoring
source monitoring
Foley, Ratner and colleagues
• performing vs. imagining how it would feel vs.
visualizing
• performing vs. watching another person perform a
task
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Memory Strategies
memory strategies
utilization deficiency
1. Rehearsal
not very effective, but can keep information in working
memory
4- and 5-year-olds do not spontaneously use rehearsal
can benefit from rehearsal if prompted
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Memory Strategies
2. Organizational strategies
categorizing and grouping
Moely and colleagues—children study pictures from four
categories; younger children rarely rearrange into
categories
3. Imagery
even 6-year-olds can be trained to use visual imagery
effectively
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Eyewitness Testimony
Leichtman and Ceci—"Sam Stone" study
•
•
•
•
control, stereotype, suggestion, and stereotype-plussuggestion groups
children interviewed about Sam Stone 10 weeks after visit
control group highly accurate
children can provide valid eyewitness testimony if they do
not receive misleading information, either before or after
the target event
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
Children's Eyewitness
Testimony
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Memory in Children
Children's Eyewitness Testimony
age, stereotyping, and misleading suggestions all
influence children's eyewitness testimony
social factors
reluctance to say "I don't know"
change statements under cross-examination
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
Individual Differences: Children’s
Intelligence and Eyewitness Testimony
Henry and Gudjonsson (2007)
children with mental retardation vs. typically
developing children
older and younger children
misleading questions
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
Individual Differences: Children’s
Intelligence and Eyewitness
Testimony
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
In Depth: Memory in Elderly People
stereotypes
large individual differences
complex developmental trends
Working Memory in Elderly People
nature of the task
Stine and coauthors (1989)—recall for spoken English
•
•
normal syntax/normal rate vs. random order/fast rate
significant age difference for complicated, non-real-life
task
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
In Depth: Memory in Elderly People
Long-Term Memory in Elderly People
perform well on semantic memory tasks and easy,
automatic tasks
age differences on more complex tasks
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
In Depth: Memory in Elderly People
Long-Term Memory in Elderly People
1. Prospective memory
simulated shopping task
complete fewer tasks and make more errors
perform more accurately when they have an environmental
cue
can even perform better than younger adults
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
In Depth: Memory in Elderly People
Long-Term Memory in Elderly People
2. Implicit memory
Light and colleagues (1995)
reading familiar letter sequence
older and younger adults performed similarly
3. Explicit recognition memory
long-term recognition memory declines slowly or not at all
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
In Depth: Memory in Elderly People
Long-Term Memory in Elderly People
4. Explicit recall memory
performance decreases slowly and age differences are
more substantial
Dunlosky and Hertzog (1998)—pairs of unrelated words
names, historical details, stories
large individual differences—verbal ability, education
Hasher and colleagues—time of day
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan
Development of Memory
In Depth: Memory in Elderly People
Explanations for Age Differences in Memory
changes in brain structures
1. Difficulty paying attention
2. Ineffective use of memory strategies
3. The contextual-cues hypothesis
4. Cognitive slowing
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
metacognition
metamemory
metacomprehension
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Children
Flavell
theory of mind—people's ideas on how their minds
work and on their beliefs about other people's
thoughts
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Children
Children's Understanding of How Memory
Works
small vs. large memory sets
related vs. random words
effectiveness of memory strategies
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Children
Children's Awareness That Effort Is
Necessary
young children do not appreciate the need for effort
keep studying information they already know
not accurate in judging what has been committed to
memory
don't realize that they need to make an effort to use a
memory strategy
naive ideas about the effort required for memorization
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Children
Children's Judgments About Their Memory
Performance
younger children unrealistically optimistic
Roebers and colleagues
memory for magic show
confidence ratings
overconfidence
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
Metamemory in Children
Figure 13.5 Average Level of Confidence for Questions Answered Correctly and Questions
Answered Incorrectly. (1 = Very Unsure; 5=Very Sure)
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Children
Children's Metamemory: The Relationship
Between Metamemory and Memory
Performance—Summary
1. Their metamemory is faulty; they do not realize that they
need to make an effort to memorize, and they also do not
realize how little they can remember.
2. They do not spontaneously use helpful memory strategies.
3. Relative to older children, their memory performance is
poor.
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Children
Children's Metamemory: The Relationship
Between Metamemory and Memory
Performance—Summary
Is there a causal link?
Metamemory
Strategy use
Memory performance
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Children
Children's Metamemory: The Relationship
Between Metamemory and Memory
Performance—Summary
•
•
•
some evidence that metamemory is related to
strategy use
extensive evidence that strategy use is related to
memory performance
moderate correlation between metamemory and
memory performance
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Elderly People
1. Beliefs about memory
younger and older adults share similar beliefs
2. Memory monitoring
equally skilled on some tasks—predicting items
they will recall, selecting most difficult items for further
study, judging accuracy on general-knowledge
questions, deciding whether an item is old or new
overconfident on some tasks—overall performance
on a test of memory for specific details about a recent
event
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Lifespan Development
of Metamemory
Metamemory in Elderly People
3. Awareness of memory problems
problems with everyday memory
some elderly people don't try to develop helpful
memory strategies because they think that
memory decline is inevitable
memory self-efficacy—the belief in one's own
potential to perform well on memory tasks
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
rate of acquisition
vocabulary size
creative language use
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
Speech Perception in Infancy
phonemes
speech-sound categories across speakers
Eimas and coauthors
habituation studies, sucking response
dishabituation indicates perceiving difference between
sounds
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
Speech Perception in Infancy
Werker and Tees—distinguishing sounds in other
languages
Kuhl—relearning lost distinctions
language rhythms
bilingual homes and language discrimination
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
Language Comprehension in Infancy
1. Recognizing important words
name, mommy, daddy
2. Discriminating between grammatical words and
meaning words
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
Language Comprehension in Infancy
3. Understanding the correspondence between
sound and sight
emotional tone of spoken language
Walker-Andrews
recordings of either a happy voice or an angry voice
side-by-side films of happy speaker and angry speaker
infants watched the face that matched the emotion of the
voice
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
Language Comprehension in Infancy
4. Appreciating semantic concepts
Mandler and colleagues—concepts about objects
distinguishing between visually similar objects
animate/inanimate objects
"animal" vs. "vehicle" categories
concepts become more refined
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
Language Production in Infancy
cooing
babbling
intentional communication
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Infants
Adults' Language to Infants
child-directed speech
motherese
fathers
adults typically use a different language style when
speaking to infants and young children than when
speaking to older people
differences across language communities
mothers who are depressed
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Children
Words
early words and concepts
word production
comprehension of words
interrelationship of memory and language
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Children
Words
fast mapping—using context to make a reasonable
guess about a word's meaning
Heibeck and Markman (1987)
series of paired objects
familiar and unfamiliar terms
overextension
underextension
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Children
Morphology
morphemes
morphology
pay greater attention to phrases with appropriate morphology
create their own regular forms
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Children
Morphology
overregularization—the tendency to add the most
customary morphemes to create new forms of
irregular words
parallel distributed processing explanation—language
system keeps tally of morpheme patterns; patterns of
excitation within neural networks account for
overregularization
rule-and-memory theory (Marcus)—children learn a general
rule for past-tense verbs and also store in memory the past
tenses for many irregular verbs
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Children
Syntax
combining words into sentences
two-word utterances
morphology and syntax
active process
using syntax cues
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Children
Pragmatics
learning the social rules of language
what to say, to whom, language styles, coordinating
conversations
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13
The Development of
Language
Language in Children
Pragmatics
adapting language to the listener
Shatz and Gelman (1973)
4-year-olds speaking to 2-year-olds, 4-year-olds and
adults
2-year olds speaking to infants
taking turns in conversation
gestures of interest; listener responses
Cognition 7e, Margaret Matlin
Chapter 13