Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood: Chapter 11

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Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood
Chapter 11
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Piagets Concrete Operational Stage

• Developmental change involves progression from a
  state of equilibrium to a state of disequilibrium
  
• Process of change moves organism from state of
  cognitive disequilibrium to a state of cognitive
  equilibrium
• Assimilationnew information fits within existing
  structures
• Accommodationnew structures are created or
  existing structures are changed to take in new
  information

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Piagets Concrete Operational Stage

• Concrete Operational Thought
• Children can reflect on their own thoughts
• Children attend to dynamic transformations
  (processes involved in change)
• Childrens mental capabilities change
• Decenterconsider multiple attributes or
  dimensions simultaneously
• Reversibilitymentally reverse events or actions
• Use logic to make transitive inferences

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Piagets Concrete Operational Stage

• Limits to Piagets concrete operational child
• Reflective thinking, decentering, and
  reversibility are limited to those events
  experienced by the child
• May underestimate the childs competency with
  enriched environment

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Information Processing Theory (IPT)

• IPT focuses on
• encoding,
• transformation,
• storage, and
• retrieval of information
• Working Memory
• Information currently in active and conscious
  processing
• Limited duration without rehearsal
• Limited capacity without mnemonic devices

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IPT Working Memory

• Evidence points to unique processing components
• Verbal
• Auditory
• Executive Control
• Monitoring
• Controlling

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IPT Depth of Processing Theory

• Shallowattend to surface features, rote
  rehearsal
• E.g. memorizing names and dates memorizing
  definitions
• Deepattend to meaningful features, strategic
  rehearsal
• E.g. summarizing in your own words constructing
  a concept map
• Overall, deep processing leads to more flexible
  and accessible memories

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IPT Long Term Memory

• Relatively permanent duration
• Relatively (and largely unknown) large capacity
• Organization is based on strategies used during
  encoding or processing in Working Memory

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Network Models of Long Term Storage

• Conceptual nodes
• Represent concepts, facts, or other entities
• Logical arcs
• Represent relationships among conceptual nodes
• Activation of nodes and arcs
• Based on environmental stimulation
• Stream of consciousness
• More frequent activation leads to easier access
  and retrieval
• More arcs between adjacent nodes and the target
  node lead to increased cognitive flexibility

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Categories of Knowledge in Long-term Memory

• Tulving
• Semantic memoryknowing facts, concepts
• Episodic memoryknowing about events or
  activities (maybe a more dominant type of memory
  in children
• Shank Abelson
• Knowledge of a relatively fixed routine
• Related to episodic memory
• Form default patterns of actions (fast food
  restaurant script)

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Characteristics of Memory

• ConstructiveReconstructive Processing
• Constructive Processing Distortion occurs at
  encoding
• Reconstructive Processing Distortion occurs at
  retrieval
• Autobiographical Memory
• Memories for ones own experiences
• Influenced not only by events themselves, but
  also how others describe the events to us
• Suggestibility (e.g. false memoriesreconstructi
  ve and autobiographical)

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Major Developmental Changes across Middle
Childhood

• Metacognitive skills
• Cognitive monitoring
• Cognitive control
• Cognitive flexibility
• Strategy acquisition, development, and use

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Major Developmental Changes across Middle
Childhood

• Knowledge base
• Greater number of conceptual nodes
• More efficient organization
• More flexible organization
• More complex networks

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Cognitive Development in Context (Mathematics)

• Early on, strategies reflect controlled
  processing (resource intensive)
• With practice and more efficient memory,
  strategies reflect more automatic processes (less
  resource intensive
• Automatic strategies require monitoring that is
  based on metacognitive awareness

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Cognitive Development in Context (Mathematics)

• Mathematics Problems embedded in language and
  richer contexts
• Strategies include
• Stating the problem
• Solving the computational steps
• Evaluating the outcome
• Restating the results in terms of the original
  problem statement
• Strategies are likely to be controlled not
  automatic

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Cognitive Development in Context (Literacy)

• Overall, progression is from controlled
  processing to automatic at several levels
• Phonemic awareness
• Sight words
• Context cues
• Schema-driven knowledge (top-down)

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Cognitive Development in Context (Literacy)

• Children who
• are told stories,
• have someone read to them regularly,
• have a print rich environment in their lives, and
  
• have opportunity to explore language
• Singing, Scribbling, Drawing, Invented spelling
• Tend to have more optimistic outcome in literacy
  in school
• Table 11.3 (pg 393)developmental progression of
  reading

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Cognitive Development in Context (Literacy)

• Developmental process
• Scribbling
• forming pseudo-words with letters,
• invented spelling,
• simple stories and
• narratives based on own experience,

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Cognitive Development in Context (Literacy)

• Narrative Schema
• Tends to be universal
• Predicable order of elements
• Setting
• Initiating event
• Reaction
• Action
• Consequence
• Moral

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Cognitive Development in Context (Literacy)

• Narrative
• Structure appears early on
• Nursery tales, childrens stories tend to follow
  the structure universally
• Children are sensitive to violations of the
  structure

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Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

• Tends to be a period across cultures of
  preparation for more mature roles and
  responsibilities
• Schooling, in some form, occurs in all cultures
• Fits within Eriksons stage of Industry vs.
  Inferiority