Week 4

1. Week 4 Strategy use in Children: Formerly “Changes in the Software”

2. Last Week… • Information processing approach to cognitive development • Changes may occur in the hardware: • Capacity • Speed • Efficiency

3. Changes in Software • Knowledge base • E.g. Chess, karate, golf… • Strategies: • Goal-directed, deliberately implemented mental operations used to facilitate task performance

5. Features of strategy development • Not linear • Used in many / most areas of cognitive functioning • Some are self-learned; others taught more formally • Continue to develop beyond first use • Great variability in what children use • Children integrate strategies that they have

6. Training Studies • Began in 1960’s • 3 step model of strategy acquisition • No spontaneous use of strategy • Will not produce, but will use when shown • Produce and use on own

7. Stage 1 characterized by mediational deficiency • Strategy shown to them fails to elicit better performance • E.g. Fail to use rehearsal to simplify memory task

8. Stage 2 characterized by production deficiency • Can use strategies, but don’t think them up on own • Will rehearse if you tell them to • Part-way between stage 1 and 2…moving word example

9. Moving Word Task BUS

10. Moving Word Task BUS Children under 5 will say the card now says frog!!

11. Our modification of the Moving Word task • 4-year-olds • 3 conditions: pre-made, on-site prep, prep on own • No clear strategy was evident • Were unable to give correct answer under any of these conditions • They may not have been using a strategy at all, or they misused the one they did pick!

12. Point: • Children with production deficiency can learn a strategy but often appear to not have one to begin with • Are they completely a-strategic or strategy-free? • No – but their strategy may not be obvious

13. What do production deficient children do?? • Primitive strategies that may lead them astray • May explain some phenomena (e.g. dccs, concentration)

14. Argument against? • Huffman & Bray • Children may not be deficient: we may be asking wrong questions • See four things as important • Modality • Available tools? • Task difficulty? • Individual differences in span

15. Huffman & Bray • Tested 7- and 11-year-olds • Lots of memory span measures • Primary measure had 4 conditions: • Auditory, no objects • Auditory, objects • Visual, no objects • Visual, objects

17. Huffman & Bray • No age differences in strategy use • Little relationship between span and strategy • Qualitative differences in kind of strategy use • Younger children used more external strategies without orientation • They did not differentiate between load sizes • Objects helped all • All did badly in auditory

18. Point… • Young children (< 7) are not always unable to use strategies, it just depends on how you ask them • Also, what you give them to help themselves

19. Stage 3: • Older children at this stage thought to be perfect strategy users, but not so • Often exhibit a utilization deficiency, where they seem to use a strategy, but doesn’t really help • Bjorklund et al., 1994

20. Bjorklund et al., 1994

21. Memory Strategies or Mnemonics • Mnemonics Neatly Eliminate Man’s Only Nemesis: Insufficient Cerebral Storage • Dr. Mrs. Vandertrampp • Bedmas • I before e except after c, and when you say A, as in neighbour and weigh • You should get twice as much deSSert • FACE • Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

22. Memory Strategies • Only useful if they have meaning • Referring mainly to context-independent memory • We study different kinds of strategies • Rehearsal • Organization • Elaboration • Retrieval

23. Rehearsal • Overt strategies: lip movement • Digit span • Studies of recall • Children will not use adequate rehearsal strategy until the age of around 12: • Passive vs. active rehearsal sets

24. Organization • Remember this list: Knife, shirt, car, fork, boat, pants, sock, truck, spoon, plate

25. Organization • Can be taught to cluster, but only if all things to recall are visually displayed (Ornstein et al.) • Why? IP says: Takes up too much space

26. Organization • Very difficult strategy not typically evident until early teens • Hasselhorn (1992) showed children as old as 8 would not group pictures into categories • Extensive and explicit training may help, but have to be told to use strategy. • Children show a utilization deficiency until about 12 • Related knowledge of objects and vocabulary

27. Elaboration • Can involve abstract imagery, which according to Piaget was not in place until 14, or this developmental phase…? • If learning a language, you might associate a word with a picture…

28. Duck in Spanish is Poto: You may try to remember a duck in a pot

29. Spanish word for horse is : Caballo, or cab-eye-o, so you may try to remember a horse hitting an eye (bull’s eye)

30. Elaboration • Can involve abstract imagery, which according to Piaget was not in place until 14, or this developmental phase…? • If learning a language, you might associate a word with a picture… • Method of loci

31. Retrieval Processes • Getting information out once it goes in • General questions = general answers • Focus on encoding, get them to pay attention to thing they are trying to remember, provide many cues (levels-of-processing) • By grade 6, children will benefit less from imposed structure, because they are using their own

32. Knowledge and strategy use • 3 effects that knowledge has: • Effects of item-type • Better memory for familiar items • Non-strategic organization • Better memory if effortless org. is possible • Facilitating strategies • Good knowledge base about a set of items allows use of strategy

33. Metacomponents • Consciousness of how one’s own thought processes work • Can be explicit or implicit

34. Sternberg’s theory of intelligence Intelligence Knowledge acquisition components Metacomponents Performance components Strategy construction Strategy Selection Strategy Coordination

35. Metacomponents • Meta-attention • Children do not always know how to pick and choose what they attend to • Evident in math problems…(Majumder, 2003)

36. James has 3 muffins. He has 2 muffins fewer than Ben. Mark has 14 muffins, which is 8 more than Hal. How many muffins does Ben have? • Children have difficulty with these • Performance correlated with measures of inhibition (Simon task)

37. Metamemory • Awareness of one’s own memory abilities • Adults underestimate; children overestimate • Some kids (<7 years) fail to recognize usefulness: do not generalize • E.g. Fabricius & Hagen, 1984

38. Metamemory trajectory 1st grade: will not gain from learning strategy 3rd grade: if they know it helps , they will use it 6th grade: do not require help

39. Metamemory in ASD • Children with ASD thought to be passive, no active participation in IP • Strategy use only evident in simplest tasks (rote recall) • Bebko & Ricciuti looked at strategy use in children with ASD

40. Bebko & Ricciuti, 2000 • Task: recall picture cards in either a specific order or in open recall • First classified them as rehearsers or non-rehearsers, then gave them tasks

41. B & R, 2000 • Results • High functioning children with ASD showed strategy use, especially in open task • Moderate ASD group had less rehearsers, but again more in the open task • Also: higher verbal abilities = more strategy use • However: strategy use still lower than expected given their VMA

42. Metamemory in ASD • Underscores importance of the task demands again • Serial recall demands may have over-loaded them

43. Accounting for strategy development… • Why do they sometimes use them and sometimes not? • Why do they sometimes benefit and sometimes not? • Why do they revert from less to more sophisticated and more to less sophisticated?

44. Siegler’s Adaptive Strategy Choice Model • Children use strategies at all points in time during development (all kinds available) • The difference is in the choice of strategy • Adding example: sum vs min vs fact retrieval • When one fails, child can fall back on older strategy • Development occurs in a series of overlapping waves

45. Strat. 3 Strat. 1 Strat. 4 Use Strat. 2 Age

46. Cost of strategy use • Will it use up space? • Do they have the space?

47. Case’s theory of processing efficiency Younger Child Older Child Operating Space Storage Space Operating Space Storage Space

48. Siegler’s ASCM • Feature of variability • Feature of integration • Siegler gives child a lot of credit…

49. Good information processing model Good thinking processes Motivation capacity metamemory Knowledge base strategies

50. Using this model, Pressley et al. noted 3 stages of knowledge instruction: • Specific strategy knowledge • Relational knowledge • General strategy knowledge