Cognitive Aging and Memory Tasks

Language

• Language is an arbitrary system of communication, combining symbols like words or gestures.
• It's rule-based, although rules are often violated in natural conversation.
• Language serves to communicate information and emotions, aiding memory.
• Key properties of human language include: generative nature, recursive structure, and displacement.

Features of Language

• Highly practiced and automatic process.
• Four levels of analysis coordinate: phonemes, morphemes, syntax, and extralinguistic information.

Phonemes

• Smallest component of language.
• Vary by language, with English using around 45 phonemes.
• Infants are born with ability to distinguish between all phonemes, but this ability is refined over time based on exposure.

Morphemes

• Smallest units of meaning in a language.
• Convey semantic meaning in words and sentences.
• Can be full words or modifiers.

Syntax

• Set of rules for forming sentences in a language.
• Includes word order, grammatical markers, and sentence structure.
• Real-world language doesn't always perfectly follow grammatical rules.

Extrolinguistic Information

• Elements like tone of voice, facial expressions, and previous statements enhance the communication that transcends the literal words.
• Crucial to interpreting the intent and nuanced meaning of what is said.

Language Dialects

• Variations of a language based on geography, social groups, or ethnicity are mutually understandable.
• Use largely consistent syntax rules, though differences exist between dialects.

Language and Aging

• Language changes and remains stable across the lifespan.
• Elderspeak, a communication style targeted at older adults, can reduce the language capacity of the recipient.
• Older adults experience declines in processing speed, reading rate, and retrieval memory.

Bilingualism

• Acquiring two languages early in life is more advantageous than later, although some cognitive delays may occur at the beginning.
• Similar brain areas are involved if the language is learned early; if learned later, different areas are involved.
• Bilingualism may enhance metalinguistic awareness and decision-making ability.

Language Deprivation

• Cases like Genie and the homesigners illustrate significant negative effects of lack of early language exposure.
• While there isn't a strict "critical period," childhood represents a "sensitive period" where learning is more effective.
• Younger children tend to learn languages faster, though experience and acquired strategies become more important with age.

Theories of Language Acquisition

• Imitation – Children learn by mimicking adults.
• Nativist – Children are born with an innate ability to acquire language (language acquisition device).
• Social pragmatics – Children learn language by interacting with their social environment, including an understanding of the other person.
• General cognitive processes – Ability to learn language linked to broader cognitive development overall.

Reading

• Reading, like language, becomes an automatic process.
• Difficulty halting an automatic reading process even when desired.

Learning to Read

• Writing is meaningful and follows a set direction.
• Recognizing letters and understanding their relationship to sounds are essential skills.
• Whole word recognition and phonetic decomposition are crucial for reading effectively as a skillset.

Language and Thought

• Linguistic determinism suggests thoughts are completely structured by language.
• Linguistic relativism suggests the structure of language influences thought but isn't the sole determinant.
• Linguistic labelling – labelling experiences has an impact on the intensity of associated emotions and experiences.

Reasoning, Judgment, and Decision Making

• Reasoning evaluates conclusions based on existing information, asking, "is it logical?"
• Judgment arrives at conclusions based on given information, asking, "is it reasonable?"
• Decision making involves choosing options given uncertain outcomes with incomplete information.

Research Focused on Errors

• Studying errors in reasoning, judgment, and decision making offers valuable insight into the process of these behaviors.
• Even when conclusions are correct, error studies provide a better understanding of successful cognitive processes.

Rational Decision Making

• Define the problem
• Identify the criteria
• Weight the criteria
• Generate alternatives
• Rate options according to criteria
• Compute the optimal decision

Bounded Rationality

• Decision-making processes are limited by factors like time, energy, available information, and consequences.

System 1 vs. System 2 Processes

• System 1 processes are fast, unconscious, automatic, and intuitive.
• System 2 processes are slow, conscious, controlled, analytical, and logical.

Reasoning

• Inductive reasoning works from specific observations to general conclusions.
• Deductive reasoning works from general principles to specific conclusions.
• Syllogistic reasoning involves drawing conclusions from two or more premises.
• Conditional reasoning assesses the validity of conclusions drawn from conditional statements (e.g., if A, then B).

Judgment

• A judgment is an evaluation, often based on heuristics (mental shortcuts) that involve a variety of biases.
• Availability heuristic is a mental shortcut whereby we often estimate the frequency of an event based on how easily relevant examples come to mind.
• Representative heuristic is a mental shortcut that involves estimating the likelihood of an event based on the similarity to a prototype.

Decision Making

Expected Utility Theory

• Suggests that when choosing between options, we consider the expected value of outcomes combined with the probability of those outcomes.

Violations of Expected Utility

• Preferences for options vary depending on how these choices are presented and described, sometimes leading to inconsistent decisions.

Prospect Theory

• Asserts that we view gains and losses differently.

Framing

• Decisions are heavily influenced on how choices are presented (framed).
• How choices are described (framed) can make a difference in terms of the choices made. 

Sunk Costs 

• We tend to continue to engage in something when we have already invested time, energy, or money, even when the current costs outweigh the benefits.

Decision Making is Adaptive

• Cognitive heuristics, biases, and fallacies can make decision-making processes seem illogical; but these biases often are an efficient adaptation. Decisions made this way typically serve their intended purpose, even though they may deviate from a "perfect" approach. 

Childhood Cognitive Development

• Cognitive development involves changes in thinking and reasoning abilities across the lifespan.

Critical Periods vs. Sensitive Periods

• A critical period is a period in which certain specific inputs must be available for development to happen normally, otherwise the development will be impeded.
• A sensitive period is a period in which a skill or characteristic can be acquired most readily.

Stages vs. Continuum

• Quantitative changes represent gradual changes in the amount of a given cognitive ability.
• Qualitative changes represent shifts in the manner in which a cognitive ability is processed or carried out.

Piaget's Stages of Development

• Sensorimotor: Understanding that objects exist when out of sight.
• Preoperational: Symbolic thinking; difficulty understanding another perspective.
• Concrete Operational: Logical thinking about concrete events; difficulty with abstract reasoning.
• Formal Operational: Logical, abstract, and flexible thinking. 

Criticisms of Piaget's Theory

• Many researchers believe Piaget underestimated the capabilities of younger children and that cognitive development is not as stage-like as Piaget had originally proposed.
• Cognitive development is impacted by culture and experiences, which may facilitate or impede cognitive development.

Vygotsky's Social Context Theory

• Development is not simply an internal matter, but heavily reliant on the social interactions that take place in a person's world and the cultural environment. 

Information Processing Approaches

• Information processing approaches emphasize that cognitive development is continuous across the lifespan. These approaches seek to determine how information is processed systematically.
• Cognitive abilities such as planning, attention, and memory improvement occurs across the lifespan, though capacities vary.

Theory of Mind

• Theory of mind is the ability to understand and infer other people's mental states.
• This ability emerges in early childhood and impacts social interactions. 

Adolescent Cognitive Changes

• Adolescent egocentrism: Self-absorbed perspective of their thoughts and feelings.
• Personal fable: Overestimation of personal uniqueness.
• Imaginary audience: Belief they are constantly being evaluated.

Adolescent Brain Development

• The brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, particularly the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with cognitive abilities like decision making, impulse control, and working memory.
• Myelination and synaptic pruning are two important processes that occur during brain development.

Memory Development

• The four principles of memory development, and areas of the brain involved with the development of declarative memory are explored in this area.

Infantile Amnesia

• Infantile amnesia is a phenomenon whereby our recollection of events from our earliest childhood years is often very limited or non-existent.
• The reminiscence bump refers to the tendency for adults over 40 to recall events from their late teens and early 20s more readily than events from other periods of life.

Eyewitness Memory

• Witness accounts can be inaccurate due to factors such as distortions in perception and retrieval.
• Factors that can influence eyewitness memory include conditions present at the time of the event (day vs. night, amount of time, etc), use of leading questions, and the witness's own prior assumptions. 
• Lineup procedures (e.g., simultaneous vs. sequential lineups) can also have significant influences on outcomes.  
• Inaccuracy in eyewitness accounts are often due to factors that exist outside of the witness's awareness.

Earwitness Memory

• This topic discusses the problems and difficulties in identifying a person's voice.
• Voices can vary in pitch, tone, and timbre, depending on a variety of factors (including emotional states, environment, or physical conditions).
• People's ability to recognize voices can be severely affected by factors like stress, time delay, or whether disguises were present.
• The face-over shadowing effect is a concept that recognizes that our prior knowledge or expectations (schemas) can influence how well we can evaluate other people's characteristics.

This quiz explores the effects of aging on cognitive functions, specifically focusing on memory tasks, attention, and processing capacity. It examines the differences in performance between older and younger adults, identifying key factors that contribute to declines in episodic memory and multitasking abilities. Test your knowledge on how aging influences cognitive processes!