Information-Processing Theories

The Importance of Information-Processing Theories

• Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories have had a profound influence but many scholars wanted a fresher outlook
• The digital computer intrigued scientists with its potential to rapidly convert input to output, similar to the mind
• Cognitive development can be viewed from this information-processing perspective.
• The chapter examines the principles of information processing and applies models to understand development, development changes central to the perspective

How the Mind is Like a Computer

• Both the mind and computers have limited information processing capacity, associated with hardware and software.
• Computer hardware includes the keyboard (input), storage, and logic units.
• The nervous system, including the brain, sensory receptors, and neural connections, is the mind's hardware.
• Computer software consists of programs for storing and manipulating information (e.g., word processing).
• The mind's software comprises rules, strategies, and mental programs that specify how information is registered, interpreted, stored, retrieved, and analyzed.
• As brains and nervous systems mature and new strategies emerge, complex cognitive abilities increase in speed and accuracy.
• Information-processing views aren't inherently developmental; wide uses for process studies in adults, children, disabilities, species etc

The Multistore Model

• There is no single information-processing framework for cognition or development
• All models center around people using cognitive operations/strategies to process information thru the limited system
• Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) created a multistore model, acting as a useful guide for understanding thinking.

The Sensory Store

• Incoming, raw data from the senses is first held briefly as an afterimage or echo.
• Separate sensory registers exist for each sense modality (vision, hearing etc.), with large capacity but volatile contents
• This information disappears quickly without further processing.

Short-Term Store (STS)

• Attended-to information passes here, which has limited storage (around five to nine pieces) for seconds.
• It is sufficient to retain a phone number long enough to dial.
• Information rehearsed or operated goes from the sensory to the short-term unless rehearsed or lost
• STS which is also known as working memory, it handles conscious intellectual activity by storing and manipulating information,

Long-Term Store (LTS)

• Information operated on in STS may transfer, holding knowledge, impressions, events, and processing strategies, being a vast, relatively permanent storehouse
• People actively select information to attend to, as information does not passively flow through the stores
• Control processes, or executive functions, plan and monitor what to attend to from input
• Metacognition, another name for executive functions, involves knowledge of cognitive abilities and thinking processes.
• Executive functions which are largely under voluntary control, distinguish human information processors from computers.
• Humans must initiate, organize, and evaluate all cognitive activities, using self-organization in dynamic systems
• More advanced stages of cognition relates to Piaget idea of assimilation and accommodation.

Core Principles of Information Processing

• Cognitive process capacity can relate too allocated space, and to information retention times
• The capacity of the short-term store (STS), age and speed changes and developmental differences all affect how processing happens in the STS
• Traditionally, memory span tests assess the capacity of the short-term store (STS)
• Memory span, assessed with the quantity of rapidly presented and unrelated items, has age differences for reliable results
• Span becomes one method to measure the general human intelligence
• Visual data span of infants and children increase yearly
• Knowledge about presented items affects memory: detailed knowledge/chess vs. lack-of-knowledge/digits