Deck 9: Cognitive Development: Information-Processing Perspectives and Connectionism

Question 1

With which educational recommendations would an information-processing theorist most likely agree?

A)those that emphasize reducing short-term memory demands and explaining why memory strategies work
B)those that discourage an active role of the child in learning and directly teach attentional strategies
C)those that emphasize the role of the teacher as setting the climate for self-discovery
D)those that discourage the use of inefficient learning strategies

Answer 1

those that emphasize reducing short-term memory demands and explaining why memory strategies work

Question 2

Which of the following is a prerequisite for using relational similarity to solve analogical reasoning problems?

A)suggestibility
B)cardinality
C)familiarity
D)rehearsal

Answer 2

familiarity

Question 3

Which statement best characterizes the memory performance of children when they organize events into scripts?

A)They forget typical information, but remember atypical events.
B)They remember typical events, but forget atypical information.
C)They remember both typical events and atypical information, equally.
D)They forget both atypical information and typical events, equally.

Answer 3

They remember typical events, but forget atypical information.

Question 4

In her job as a medical resident, Karima is responsible for monitoring and attending to many patients at the same time, and providing both verbal and written reports to her supervisor.Karima's duties are similar to which connectionist concept?

A)parallel distributed processing
B)parallel unitary processing
C)serial neuronal activation
D)serial distributed activation

Question 5

Miller and Weiss asked 7-, 10-, and 13-year-olds to remember the locations of animals hidden behind flaps, telling the children to pay attention to the animals and ignore other objects behind each flap.How helpful were these instructions for each age group?

A)They were helpful for all three age groups and increased performance dramatically.
B)They were helpful only for the youngest age group; the 10- and 13-year-olds did well whether told what to ignore or not told.
C)They were not helpful for any of the age groups; even at 13 years of age children have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information.
D)They were most helpful for the 13-year-olds; younger children tended to have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information, even when instructed to.

Question 6

Which statement best summarizes the research findings regarding the effects of knowledge base on children's memory?

A)Expert children will typically recall more than nonexpert adults if their knowledge base is more extensive.
B)Nonexpert adults will still recall more than expert children because of greater memory capacity.
C)Expert children and nonexpert adults will recall about the same amount of information regardless of knowledge base.
D)Nonexpert children will recall more information than expert adults due to recall interference in adults.

Question 7

When asked to "think of nothing," which age group will report that they are able to do so?

A)5-year-olds
B)7-year-olds
C)10-year-olds
D)14-year-olds

Question 8

What is the typical capacity of the short-term store?

A)between 3 and 7 items
B)between 5 and 9 items
C)between 7 and 11 items
D)unlimited if the material is kept active using rehearsal

Question 9

In contrast to theorists who emphasize the activation of cognitive processes in the development of thinking skills, others emphasize the importance of which skill?

A)verbatim tracing
B)inhibition
C)detection
D)attentional tracing

Question 10

In comparison to an information-processing theorist, how would a Piagetian theorist view the role of a teacher?

A)as critical
B)as relatively unimportant
C)as passive
D)as active

Question 11

Mr.Reynolds asks his Grade 3 students to write a short essay about what they did during their spring break.To do this effectively, what type of memory will his students need to use?

A)sensory
B)event
C)selective
D)strategic

Question 12

Which information-processing component is subject to the greatest voluntary control?

A)sensory functions
B)the short-term store
C)the long-term store
D)executive functions

Question 13

Which statement best summarizes research findings regarding the difference in the use of strategies between younger and older children?

A)Younger children use fewer strategies, but use them more effectively than older children do.
B)Younger children use more strategies, but use them far less effectively than older children do.
C)Younger children use fewer strategies, and use them less effectively than older children do.
D)Younger children use the same number of strategies, but use them less effectively than older children do.

Question 14

Which memory strategy involves grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful clusters?

A)rehearsal
B)semantic organization
C)cued encoding
D)elaboration

Question 15

Ambrose Bierce wrote, "The mind is a mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain; its chief activity consists of trying to understand its own functions." For Bierce, what does the mind's main activity represent?

A)fuzzy traces
B)metacognition
C)relational primacy
D)working memory

Question 16

Which type of event memory is the earliest to develop?

A)strategic
B)autobiographical
C)nonverbal rehearsed
D)deferred imitation

Question 17

What is meant by the term metacognition?

A)literal, verbatim traces of information
B)the physical capacities of the various human information-processing systems
C)imprecise encoding of information
D)knowledge of one's cognitive abilities and processes that relate to thinking

Question 18

Younger children tend to recall more incidental, irrelevant information about situations than do older children and adults.Difficulties with which cognitive process is thought to account for the younger children's deficit?

A)event memory
B)systematic visual scanning
C)detecting visual forms
D)selective attention

Question 19

Which memory system maintains information in a relatively pure, unanalyzed form?

A)the sensory register
B)the short-term store
C)the long-term store
D)the procedural register

Question 20

At what age did Strauss and Curtis find evidence of a rudimentary sense of ordinal relationships?

A)newborns
B)11 to 12 months
C)8 to 9 months
D)16 and 18 months

Question 21

Which type of memory is exemplified in eyewitness testimony?

A)strategic memory
B)attentional memory
C)implicit memory
D)event memory

Question 22

Ms.Luder is trying to determine what her students know about memory and memory processes.All the students in her class understand that memory strategies can help people to remember things more easily, and most of them recognize that organization is a more effective strategy than rehearsal.Based on this information, what age are the students in Ms.Luder's class?

A)4 years
B)5 years old
C)7 years old
D)11 years old

Question 23

Which strategy are children using for addition when they start with the larger of the two numbers to be added, and then count up from that number?

A)min
B)sum
C)max
D)fact retrieval

Question 24

What does research on the ability to recall early childhood events indicate about most adults' memories?

A)Most adults do not recall events that occurred before age 3 because of the young child's limited memory capacity.
B)Most adults do not recall events that occurred before age 3, possibly because the events were stored nonverbally and are difficult to retrieve.
C)Most adults recall numerous vivid memories of events that occurred before age 3, particularly emotional events such as birthdays or scary events such as injuries.
D)Most adults do not recall events that occurred before age 3, probably because of the emotional nature of the content.

Question 25

According to information-processing theory, why should students minimize solving problems "in their head"?

A)They become socially isolated.
B)They overburden their short-term memory.
C)They are more likely to develop phobic responses to math.
D)They disrupt their selective attention.

Question 26

What is the term for memories of events that we have personally experienced?

A)strategic
B)scripted
C)autobiographical
D)contextual

Question 27

Why does the memory strategy of elaboration emerge fairly late in development?

A)Young children may not have the knowledge base needed for generating elaborative mediators.
B)Young children may not have the creativity needed to generate elaborative images.
C)Young children may be too creative and generate too many elaborative mediators to be effective.
D)Elaboration often relies on three-dimensional imagery rather than words

Question 28

Five-year-old Boris tells his teacher, "I can't figure out how to memorize the names of the zoo animals; can you help me?" What type of learning deficiency is Boris exhibiting?

A)dyslexia
B)production
C)utilization
D)apprehension

Question 29

Which statement best summarizes research findings regarding the persistence of false memories that are created during studies that assess children's eyewitness memory?

A)They seldom persist once the memory test is over.
B)They persist for several days after the test but then are forgotten.
C)They often persist, and these false memories may be as resistant as, or more resistant to, forgetting than true memories.
D)They often persist, but these false memories are generally less resistant to forgetting than true memories.

Question 30

Which statement best summarizes the research findings regarding the arithmetic skills of children who have not received formal schooling?

A)They are deficient in all aspects of math.
B)They are deficient in applied math.
C)They are deficient at paper-and-pencil tests, but do well in applied situations.
D)They are no different from children who have been taught math.

Question 31

Which characteristic most clearly distinguishes human information processors from computers?

A)The mind has nothing that is analogous to a computer's hardware.
B)Unlike computers, in humans the long-term store has a limited capacity.
C)The computer has nothing that is analogous to the mind's computational capacity.
D)Unlike humans, computers lack voluntary executive control processes.

Question 32

Jasmine is studying French, and when her teacher writes the French word for rabbit on the board, Jasmine thinks of a soft bunny sitting in her lap.On the exam when she sees the word lapin, she instantly recalls the visual image and correctly defines the word.Which mnemonic device did Jasmin use to generate the correct answer?

A)semantic organization
B)elaboration
C)paired associate learning
D)directed cueing

Question 33

According to the research by Robert Kail, increases in which aspect of information-processing accounts for improved memory with increasing age?

A)capacity of the short-term store
B)capacity of the long-term store
C)speed and efficiency of processing
D)selective attention

Question 34

Your psychology professor asks you for the name of the individual who identified three different levels of moral development.To answer this question correctly, what type of memory will you need to use?

A)event
B)autobiographical
C)meta
D)strategic

Question 35

Wayne and Sally are telling their friends about the interesting things they did during their recent trip to Banff National Park.What type of memory are Wayne and Sally using to communicate the events of their trip?

A)episodic
B)strategic
C)mnemonic
D)selective

Question 36

Which statement best summarizes Siegler's model of developmental changes in strategy use?

A)They occur as overlapping waves.
B)They occur in overlapping stages in which strategies are sequentially replaced.
C)They occur as discrete waves with no overlap.
D)They occur in discrete stages with no overlap.

Question 37

Ornstein and associates have shown that a 7-year-old will rehearse as effectively as a 12-year-old as long as the items the child must remember remain in sight.What do these results imply about the source of the inefficient rehearsal that 7-year-olds normally display?

A)It results from a mediation deficiency.
B)It results from the physical limitations of the short-term store in young children.
C)It results from problems in retrieving items to form clusters.
D)It results from a lack of motivation to succeed when memory tasks are difficult.

Question 38

When preschoolers are given tests of memory recall, how do they typically perform?

A)poorly with either cued recall or free recall
B)better with free recall than with cued recall
C)better with cued recall than with free recall
D)best with either cued recall or free recall

Question 39

Zachary is learning to do addition.His method is to identify the larger number and then count upward from that number.Which method of addition is Zachary using?

A)sum
B)decomposition
C)learning-to-learn
D)min

Question 40

Dylan is a 10-year-old boy who loves sharks and has a great deal of knowledge on the topic.His uncle Gerry knows nothing about sharks.Pictures of sharks are shown to them at a rate of one per second.After a delay, they are shown a set of pictures that contain both new items and old items.If Dylan performs better than Gerry on the recall task, what is the most likely explanation?

A)He has increased STM capacity.
B)He has better memory for pictures.
C)His knowledge base increased the speed of his item identification.
D)He is faster at processing pictorial information.

Question 41

You are assessing the strategies used to solve arithmetic problems by a group of Grade 1 students.One of the children consistently uses strategies such as decomposition and fact retrieval.Is this child's behaviour unusual?

A)No, if the child was raised in Canada.
B)Yes, regardless of the culture of origin.
C)No, if the child was raised in an Asian culture.
D)No, regardless of the culture of origin.

Question 42

Which of the following best describes what fuzzy-trace theorists mean by the term gists?

A)representations that fail to preserve essential details and necessary information
B)literal, verbatim representations of key information
C)verbatim representations that have degraded over time
D)representations that preserve the essential content of memories, without precise details

Question 43

Which statement best summarizes the research findings regarding the development of semantic organization as a memory strategy?

A)Most children need to discover this strategy for themselves and do not benefit from adult guidance.
B)Providing practice and guidance in the use of this strategy has little carryover from games, homework, etc., to tasks encountered later.
C)Children can benefit from adult-directed practice and guidance in the use of this strategy.
D)Children can benefit from peer-directed practice and guidance.

Question 44

Rachel is 4 years old and has difficulty with a task requiring her to decide whether two complex stimuli are the same or different.To what would Vurpillot attribute Rachel's difficulties with this task?

A)poor recall and recognition memory
B)a failure to use systematic attention
C)inadequate verbal capabilities
D)immature sensory registration

Question 45

Younger children are suggestible in part because of a tendency to encode which type of information?

A)verbatim
B)gist
C)irrelevant
D)schema

Question 46

What memory system has the largest capacity?

A)the long-term store
B)the short-term store
C)the sensory register
D)the somatic register

Question 47

In a research study 6-year-olds and 14-year-olds are asked to sort coloured cards.In order to increase performance, will it be helpful to tell the participants to pay attention to the colours, while ignoring the shape of the cards?

A)It will be equally helpful to both age groups.
B)It will be helpful only to the younger age group.
C)It will not be helpful to either group.
D)It will be helpful to the older group.

Question 48

Which statement best summarizes the research findings regarding children's autobiographical memories when they are aided by parental elaboration?

A)They recall more information, but only in the short term.
B)They make more errors in the information that they recall.
C)They recall more information, even a few years later.
D)They make more errors unless their parents are present.

Question 49

A number of cross-cultural studies of mathematical aptitude have compared the performance of North American students with that of Asian students.Compared to their age-mates from Asian cultures, how do North American Grade 1 students perform?

A)They perform much worse, and the difference in performance becomes more pronounced by Grade 5.
B)They perform at the same level, but by Grade 5 North American students are generally performing at a lower level.
C)They perform at a higher level, and the difference in performance becomes more pronounced by Grade 5.
D)They perform much worse, but by Grade 5 differences in performance are no longer evident.

Question 50

Information-processing theorists draw an analogy between the operations of a computer and the workings of the human mind.According to this view, what is the mind's software?

A)the brain and the strategies the brain uses to solve problems
B)the brain, the sensory receptors, and their neural connections
C)the rules and strategies that specify how information is registered, interpreted, stored, retrieved, and analyzed
D)the genotype that specifies the formation of neural connections

Question 51

When police investigators interrogate a witness to a crime, what type of memory are they asking the witness to use?

A)rehearsal
B)event
C)strategic
D)sensory

Question 52

What type of deficiency occurs when a child fails to generate and use a known strategy that could improve learning and memory?

A)production
B)schematic
C)utilization
D)mediation

Question 53

Ms.Bellamy places 14 items on a table in front of her class, and then she carefully watches the children's lips to see if they are silently "rehearsing" the items to help them remember what they have seen.She observes that just over half seem to use this strategy.Based on this information, what year of age are the students in Ms.Bellamy's class?

A)3
B)5
C)7
D)10

Question 54

What is a memory script?

A)schemes for certain experiences that preserve the ordering and causal relations among the events
B)memories of particular events that we have personally experienced
C)metamemory strategies for effectively retrieving information from the long-term store
D)metamemory strategies for effectively organizing information to be remembered

Question 55

Which of the following do children first use to solve analogical reasoning problems?

A)object similarity
B)relational similarity
C)cardinality
D)elaboration

Question 56

When Aiden is asked to add two numbers together, he "just knows" the answer and retrieves the correct answer directly from long-term memory.What did Siegler and his colleagues call this strategy?

A)min
B)sum
C)max
D)fact retrieval

Question 57

What is another name for working memory?

A)the sensory register
B)procedural memory
C)the short-term store
D)the proactive store

Question 58

What is the memory system that maintains information for extended periods of time?

A)the sensory register
B)the long-term store
C)the short-term store
D)the associative register

Question 59

Lynette is writing a test in geography and is trying to recall the capital of Germany.To answer this question correctly, what type of memory will Lynnette need to use?

A)autobiographical
B)transitional
C)strategic
D)event

Question 60

Given that a child has a production deficiency, what intervention strategy would be most useful to improve his or her performance?

A)Counsel the child to adapt to her or his learning disability.
B)Give encouragement to raise her or his self-esteem.
C)Teach him or her a more appropriate problem-solving strategy.
D)Redirect his or her efforts to less-difficult problems.

Question 61

According to available evidence, people of all ages report more inaccurate information when asked leading questions that suggest inaccurate facts or events.Which age group is most susceptible to such memory distortions?

A)elementary school children
B)preadolescents
C)older adolescents
D)adults

Question 62

Researchers have found that 6-year-olds give more sustained attention to their toys or activities than do younger children.What has this developmental change in attention span been attributed to?

A)myelinization of the occipital lobe
B)improved cross-modal transfer
C)myelinization of the reticular formation
D)decreased speed of habituation

Question 63

Suppose that you are to give a presentation for one of your classes.As you drive to school you practise your presentation in your head.You arrive and your friend asks you about the traffic on your way.You find that you do not really remember the drive at all, despite arriving safely.What process allowed you to complete the drive?

A)implicit memory
B)explicit memory
C)explicit base
D)implicit base

Question 64

In addition to the advances in the development of brain physiology, what other factor is thought to account for the improvement in attention span with age?

A)unconditional positive reinforcement from others
B)improvement of attentional strategies
C)increased involvement in activities such as study groups
D)increased capacity of the sensory store

Question 65

Information processing is to multiple component(s) as connectionism is to which of the following?

A)a single component
B)variable components
C)a unique component
D)neural components

Question 66

Which strategy has been shown to be helpful for learning the basic vocabulary of a foreign language?

A)rehearsal
B)elaboration
C)analogical reasoning
D)dimensional sorting

Question 67

Which is the most accurate statement regarding the superiority of recognition versus recall memory in children?

A)Recall memory typically exceeds recognition memory.
B)Recognition memory typically exceeds recall memory.
C)Recognition memory and recall memory are equivalent.
D)Recall is superior for strategic memory, but recognition is superior for event memory.

Question 68

How is the amount and accuracy of information contained in children's eyewitness memory affected by development?

A)Children report less information, and it is more accurate.
B)Children report less information, but accuracy does not change.
C)Children report more information, and it is more accurate.
D)Children report more information, but accuracy does not change.

Question 69

At what age do children first show evidence of actively retrieving information from memory, when no cues are present to remind them of their experiences?

A)at birth
B)between 1 and 4 months
C)between 8 and 12 months
D)at about 24 months

Question 70

Frankie's preschool teacher asks the class if it would be easier to remember the names of three types of birds or the names of five types of animals.If Frankie is a typical preschooler, what is he likely to answer?

A)It will be easier to remember the names of the birds, because they are smaller than animals.
B)It will be just as easy to remember the names of either the birds or the animals.
C)It will be easier to remember the names of the animals, because he likes animals more.
D)It will be easier to remember the names of the birds, because there are fewer of them.

Question 71

What do children who are abused multiple times develop to help them remember general details of the event quite well?

A)a heuristic
B)a script
C)a schema
D)an algorithm

Question 72

Which statement best summarizes the relationship between metamemory and actual memory?

A)Good recall requires good metamemory.
B)Good metamemory guarantees good recall.
C)Good metamemory is not always necessary for good recall.
D)Good recall guarantees good recall.

Question 73

A 5-year-old relates her experience about going to the dentist: "You get in the car, drive there, get out, go inside, wait, get in the dental chair, get teeth fixed, jump from the chair, walk to the car, and go home." How would a psychologist characterize this child's memory strategy?

A)as an apprehension event
B)as a metamemory script
C)as a general memory script
D)as a rehearsal event

Question 74

Kerry is 6 years old, and when she adds numbers together she uses the sum strategy.Her older brother shows her the min strategy, and Kerry can see that this is a better strategy that will be much faster.The fact that Kerry didn't use the min strategy until her brother showed her how illustrates what type of deficiency?

A)operational
B)production
C)utilization
D)mediation

Question 75

When Marcos was playing backgammon the other day, his sister showed him a new strategy that he could use to win the game.If Marcos uses this new strategy in the future, what would an information-processing theorist suggest that Marcos had done?

A)increased both his mental software and his mental hardware
B)increased his mental software
C)reduced his capacity to discover new adaptive strategies on his own
D)reduced his mental software

Question 76

What is the memory system that holds large amounts of information for very brief periods of time?

A)the sensory register
B)the associative register
C)the long-term store
D)the short-term store

Question 77

At what age do children first understand the concept of cardinality?

A)between 4 and 5 months
B)between 16 and 18 months
C)between 2 and 3 years
D)between 4 1/2 and 5 years

Question 78

In comparison to verbatim traces, which statement best summarizes the research evidence concerning the use of fuzzy traces to encode and use learned information?

A)They are more susceptible to interference and forgetting.
B)They are more easily accessed and require more effort to use.
C)They are less susceptible to interference and forgetting.
D)They are less easily accessed and require more effort to use.

Question 79

Wilson remembered his new six-digit PIN number for his ATM card by noting that the first two digits were the year he was born, the second two digits were the year his son was born, and the last two digits were the year he graduated from high school.Wilson's strategy is an example of which mnemonic device?

A)semantic organization
B)elaboration
C)directed cueing
D)paired associate learning

Question 80

Which statement best summarizes the research finding regarding the recall abilities of preschool children when they are prompted with specific cues about events that they have witnessed?

A)They recall more of the actual details of the event and exclude some of the inaccurate details that had been previously recalled.
B)They recall more of the actual details of the event but include more details about the event that are inaccurate.
C)They recall the same information regardless of prompting.
D)They recall many inaccurate details, and do not show any improvement in their recall of the actual events after prompting