The information-processing aproach

Information, memory and thinking

According to the information-processing approach, children develop a gradually increasing capacity for processing information, which allows them to acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills. In the 1950s and 1960s, many psychologists began to acknowledge that they
could not explain children’s learning without referring to mental processes such as memory and thinking.

Cognitive resources: capacity and speed of processing infromation

As children grow and mature, and as they experience the world, their information processing abilities increase, influenced by concurrent increases in both capacity and
speed of processing. Th ese two characteristics of capacity and speed are often referred to as cognitive resources and are proposed to have an important influence on memory
and problem solving.
Both biology and experience contribute to growth in cognitive resources

Mechanisms of change

This three mechanisms work together to create changes in children’s cognitive skills: 1. Encoding is the process by which information gets stored in memory. Changes
in children’s cognitive skills depend on increased skill at encoding relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information. 2. Automaticity refers to the ability to process information with little or no effort. Practice allows children to encode increasing amounts of information automatically. 3. Strategy construction is the creation of new procedures for processing information.

Expertise and learning

According to the National Research Council, they are better than novices at the following:
● Detecting features and meaningful patterns of information
● Accumulating more content knowledge and organizing it in a manner that shows an understanding of the topic
● Retrieving important aspects of knowledge with little effort
● Adapting an approach to new situations
● Using effective strategies

Acquiring expertise

Practice and Motivation: One perspective is that a particular kind of practice—deliberate practice —is required to become an expert. Deliberate practice is at an appropriate level of difficulty for the individual, provides corrective feedback, and allows opportunities for repetition. Talent: A number of psychologists who study expertise stress that it requires not
only deliberate practice and motivation but also talent

Expertise and teaching

Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Some educators have distinguished between the content knowledge required for expertise and the pedagogical content knowledge necessary to effectively teach it. Pedagogical content knowledge includes ideas about common difficulties that students have as they try to learn a content area, typical paths students must take to understand the area, and strategies for overcoming the difficulties they experience. Technology, Expertise, and Teaching: Richard Mayer (2008, 2009) has presented a number of ideas and conducted research on ways to incorporate expertise and technology in the classroom. In his cognitive theory of multimedia learning, Mayer (2009) highlights the following:
● There are two separate channels (auditory and visual) for processing information, which is sometimes referred to as dual-coding theory.
● Each channel has a limited (finite) capacity, similar to the concept of cognitive load.
● Learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing, and integrating information based on prior knowledge.

Developmental changes

Childhood. Many studies have focused on children’s metamemory, or knowledge of how memory worksic. Metamemory: By 5 or 6 years of age, children usually know that familiar items are easier to learn than unfamiliar ones, that short lists are easier than long ones, that recognition is easier than recall, and that forgetting becomes more likely over time. Theory of Mind: Even young children are curious about the nature of the human
mind. They have a theory of mind, which refers to awareness of one’s own mental
processes and the mental processes of others. Studies of theory of mind view the child as “a thinker who is trying to explain, predict, and understand people’s thoughts, feelings, and utterances”

The good information-processing model

It emphasizes that competent cognition results from a number of interacting factors. Th ese include strategies, content knowledge, motivation, and metacognition. Th ey argue that children become good at cognition in three main steps:
1. Children are taught by parents or teachers to use a particular strategy. With practice, they learn about its characteristics and advantages for learning specific knowledge. The more intellectually stimulating children’s homes and schools are, the more specifi c strategies they will encounter and learn to use.
2. Teachers may demonstrate similarities and diff erences in multiple strategies in a particular domain, such as math, which motivates students to see shared
features of diff erent strategies. This leads to better relational knowledge.
3. At this point, students recognize the general benefi ts of using strategies, which produces general strategy knowledge. Th ey learn to attribute successful learning outcomes to the efforts they make in evaluating, selecting, and monitoring
strategy use (metacognitive knowledge and activity).

Strategies and metacognitive regulation

In the view of Pressley and his colleagues, the key to education is helping students learn a rich
repertoire of strategies that results in solutions of problems. Good thinkers routinely use strategies and effective planning to solve problems. Good thinkers also know when and where to use strategies (metacognitive knowledge about strategies). Understanding when and where to use strategies oft en results from the learner’s monitoring of the learning situation. Pressley and his colleagues argue that when students are given instruction about effective strategies, they oft en can apply strategies that they previously have not used on their own. They emphasize that students benefit when the teacher models the appropriate strategy and overtly verbalizes its steps. Th en students should practice the strategy, guided and supported by the teacher’s feedback until
they can use it autonomously. When instructing students about employing a strategy, it also is a good idea to explain to them how using the strategy will benefit them.

What is attention?

Attention is the focusing of mental resources. Psychologists have labeled these types of allocation as selective attention, divided attention, sustained attention, and
executive attention.
●Selective attention is focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that
are irrelevant. ●Divided attention involves concentrating on more than one activity at the same time. ●Sustained attention is the ability to maintain attention over an extended
period of time. ● Executive attention involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing
with novel or diffi cult circumstances.

Developmental changes

The length of time children can pay attention increases as they get older. Preschool children’s ability to control and sustain their attention is related to school readiness. Sustained attention improves from 5 to 6 years to 11 to 12 years of age, and this increased attention is linked to better performance on cognitive tasks. Attention to relevant information increases steadily through the elementary and
secondary school years. Processing of irrelevant information decreases in adolescence. As children grow up, their abilities both to direct selective attention and to divide attention also improve.

What is memory?

Memory is the retention of information over time. Educational psychologists study how information is initially placed or encoded into memory, how it is retained or stored after being encoded, and how it is found or retrieved for a certain purpose later.

Encoding

Encoding is the process by which information gets into
memory. It consists of a number of processes:
Rehearsal: is the conscious repetition of information over
time to increase the length of time it stays in memory. Rehearsal works best when you need to encode and remember a list of items for a brief period of time. Deep processing: Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart proposed that we can process information at a variety of levels. Their levels of processing theory states that the processing of memory occurs on a continuum from shallow to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory. Elaboration: Cognitive psychologists discovered that memory benefits from the use of elaboration, which refers to extensiveness of information,in
the process of encoding. Constructing Images When we construct an image of something, we are elaborating the information. Organization If students organize information when they are encoding it, their
memory benefits.

Storage

The three types of memory, which correspond to these diff erent time frames, are sensory memory (which lasts a fraction of a second to several seconds); short-term memory (lasts about 30 seconds), and long-term memory (lasts up to a lifetime).
Sensory Memory Sensory memory holds information from the world in its original sensory form for only an instant, not much longer than the brief time a student is exposed to the visual, auditory, and other sensations. Short-Term Memory is a limited-capacity memory system in which information is retained at least 30 seconds unless it is rehearsed or otherwise processed further, in which case it can be retained longer.

Retrieval and forgetting

Retrieval:When we retrieve something from our mental “data bank,” we search our store of memory to find the relevant information. Forgetting: One form of forgetting involves cue dependent forgetting, which is retrieval failure caused by a lack of eff ective retrieval cues.
The notion of cue-dependent forgetting can explain why a student might fail to retrieve a needed fact for an exam even when he is sure he “knows” the information.