Week 4

Strategy use in Children:

Formerly “Changes in the Software”

Last Week…

Information processing approach to cognitive development

Changes may occur in the hardware:CapacitySpeedEfficiency

Changes in Software

Knowledge baseE.g. Chess, karate, golf…

Strategies:Goal-directed, deliberately implemented

mental operations used to facilitate task performance

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

Training Studies

Began in 1960’s

3 step model of strategy acquisition1. No spontaneous use of strategy

2. Will not produce, but will use when shown

3. Produce and use on own

Stage 1 characterized by mediational deficiencyStrategy shown to them fails to elicit better

performanceE.g. Fail to use rehearsal to simplify memory

task

Stage 2 characterized by production deficiencyCan use strategies, but don’t think them up

on ownWill rehearse if you tell them to

Part-way between stage 1 and 2…moving word example

Moving Word Task

BUS

Moving Word Task

BUS

Children under 5 will say the card now says frog!!

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!

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

What do production deficient children do??

Primitive strategies that may lead them astrayMay explain some phenomena (e.g. dccs,

concentration)

Argument against?

Huffman & Bray

Children may not be deficient: we may be asking wrong questions

See four things as important1. Modality

2. Available tools?

3. Task difficulty?

4. Individual differences in span

Huffman & Bray

Tested 7- and 11-year-olds

Lots of memory span measures

Primary measure had 4 conditions:1. Auditory, no objects

2. Auditory, objects

3. Visual, no objects

4. Visual, objects

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

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

Stage 3:Older children at this stage thought to be

perfect strategy users, but not soOften exhibit a utilization deficiency, where

they seem to use a strategy, but doesn’t really help

Bjorklund et al., 1994

Bjorklund et al., 1994

00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9

1

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4

Phase

Pro

po

rtio

n r

ecall

ed

Sorting

Clustering

Recall

Memory Strategies or Mnemonics

Mnemonics Neatly Eliminate Man’s Only Nemesis: Insufficient Cerebral StorageDr. Mrs. VandertramppBedmasI before e except after c, and when you say A, as in neighbour and weighYou should get twice as much deSSertFACEEvery Good Boy Deserves Fudge

Memory Strategies

Only useful if they have meaningReferring mainly to context-independent memoryWe study different kinds of strategiesRehearsalOrganizationElaborationRetrieval

Rehearsal

Overt strategies: lip movementDigit spanStudies of recall

Children will not use adequate rehearsal strategy until the age of around 12:Passive vs. active rehearsal sets

OrganizationRemember this list:

Knife, shirt, car, fork, boat, pants, sock, truck, spoon, plate

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

Organization

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

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…

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

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

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

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

Knowledge and strategy use

3 effects that knowledge has:

1. Effects of item-type• Better memory for familiar items

2. Non-strategic organization• Better memory if effortless org. is possible

3. Facilitating strategies• Good knowledge base about a set of items

allows use of strategy

Metacomponents

Consciousness of how one’s own thought processes work

Can be explicit or implicit

Sternberg’s theory of intelligence

Intelligence

Knowledge acquisition components

MetacomponentsPerformance components

Strategy construction

Strategy Coordination

Strategy Selection

Metacomponents

Meta-attentionChildren do not always know how to pick

and choose what they attend toEvident in math problems…(Majumder,

2003)

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 thesePerformance correlated with measures of inhibition (Simon task)

Metamemory

Awareness of one’s own memory abilities

Adults underestimate; children overestimateSome kids (<7 years) fail to recognize usefulness: do not generalizeE.g. Fabricius & Hagen, 1984

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

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

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

B & R, 2000

ResultsHigh functioning children with ASD showed

strategy use, especially in open taskModerate ASD group had less rehearsers,

but again more in the open taskAlso: higher verbal abilities = more strategy

useHowever: strategy use still lower than

expected given their VMA

Metamemory in ASD

Underscores importance of the task demands again

Serial recall demands may have over-loaded them

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?

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

Strat. 1

Strat. 2

Strat. 3

Strat. 4

Age

Use

Cost of strategy use

Will it use up space?

Do they have the space?

Case’s theory of processing efficiency

Younger Child Older Child

Operating Space

Storage Space Operating

Space Storage Space

Siegler’s ASCM

Feature of variability

Feature of integration

Siegler gives child a lot of credit…

Good information processing model

Good thinking processes

capacity

metamemory Knowledge base

strategies

Motivation

Using this model, Pressley et al. noted 3 stages of knowledge instruction:

1. Specific strategy knowledge

2. Relational knowledge

3. General strategy knowledge

Take home messages

According to IP, children handle limited informationAbility to strategize about a task develops slowlyChildren are not strategy-free, but rather possibly inefficientEventually they will establish meta-awareness of strategies