Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, Being
13th EditionMichael R Solomon
449 solutions
Social Psychology
10th EditionElliot Aronson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers, Timothy D. Wilson
525 solutions
Social Psychology
10th EditionElliot Aronson, Robin M. Akert, Timothy D. Wilson
525 solutions
HDEV5
6th EditionSpencer A. Rathus
380 solutions
Children's memories, like those of adults, are constructive and reconstructive. Children have schemas for all sorts of information, and these schemas affect how they encode, store, and retrieve memories
One student might reconstruct the story by saying the characters died in a plane crash, another might describe three men and three women, another might say the crash was in Germany, and so on
Reconstruction and distortion are nowhere more apparent than in clashing testimony given by eyewitnesses at trials. A special concern is susceptibility to suggestion and how this can alter memory
Why?
preschool children are more susceptible to believing misleading or incorrect information given aft er an even
Some preschoolers are highly resistant to interviewers' suggestions, whereas others immediately succumb to the slightest suggestion
When children do accurately recall information about an event, the interviewer often has a neutral tone, there is limited use of misleading questions, and there is an absence of any motivation for the child to make a false report
argues that these early categorizations are best described as perceptual categorization. That is, the categorizations are based on similar perceptual features of objects, such as size, color, and movement, as well as parts of objects, such as legs for animals. Mandler (2004) concludes that it is not until about 7 to 9 months of age that infants form conceptual categories rather than just making perceptual discriminations between different categories. In one study of 9- to 11-month-olds, infants classified birds as animals and airplanes as vehicles even though the objects were perceptually similar—airplanes and birds with their wings spread
Many infants' "first concepts are broad and global in nature, such as 'animal' or 'indoor thing.' Gradually, over the first two years, these broad concepts become more differentiated into concepts such as 'land animal,' then 'dog,' or to 'furniture,' then 'chair
Learning to put things into the correct categories—what makes something one kind of thing rather than another kind of thing, such as what makes a bird a bird, or a fish a fish—is an important aspect of learning. As infant development researcher Alison Gopnik (2010, p. 159) pointed out, "If you can sort the world into the right categories—put things in the right boxes—then you've got a big advance on understanding the world."
Categorization of boys' intense interests focused on vehicles, trains, machines, dinosaurs, and balls; girls' intense interests were more likely to involve dress-ups and books/reading. When your author's grandson Alex was 18 to 24 months old, he already had developed an intense, passionate interest in the category of vehicles.
being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life's everyday activities and tasks—is an important aspect of thinking critically
Mindful individuals create new ideas, are open to new information, and can operate from more than one perspective. By contrast, mindless individuals are entrapped in old ideas, engage in automatic behavior, and operate from a single perspective.
Robert Roeser and Philip Zelazo have emphasized that mindfulness is an important mental process that children can engage in to improve a number of cognitive and socioemotional skills, such as executive function, focused attention, emotion regulation, and empathy
techniques such as yoga, meditation, and tai chi have been recently proposed as candidates for improving children's cognitive and socioemotional development
involves finding an appropriate way to attain a goal. Let's examine two ways children solve problems—by applying rules and by using analogies—and then consider some ways to help children learn effective strategies for solving problems.
During early childhood, the relatively stimulus-driven toddler is transformed into a child capable of flexible, goal-directed problem solving
For example, because they lack a concept of perspectives, 3- to 4-year-olds cannot understand that a single stimulus can be redescribed in a different, incompatible way
3- to 4-year-olds showed representational inflexibility.
With age, children also learn better rules to apply to problems
With
age, children also learn better rules to apply to problems
Figure 7.12 provides an example; it shows the balance scale problem that has been used to examine children's use of rules in solving problems. Th e scale includes a fulcrum and an arm that can rotate around it. Th e arm can tip left or right or remain level, depending on how weights (metal disks with holes in the center) are arranged on the pegs in each side of the fulcrum. Th e child's task is to look at the confi guration of weights
on the pegs in each problem and then predict whether the left side will go down, the right side will go down, or the arm will balance
Adolescence is a time of increased decision making—which friends to choose, which person to date, whether to have sex, buy a car, go to college, and so on
older adolescents are described as more competent than younger adolescents, who in turn are more competent than children
However, older adolescents' (as well as adults') decision-making skills are far from perfect, and having the capacity to make competent decisions does not guarantee they will be made in everyday life, where breadth of experience oft en comes into play
Most people make better decisions when they are calm rather than emotionally aroused, which often is especially true for adolescents
Adolescents need more opportunities to practice and discuss realistic decision making. Many real-world decisions on matters such as sex, drugs, and daredevil driving occur in an atmosphere of stress that includes time constraints and emotional involvement
Perceptions. By 2 years of age, children recognize that another person will see what's in front of her own eyes instead of what's in front of the child's eyes (Lempers, Flavell, & Flavell, 1977), and by 3 years of age, they realize that looking leads to knowing what's inside a container (Pratt & Bryant, 1990).
• Emotions. Th e child can distinguish between positive (for example, happy) and negative (for example, sad) emotions. A child might say, "Tommy feels bad."
• Desires. All humans have some sort of desires. But when do children begin to recognize that someone else's desires may diff er from their own? Toddlers recognize that if people want something, they will try to get it. For instance, a child might say, "I want my mommy."
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 to remember than long ones, that recognition is easier than recall, and that forgetting becomes more likely over time
However, in other ways young children's metamemory is limited. They don't understand that related items are easier to remember than unrelated ones or that remembering the gist of a story is easier than remembering information verbatim (by fifth grade this becomes easier)
Preschool children also have an inflated opinion of their memory abilities. For example, in one study, a majority of preschool children predicted that they would be able to recall all 10 items on a list of 10 items. When tested, none of the young children managed this feat
Preschool children also have little appreciation for the importance of cues to memory, such as "It helps when you can think of an example of it." By 7 or 8 years of age, children better appreciate the importance of cueing for memory