Advances in Child Development and Behavior

1. Auflage 2001
ISBN: 978-0-08-052627-0
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band Volume 28, 246 Seiten

Reihe: Advances in Child Development and Behavior

Advances in Child Development and Behavior is intended to ease the task faced by researchers, instructors, and students who are confronted by the vast amount of research and theoretical discussion in child development and behavior. The serial provides scholarly technical articles with critical reviews, recent advances in research, and fresh theoretical viewpoints. Volume 28 discusses variability in reasoning, dual processes in memory, reasoning, and cognitive neuroscience, language and cognition, and adolescent depression.

Zielgruppe

Academic/professional/technical: Undergraduate. Academic/professional/technical: Postgraduate. Academic/professional/technical: Research and professional

Autoren/Hrsg.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Front Cover;1
2;Advances in Child Development and Behavior;4
3;Copyright Page;5
4;Contents;6
5;Contributors;8
6;Preface;10
7;Chapter 1. Variability in Children's Reasoning;12
7.1;I. Introduction;13
7.2;II. Assessing the Importance of Variability in Children's Thinking;14
7.3;III. Types of Variability in Children's Reasoning;19
7.4;IV. Theories and the Meaning of Variability in Children's Reasoning;27
7.5;V. Methodological Issues;38
7.6;VI. Conclusions;45
7.7;References;46
8;Chapter 2. Fuzzy-Trace Theory: Dual Processes in Memory, Reasoning, and Cognitive Neuroscience;52
8.1;I. Introduction;53
8.2;II. Memory–Reasoning Relations: Necessity, Constructivism, and Dissociation;54
8.3;III. Dual-Process Conceptions of Reasoning, Memory, and Memory–Reasoning Relations;58
8.4;IV. Four Research Domains;76
8.5;V. Summary;100
8.6;References;102
9;Chapter 3. Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition;112
9.1;I. Introduction;112
9.2;II. Relational Frame Theory as an Approach to Language and Cognition;114
9.3;III. Conclusion;146
9.4;References;147
10;Chapter 4. The Continuity of Depression across the Adolescent Transition;150
10.1;I. Introduction;151
10.2;II. Disorder, Syndrome, and Mood;153
10.3;III. Stability and Continuity;159
10.4;IV. Genetic, Biological, Cognitive, and Social Influences on Continuity;169
10.5;V. Conclusions;174
10.6;References;176
11;Chapter 5. The Time of Our Lives: Self-Continuity in Native and Non-native Youth;186
11.1;I. Introduction;187
11.2;II. Narrativity and Essentialism Writ Large;188
11.3;III. The Essentialist Tradition: Strict Essentialism, Nominal Essentialism, Neo-essentialism, and Any Other Essentialism You Can Think Of;193
11.4;IV. The Narrative Tradition as Another Singular Possibility;201
11.5;V. A Theory in Search of Evidence;208
11.6;VI. Real Evidence;216
11.7;VII. Summary of Conclusions: Five Easy Pieces;226
11.8;References;226
12;Author Index;234
13;Subject Index;244
14;Contents of Previous Volumes;250

Leseproben

Fuzzy-Trace Theory: Dual Processes in Memory, Reasoning, and Cognitive Neuroscience
C.J. Brainerd*,1; V.F. Reyna2    1 Department of Special Education Rehabilitation, and School Psychology
2 Departments of Surgery and Medicine, Arizona Health Sciences Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721
* C. J. Brainerd, Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. email address: [e-mail] I Introduction
The science of cognitive development is divisible into two broad fields of inquiry: (a) the ontogenesis of basic processes and capabilities (e.g., attention, memory, processing speed, inhibition) that support higher reasoning and (b) the ontogenesis of types of higher reasoning (e.g., decision making, deductive inference, judgment, problem solving). The paradigms that are central to research in the two fields are quite different, of course (e.g., free recall vs. mathematical problem solving), as are the theoretical assumptions that guide experimentation. At a deeper level, however, theories in both fields have long shared a core attribute—namely, they have been unitary theories. By “unitary theories,” we mean theories in which an overriding developmental bottom line is posited; that is, a unifying theme or principle that characterizes what development is moving away from and what it is evolving toward. In the memory sphere, the unifying theme is that development moves away from recollections that are sketchy, distorted representations of experience and toward recollections that are detailed, veridical representations. In the reasoning sphere, the unifying theme is that development moves away from reasoning operations that are intuitive, qualitative, or heuristic toward reasoning operations that are analytical, computational, or logical. From the perspective of parsimony, unitary conceptions are the proper place to begin theory building. However, research in mainstream cognitive psychology has long since established that some basic facts of adult memory and reasoning pose serious difficulties for such conceptions. In adults, both memory and reasoning seem to be characterized by well-articulated dual systems that process different types of information in seemingly contradictory and incompatible ways. In the memory sphere, the same adults who exhibit highly veridical recall and recognition of experience also display powerful illusions of recollection for events that were never experienced (for a review, see Roediger, 1996). In the reasoning sphere, the same adults who provide analytical, logical solutions to certain problem-solving tasks also provide intuitive, heuristic solutions when the tasks are framed in slightly different ways (e.g., Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981, 1983). Such evidence poses two fundamental challenges to theories of cognitive development: first, to formulate testable theoretical models of these dual systems and, second, to spell out their developmental trajectories. Fuzzy-trace theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 1990a; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995; Reyna, Lloyd, & Brainerd, 2001) is an attempt to respond to these challenges by integrating two disparate approaches to the study of memory (the constructivist and verbal-learning traditions) and by uniting two similarly disparate approaches to the study of reasoning (the intuitionist and logicist traditions). We survey the current status of fuzzy-trace theory in this article. In section II, we sketch two prominent interpretations of memory–reasoning relations in cognitive development that preceded fuzzy-trace theory, the necessity hypothesis and the constructivist hypothesis, and that were predicated on unitary conceptions of memory and reasoning. We summarize developmental findings that disconfirmed both interpretations and motivated fuzzy-trace theory as an alternative approach. In section III, we consider dual-process conceptions of reasoning, memory, and their relations, as posited in fuzzy-trace theory. Research that bears on these conceptions is also reviewed. In section IV, we examine four domains of research that have been active venues for evaluating the explanatory and predictive capabilities of fuzzy-trace theory: (a) developmental cognitive neuroscience studies of false memory; (b) studies of false memory in brain-damaged patients; (c) studies of judgment and decision-making errors in adults; and (d) studies of dual-retrieval processes in child and adult recall. II Memory–Reasoning Relations: Necessity, Constructivism, and Dissociation
Fuzzy-trace theory was originally motivated by several considerations, some theoretical and others empirical (for a review, see Brainerd & Reyna, 1993a). A pivotal early factor was the accumulation of counterintuitive developmental data on the seemingly simple question, How is memory development related to the development of specific reasoning abilities? Until the mid-1980s, there were two conventional answers. The first, which figured in both the Piagetian and information processing traditions (Bryant & Trabasso, 1971; Elkind, 1967; Smedslund, 1969), was the necessity hypothesis. Maintenance of veridical representations of problem information (e.g., the premises in transitive or conditional inference problems and the numerical values of sets in probability judgment problems) until reasoning operations could be completed was treated as an essential, though not sufficient, condition for valid reasoning—hence, “necessity” hypothesis. The constructivist hypothesis evolved from Bartlett’s (1932) work in social psychology and characterized Piaget’s later views on memory-reasoning relations (e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1973). Here, the core idea was that memory traces are not bedrocks for accurate reasoning but, rather, are themselves modified (“constructed”) by reasoning operations (Brainerd & Reyna, 1995; Reyna & Kiernan, 1994). In other words, “The schemata of the memory are borrowed from the intelligence” (Piaget & Inhelder, 1973, p. 382). The necessity and constructivist hypotheses, though contradictory, were both supported by lines of evidence that were superficially compelling. Regarding necessity, for instance, some investigators used overlearning trials to ensure that children would remember the exact problem information that accompanies Piaget’s concrete-operational reasoning tasks. In this procedure, before reasoning problems are administered, children are trained on crucial background information until they perform perfectly on memory tests for that information. Overlearning of problem information produced dramatic improvements in children’s reasoning accuracy (e.g., Trabasso, 1977). Regarding constructivism, recognition memory experiments with adults (Bransford & Franks, 1971) and children (Paris & Carter, 1973) seemed to demonstrate that participants remembered what they understood, not what they actually experienced. A key finding was that adults and children often failed to discriminate material that they had actually experienced (e.g., the statements “The cage is on the table” and “The cat is in the cage”) from unpresented material that integrated the meaning of experience (e.g., “The cat is on the table”). This finding was said to show that (a) memory for experience takes the form of a unitary semantic code that lacks individuating surface details and that (b) responses to recognition probes depend on whether probes are consistent with the meaning of experience (i.e., “The cage is on the table” and the “The cat is on the table” are both true, based on the meaning of presented material). A EVIDENCE FOR NECESSITY
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, both types of findings were cited in cognitive development textbooks (e.g., Bjorklund, 1989; Siegler, 1991) as establishing that, without deciding between the two hypotheses, accurate reasoning and accurate memory must be closely intermeshed. However, Brainerd and Kingma (1984) pointed out that such findings did not actually establish direct links between solutions to specific childhood reasoning problems (conservation, probability judgment, transitive inference, and so forth) and memory for the specific background facts that authorize those solutions. To close this gap, they investigated the relation between children’s (5- to 8-year-olds’) memory for individual premises on transitive inference problems (“John is taller than Jim” and “Jim is taller than Don”) and their ability to make correct inferences from the premises (“John is tallest”). This required only the minor methodological adjustment of adding premise-memory probes to each transitive inference problem. The resulting experiments were focused on the necessity hypothesis, which predicts that if accurate premise memory is a precondition for valid reasoning, children will be more likely to make correct inferences when they can remember the premises for a problem than when they cannot. The necessity hypothesis also predicts that relations between performance on premise-memory tests and transitivity problems...