PSYC2213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Frontal Lobe, Synaptic Pruning, Temporal Lobe
Document Summary
Information processing theories - assume children have quantitative changes that are continuous. Hardware (structure) - memory capacity and processing speed. Software (processes) - cognitive strategies, representations, executive functions. Cognitive system responsible for simultaneous storage and manipulation of info during the performance of cognitive tasks. Strong predictor higher level cognitive abilities and academic achievement. Speed with which cognitive operations can be executed. Measure of processing speed: decision speed, perceptual, psychomotor, reaction time, psychophysical, time course of internal responses. Regular trajectory across lifespan - increased throughout childhood, peaks in young adulthood, declines in older adulthood. Suggests global mechanism responsible for age-related changes in processing speed - not speci c to any task or domain, fundamental characteristic of developing info processing system. If speeds of di erent processes are limited by a global mechanism, should see the same pattern of developmental change in processing speed across variety of tasks.
