Working memory and the developmental analysis of probability judgment.

Brainerd, Charles J.

doi:10.1037/0033-295x.88.6.463

Cited by 102 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…The fact that frequency memory also improves during childhood allows one to account for age changes in triage. (Although some [e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1984] have claimed that retention of frequency information is developmentally invariant, there is also considerable evidence of age changes in performance on tasks that rely on frequency memory [e.g., Brainerd, 1981;Ghatala & Levin, 1976 ]. In the present context, it is immaterial whether such changes reflect improvements in frequency memory per se or merely improvements in the ability to process these memories in the course of performing tasks such as free recall.…”

Section: What Is the Triage Mechanism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because recall accuracy is monotonically related to memory strength, reliable in situ strength discriminations can be formed by merely differentiating the target words in terms of their respective rates of recall. Frequency memory, which is highly accurate even in preschoolers (Brainerd, 1981;Ghatala & Levin, 1976), could be exploited for this purpose. The usual cycles of study and test allow differential error-success counts to accumulate for items, which allows strength discriminations to become progressively more exact.…”

Section: Triagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the start of recall, nodes with the highest strengths are activated first, and activation then spreads out in a stronger --~ weaker direction because, by definition, stronger nodes possess more connections to already activated nodes than weaker nodes do. The resource hypothesis, alternatively, postulates a limited-capacity pool of generic mental energy that is variously called the processing resource (Bjorklund & Harnishfeger, 1990), working-memory capacity (Brainerd, 1981 ), and attentional capacity (Kahneman, 1973). In applications to recall, it is assumed that resource consumption is monotonically related to memory strength, that more capacity is expended when weaker words are retrieved than when stronger words are retrieved (Bjorklund, 1987;Bjorklund & Muir, 1988).…”

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Fuzzy-trace theory and cognitive triage in memory development.

Brainerd¹,

Reyna²,

Howe³

et al. 1991

Developmental Psychology

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When children and adults retrieve words during unconstrained recall, it is commonly supposed that words will present themselves to consciousness in decreasing order of memory strength, which means that their order of readout should be stronger --~ weaker. In contrast, fuzzy-trace theory proposes a counterintuitive nonmonotonic relationship between order of readout and memory strength. This relationship, which we call cognitive triage, arises from the theory's interpretation of recall as a dynamic system in which the influences of three variables (memory strength, episodic activation, and output interference) must be balanced to maximize recall. Because fuzzy-trace theory anticipates ontogenetic variations in cognitive triage, we studied it developmentally. A series of nine experiments produced several findings that were consistent with the theory's assumptions: Children never recalled stronger words before weaker words, doing the reverse instead; the priority of weaker words over stronger words in output queues was observed in the earliest phases of learning in both younger and older children; as learning progressed and children secured more reliable information about the relative memory strengths of words, a weaker--~ stronger --~ weaker ordering emerged, and it emerged more rapidly in older children; at criterion, when all items were recallable, the weaker ~ stronger --~ weaker ordering was present at all age levels, although it was more pronounced in older children. We show how the theory's assumptions also explain some classic findings about the development of recall, especially subjective organization and serial-position effects.

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Section: What Is the Triage Mechanism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Triagementioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Fuzzy-trace theory and cognitive triage in memory development.

Brainerd¹,

Reyna²,

Howe³

et al. 1991

Developmental Psychology

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“…Suppose that Reasoner A retrieves the example of a sparrow, as an alternative counterexample, whereas Reasoner B does not do so. If these reasoners are given standard deductive instructions and are capable of reasoning by counterexample, Reasoner A would deny the invited conclusion it tic conditional inferences, there is evidence that children as young as 6 years of age understand the basic notion of probabilistic uncertainty with familiar content (e.g., Acredolo, O'Connor, Banks, & Horobin, 1989;Brainerd, 1981). In fact, even infants have basic probabilistic intuitions (Téglás, Girotto, Gonzalez, & Bonatti, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

Different developmental patterns of simple deductive and probabilistic inferential reasoning

Markovits

Thompson

2008

Memory & Cognition

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dIn three studies, we examined simple counterexample-based and probabilistic reasoning in children 6, 7, and 9 years of age. In the first study, participants were asked to make conditional (if-f f then) inferences under both categorical (certain or uncertain) and probabilistic instructions. Results showed that 6-year-olds respond to both forms of inference in similar ways, but whereas probabilistic conditional inferences showed little development over this p period, categorical inferences clearly improved between 6 and 7 years of age. An analysis of the children's justifications indicated that performance under categorical instructions was strongly related to counterexample generation at all ages, whereas this was true only for the younger children for inferences under probabilistic instructions. These findings were replicated in a second study, using problems that referred to concrete stimuli with varying p probabilities of inference. A third study tested the hypothesis that children confused probability judgments with judgments of confidence and demonstrated a clear dissociation between these two constructs. Overall, these judgments of confidence and demonstrated a clear dissociation between these two constructs. Overall, these results show that children are capable of accurate conditional inferences under probabilistic instructions at a very t early age and that the differentiation between categorical and probabilistic conditional reasoning is clear by at least 9 years of age. These results are globally consistent with dual-process theories but suggest some difficulties for the way that the analytic-heuristic distinction underlying these theories has been conceptualized.

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“…1). In addition, FTT accounts for results showing that advanced probabilistic understanding is intuitive: emphasis on verbal explanations was discarded after the first generation of theories because it was found to be an unreliable gauge of understanding (4). Subsequent research showed that preverbal intuition could reflect advanced understanding (15,16), but some theories continued to emphasize numbers and computation.…”

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confidence: 99%