Question

MCAT Psychology Tutorial: Cognitive Development vs. Age

Answer 1

\({\bf{Information~Processing~Model:}}\) human brain is comparable to a computer that receives, processes, stores information from the environment

information --> sensory memory --> gets relayed to short-term memory --> processed and possibly discarded, if not --> long-term memory

\({\bf{Piaget's~Stages~of~Cognitive~Development:}}\)
- sensorimotor (0-2 years)
> just learns how to take in sensory information
> shows some deliberate behavior (not just acting on instinct)
> starts to develop object permanence (the idea that objects still exist even if they are hidden)

- preoperational (2-7)
> learns about symbolism
> three obstacles to logic: egocentrism, centration, irreversibility
egocentrism: inability to see from other's perspectives
centration: only focuses on one aspect of a problem while ignoring other important ones
irreversibility: cannot understand that actions can be reversed/undone
> three skills developed during this stage: classification, seriation, conservation
classification: sorting items based on similarities/differences
seriation: sorting items based on a certain property/characteristic
conservation: understanding that an object with a finite volume/size will retain that size even if its appearance is altered

- concrete operational (7-11 or 12ish): have a higher level of logical thinking but cannot handle abstract thought yet

- formal operational (12-16): can handle abstract thought, advancement of classification skills, can infer things and use higher level reasoning

Answer 2

\({\bf{Cognition~at~Old~Age:}}\)
- cognitive abilities tend to decline around ~60 yrs
- memory, verbal reasoning, spatial reasoning, math, etc. tend to decline
- mental processes slow down
- elderly do not use memory techniques as much

- procedural memory and emotional memory tend not to decline
- semantic knowledge may actually improve

Answer 3

Anyway, that's the end of my tutorial, I hope it was a helpful resource. Source material is the 2nd Edition Barron's Prep book for the new MCAT