Baddley s Information Flow describes the world information and memory in 3 main things Sensory memory holds raw sensory input Short term primary working memory processes and holds information for several seconds This gets better with age Long term memory is vast and relatively permanent This flow corresponds to the three main processes of memory 1 Encoding noticing something and sending it from sensory to short term memory 2 Storage using organizational methods taking things from short term memory and putting them in long term memory 3 Retrieval pulling stuff out of long term memory Metacognition executive control processes involved in planning and monitoring what is attended to and what is done with memory input Basically it is thinking about thinking Babies forget and can be prompted to remember forgotten material 2 month olds can remember 1 3 days ago 6 month olds can remember 15 16 days ago However this is a very fragile window of time For example a 6 month old might not remember something that happened yesterday if the environment has changed in some significant way Carolyn Rovee Collier demonstrated the saving effect it is easier for infants to learn something if they learned and forgot it then if they never learned it at all Fuzzy Trace Theory People encode experiences on a continuum ranging from crystal clear to vague and unclear We use the phrase fuzzy to refer to memories where we remember the basic gist of what happened but not Three strategies we use to boost memory Rehearsal repeating things to remember them better 3 4 year olds rarely rehearse so they rarely remember verbal information 7 10 year olds rehearse a lot more and do it more efficiently so it s a lot easier to get them to remember stuff Organization Is used by 9 10 year olds to help them keep everything together Involves Elaboration Rarely used before adolescence By adding more details you remember it arranging information into chunks easier However these strategies can lead to stereotyping ignoring atypical outliers and creating false memories That s because memories are gist based we don t remember everything in crystal clear detail we just know the general gist of a memory Children have an autobiographical memory that keeps track of information in their own life This makes them particularly susceptible to false memories if someone else suggests something Children s scripted memory is one type of this that begins at age 2 The script is essentially a routine for how things are supposed to go meal time bed time bathtime and more The script is concrete enough that it overrides small discrepancies IE bath time still happens even if they re missing their rubber duck Reading requires a few things It starts with knowing letters and reading sounds phonological awareness 1 2 Then the children have to know the connection between sound and meaning decoding 3 Finally we have to recognize the whole word whole word recognition This might be different if certain characters are used for a whole word which we call logographic systems 4 Familiarity and context boost the speed of all of these things In counting just as in reading children must associate digits with quantities and even remember the order in which those numbers should appear Unfortunately children aren t perfect at first Early counting shows a one to one principle whereby children ages 3 and 4 will say numbers for each object but are quite creative with the order After children develop the stable order principle they have difficulty understanding the importance of the final number in a count but sometime around 4 to 5 years of age they understand the cardinality principle that the last number is the number of objects This is when formal math understanding begins and children can start to do mental arithmetic Mental arithmetic is initially counting based whereby children literally count all objects or count up from the first amount Later similar to how reading goes from sounding out to whole word recognition mental arithmetic is based on fact retrieval Why do children fail at tasks Fail to encode all of the information centration Fail to know essential facts Confuse information Why do children succeed at tasks Know heuristics Means end analysis Learning disabilities include dyslexia difficulty with reading dysgraphia trouble with handwriting dyscalculia difficulty with learning math and math facts Children have difficulty transferring skills from different areas of learning