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The differences in the memory functioning of children, adults, and the elderly

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The purpose of this paper is to understand how cognitive processes develop from childhood through old age, and how children's/elderly individuals' cognitive processes differ from that of adults. Choose an area of cognition(e.g., memory, language, cognitive mapping, attention). Based on the area you selected, and utilizing at least four scholarly sources, write an paper outlining the differences between children, the elderly, and young adults in the area you selected. Refer to the "Suggested Resources," but you may use any scholarly sources you wish. Address the following questions:
How do children differ from adults in the area?
Are there differences based on age within each group?
How do the elderly differ from young/middle adults in the area?
What are some suggested ways to improve performance in this area in children and the elderly?

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This solution describes the differences in the memory functioning of children, adults, and the elderly

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Children seem to differ from adults in the area of memory, due to the fact that children are usually able to receive and process a great deal more information than adults. This seems to be largely due to the fact that children's brains are very open to new experiences, due to the fact that they are actively engaged in learning about the environment, which causes them to be more consciously aware of minor details within their environment than most adults would. In addition, children's brains are growing at a faster rate than adult brains, which is commensurate with the astronomical rate of cell multiplication within other areas of a child's body as they grow and develop. Due to this factor children would tend to take in more information in direct proportion to their ability to process and store this information, as that brains grow and develop. Therefore the fundamental physiological methodologies of how children and adults receive information through their senses, compare this stimuli to other stored stimuli, and store this stimuli biochemically as memories in differing areas of the brain, are basically the same. But the key difference between memory in children and adults, is the fact that children tend to utilize their memory more inefficiently than adults, due to the fact that adults have more experience in deciding what information is more important to recall and utilize in day-to-day activities, based upon their experience and memories of positive outcomes that have been produced by recalling and utilizing certain memorized information. This makes adults much more effective at processing new ...

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