CLOA Studies Flashcards
Bartlett ‘War of the Ghosts’ (1932)
1932
Aim: investigate whether people memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge (schemas) and the extent to which memory is reconstructive.
Method: British participants heard a story and reproduced it after a short time and then repeatedly over months and years (serial reproduction). The story was an unfamiliar native american folktale called ‘war of the ghosts;
Findings:
-remembered main idea of the idea but changed unfamiliar elements to make sense of the story by using terms more familiar to their own cultural expectations.
e.g. ‘seal hunting’->’fishing’ ‘canoe’->’boat’
-story remained a coherent whole, although it was changed.
-became shorter for each reproduction
-Bartlett: remembering is an active process, memories are not copies of experiences but rather ‘reconstruction’
Evaluation
-provides evidence for the existence of schemas and the concept of reconstructive memory
-didnt use standardised procedure or clear research method=replication difficult=reliability of findings can’t be checked
-British participants only=low generalisability to wider population
Anderson and Pichert (1977)
1977
Aim: to investigate if schema processing influenced both encoding and retrieval.
Method: participants told 72 point story about 2 boys which described a house and various things and objects within the house e.g. TV, leaky roof
-before-1/2 told house buyer 1/2 told burglar
-told read story from point of view of that person
-once read performed distraction task 12 minutes before recalling the story
-then further delay 5 mins, before asked to recall again
-before second recall, 1/2 each group retained original schema and 1/2 were given the other schema to their original one
Findings
-participants changed schema group recalled 7% more points in 2nd recall
-recall points that were directly linked to new schema increased by 10%, whereas points important to previous schema declined
-participants that didnt change recalled less in 2nd trial
Conclusion: schema processing must have some effect at retrieval as well as encoding
Evaluation
-control established cause&effect relationship on how schemas affect different memory processes
-lab=low EV
Clive Wearing
Suffered from a viral infection encephalitis which caused him damaged to his hippocampus and left him with memory impairment.
As a result, Clive Wearing can no longer form memories and can only remember a few things from before his infection.
For example, he can still remember how to read, write, play the piano and remember his wife.
However, because his memory only lasts around 30 seconds he can’t transfer information from his short term memory to his long term memory and so experiences ‘waking up’ around every 20 seconds.
This supports the model because it shows that there are separate short term memory store and long term memory store and also gives evidence to show that they short term memory has a limited duration.
The Free Recall Test
Participants are given a list of 20 words and asked to recall as many of them as possible.
Findings:
• Items from the test show that participants remember the first few words at the start of the list well because they are first to enter the stm and so have time to be rehearsed and transferred to the ltm.
• Items in the middle of the list are remembered less well as an increasing number of items fills the stm they don’t have time to be rehearsed properly.
• Words at the end of the list are also remembered well due to the recency effect, this means that they are recalled from the stm as they are last to enter the stm and are not displaced by further items.
This supports the msm as it gives evidence for the exsistence of different stores as well as that the stores do differ in capacity, duration and coding.
Gathercole (1993)
1993
• Participants had to follow a dot of light whilst half the participants also had to describe the angles of a hollow f and the other half also had to perform and verbal task.
• The half that had to describe the angles of a hollow f found this very difficult as they were using their visuo-sketchpad for both.
However, the group that had to perform and verbal task whist following the dot of light had little difficulty with this as they were using both their processing systems.
H.M
H.M. suffered from epileptic seizures when he fell off a bike aged 7, he had brain surgery in 1953 when he was 27 which involved removal of part of the hippocampus to alleviate the severe symptoms of epilepsy. Although the surgery controlled the epileptic seizures H.M. suffered serious and debilitating memory impairment. He could not create new episodic and semantic memories, but he could learn some procedural. His personality and IQ remained unchanged.
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
1974
Aim: To investigate how information provided to a witness after an event influenced their memory of that event.
Method:
45 college students split into 5 groups of 9 were asked to watch a 5-30 second clip of a traffic accident. After viewing the clip, they were asked a series of questions, the most important question being ‘About how fast were the cars going when they………. into each other’. Each group had one of the following verbs in the blank, smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted. The independent variable of the experiment was the verb used and the dependent variable was the estimate of the speed. They wanted to see how much the independent variable affected the dependant variable.
Findings:
Showed that the way the question was phrased influenced their estimate of the speed the cars were going. The more severe the participants perceived the verb to be the higher they estimate that speed of the car to be going. For the verb ‘smashed’ the mean estimation of speed was 40.8mph, however for the verb ‘contacted’ this was just 31.8mph.
Use: Therefore, the study demonstrates that there are two kinds of information that go into a person’s memory, the persons own perception and information given after an event for example leading questions.
Study therefor provides evidence for the unreliable nature of memory as information given to a person after an event can affect how they remember that event.
Evaluation
+
• The lab environment allows for standardised procedures which can easily be replicated to test the reliability of the findings
• Students are also good participants as they are used to paying attention and taking tests so therefore are motivated to take part.
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• The task of having to watch a car accident and having to judge the speed of the cars is low in mundane realism
• The experiment also took place in lab, there for it is low in ecological validity and so the artificial environment could have led to demand characteristics
• They also only used college students therefor the ability to generalise the findings to the wider population is low
• The driving ability of the participants is unknown therefore the task could have been very difficult for them
Cole and Scribner (1974)
Aim: to investigate free recall in two different countries, Liberia and USA.
Method: researcher presented a list of familiar words which belonged to 4 categories to Liberia children and a list of words familiar to USA children which belonged to differ categories. They then asked them to recall the words in any order. In the second part of the experiment they presented the items in a more meaningful way as part of a story.
Finding: They found that the schooled children from Liberia recalled as well as the children from the USA and the children used similar memory strategies. They also found that in the second experiment the non-schooled Liberia children recalled the words well as they grouped them according to the role they played in the story. The school children from both Liberia and the USA used chunking and categorization to help them, whilst the non-schooled children did not. This indicates that there are possible cultural differences in cognitive processes such as categorization and memory.
Use: indicates possible cultural differences in cognitive processes such as categorization an memory. Also social differences as schooled children from both countries used the same technique and non-schooled children used different.
Evaluation: the extent to which it is culture or schooling that affects memory is not very clear. Also the experimental environment may have helped establish an independent variable and establish a cause-effect relationship, however because the independent variable was culture it’s hard to say anything definite about a cause-effect relationship.
Rogoff and Waddel (1982)
1982
Found that Mayan children did better in memory tasks if they were given one that was meaningful to them in local terms.
Researched constructed miniature model of the children own Mayan village. They then selected 20 miniature objects from set of 80 and placed them in the model. They were then taken out the model and placed with the other 60 objects. After a few minutes the researchers asked the children to reconstruct the scene. In these conditions, Mayan children did better than children from the USA.
Use: This study also shows that the content and context of a memory task are important and that useful memory strategies are learned in a sociocultural context.
Corkin et al (1997)
1997
A study which uses MRI scans to investigate the cognitive process of memory was conducted by Corking (1997). Corkin used MRI scans to analyse the extent to which the damage to H.Ms brain affected his memory. H.M suffered from a head injury during childhood which left him suffering from epileptic seizure. An experimental operation was performed by Scoville in attempt to stop the seizures. During the operation the tissue from the temporal lope and the hipposcampus was removed. Although it stopped the seizure it left him with antergrade amnesia.
The scas showed that parts of the hippocampus and temporal lobe were missing, therefore the study shows that the hippocampus is vital in the transfer of information from the stm to the ltm.
Limitations of this study include the ethics of placing venerable adults such as H.M in a MRI scanner, however it provides objective evidence for the role of the hippocampus in memory formation.
Bremner et al (2003)
2003
Aim: to measure the volume of the hippocampus based in the theory that prolonged stress may reduce the volume of the hippocampus due to cortisol levels.
Method: participants were veterans and female adults who had experienced early childhood sexual abuse. Some had developed PTSD. MRI scans were made of the brains of the participants and participants completed memory tests
Results: hippocampus was smaller in PTSD patients than the control group. Veterans with the most memory problems had the smaller hippocampus. Correlation between years of abuse, memory problems and hippocampal volume.
People suffering from PTSD often suffer from other psychological disorders (e.g. depression) which could perhaps also play a role in the observed changes in the brain.
Use: through research gained through MRI scans, they were able to suggest stress causes the volume of the hippocampus to decrease and causes deficits in STM.
Evaluation:
+
method triangulation-participants also completed memory tests.
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small sample-difficult to say anything definite about the correlation between trauma and hippocampal volume.
There could be alternative explanations to differences in hippocampal volume (e.g. that people who suffer from PTSD often suffer from depression as well). Depression is also associated with reduction of the hippocampus. However, the findings of a large reduction of the hippocampus. However, the findings of a large reduction of hippocampal volume in combat-related PTSD has been replicated many times.
Schacter and Singer (1962)
Aim: to test the two factor theory of emotion by using the hormone adrenaline. They proposed that while adrenaline could cause emotion, the nature of the emotion was dependent on contextual factors. They also proposed that different emotions might be the same psychological changes in the body, that the brain labels through cognitive processing of the context.
Method: 184 male volunteers were told that they would receive a vitamin injection before taking part in a vision experiment. They were split into 4 groups, 3 being given a shot of adrenaline and 1 receive a placebo injection of saline. The 3 groups were told that they might experience the following side effects, group 1- increased heart rate and shaky hand, these were real side effects of the injection. Group 2- not given any information about side effects and group 3- might experience headaches and numbness/itchy feet.
The researcher created two environments to manipulate the participant’s emotions
1- Waiting room where they were encouraged to play games (euphoria)
2- Aimed to promoted anger by putting them in a room with an angry confederate getting annoyed at a personal questionnaire.
Findings: participants that were given information on the effects of adrenaline showed minimal changes in their emotion because they had an explanation for their emotion. Participants who had been told no effects showed much higher changes because they had no explanation for their state of emotion. They concluded that emotions occsur by the process of cognitive labelling. The interpretation of physiological cues in combined with contextual cues to construct a person’s subjective experience of emotion.
Evaluation: a lab experiment therefore it was controlled so it can be replicated to test reliability however a limitation of the study would be that the method was unethical as it involves deception and it was invasive.
Connection: This study supports that a combination of physiological change (adrenaline) and cognitive labelling (appraisal of the situation) can contribute to changes in emotion.
Speisman et al (1964)
1964
Aim: to investigate the effects of appraisal on autonomic arousal. The way cognitive appraisal affects body responses to stressful situations.
Method: the researcher showed participants a stressful film of aboriginal boys undergoing circumcision in the context of a puberty rite. The film was accompanied by a soundtrack, this soundtrack was different for each if the 4 groups the participants were spilt into, in order to define experimental conditions.
1- Trauma condition- the pain experienced by the boys and the use of a sharp knife was emphasized
2- Denial condition- the boys anticipation of entering manhood was pointed out, so de-emphasizing the negative aspects of the film
3- Intellectualization- the soundtrack ignored the emotional aspects of the situation and emphasized instead the traditions of aboriginal culture
4- Silent- no soundtrack in this condition
Findings: arousal state was highest in the trauma condition and lowest in the intellectualization and silent conditions. So the way the participants appraised what they were seeing in the film affected their physiological reaction to it.
Evaluation: Methodological problems – It is possible that the participants’ reactions were primarily affected by the music, not that the music affected the appraisal of the situation. And ethical issue of protection from harm.
Strengths- fMRI scans have shown that cognitive appraisals correlate with biological responses, therefore supporting Lazarus’s theory. Most contemporary theories agree with Lazarus and claim that cognitive appraisals occur automatically outside conscious awareness. Whalen et all (1998) has shown this through imaging data which demonstrated activation of the amygdala.
Connection: supports that cognitive factors do interact in emotion to a great extent.
DiMaggio (1977)
1977
Suggests that schemas are representations of knowledge and mechanisms that simplify cognition in the form of ‘cognitive shortcuts’. Schematic cognition is shaped and biased by culture.
Darley and Gross (1983)
- Carried out a lab experiment on schema processing in social world
- in lab experiment, participants saw two videos of girls. In video 1 a girl was playing in a poor environment, in video 2 a girl was playing in a rich environment. They then saw a video of a girl in what could be an intelligence test
- when the participants were asked to judge the future of the girls, they all said that the ‘rich’ girl would do well and the ‘poor’ girl would do less well
- the study suggests that the participants used pre-stored schemas of what it means to be rich and poor and interpreted the ambiguous information accordingly. Participants processed information based on a few salient details to form an overall impression that may or may not be correct.
