cog erq prep Flashcards
Models of Memory
Study 1: Serial Position Effect
Aim:
Procedure:
- participants listened to a recording of 20 words, and did a free recall for 2 minutes. Condition 1 immediately did the recall, condition 2 did a filler task and then did the recall.
Results:
- Condition one remembered beginning and end, condition2 remembered beginning
Findings:
- primacy and recency effect
○ Primacy – things at the beginning of the list are better remembered
○ Recency – most recent things are remembered better (not in condition 2 because it went out of short term by the time the filler task was over
Study 2: Phonological Similarity Effect
Aim: Test the phonological similarity effect
Procedure:
- Participants given lists of letters
- 2 groups: letters are phonetically similar (rhyme), letters are not phonetically similar (don’t rhyme)
- Participants asked to recall letters
Results:
- When the letters are phonologically different, participants recall more
Findings:
- difficult to distinguish acoustically similar info (processed similarly)
- Auditory info is processed through phonological loop
Schema Theory
Study 1: Bransford and Johnson
Aim: To determine the relationship between amount and type of context provided.
Procedure:
- The procedure used was to have 5 different groups with different amounts of type of context provided, and observe how much information they retain from listening to an audio description.
Results:
- The results of this experiment were that those who received context beforehand were more able to retain information.
Findings:
- The findings were that having prior schemas help us more effectively encode large amounts of unfamiliar information.
Evaluative point:
- This experiment had relatively high internal validity - however its external validity was limited by the lack of ecological validity. This makes the findings less generalizable.
Study 2: Native American Story Study
Aim: to study how memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge
Procedure:
- A Native American legend is told to British participants, who were divided into two conditions: repeated reproduction (asked to repeat the story after a short while and then again and again after several weeks) and serial reproduction.
Results:
- no significant difference between the way groups recalled the story three distortions: more consistent with cultural expectations, shorter, order of the story changed to make sense of it. Overall themes were consistent but unfamiliar elements were changed to match cultural expectations.
Findings:
- people remember in terms of what makes sense to them, thus memory is subject to distortions based on schemas
Evaluative point
- Higher ecological validity - however, this result is highly specific to a given culture, don’t know if its ecologically generalizable
Thinking & Decision-Making
-Rational (controlled)
-Intuitive thinking (automatic)
Stroop test:
Aim: Investigate the dual process model
Procedure:
- Participants read through 2 tests, where the participant has to state the color of the word. In one test the word itself is the same as its color, while the other test had the word being a different color. Each test is timed.
Results:
- When the color and word did not align, the response is much slower.
Findings:
- This supports the dual processing model since reading the word is faster and uses system 1 while getting the color uses system 2 because we do not usually do this task. So it’s easier to do the task when we can just rely on reading the word instead of identifying its color
Study 2: Handwriting Font Test
Aim: To determine how handwriting impacts sys 1 and 2 processing
Procedure:
- Given passage w/ either easy-to-read or difficult-to-read font
- Take test on passage
Results:
- Participants w/ difficult-to-read scored higher
Findings:
- Cognitive disfluency leads to more rational thinking
- Humans have 2 separate systems of cognition
Reconstructive Memory
Study 1: Yield Sign Study
Aim: This study sought to determine the impact of verbal misinformation on visual memory
Procedure:
- Have people choose which image they saw (some had stop signs and some had yield signs) after some were presented with a verbal statement that was consistent with their visual stimulus and some were given contradictory information.
Results:
- The contradictory information made it harder for people to recognize the right image. This effect was exacerbated by the passage of a week’s time, implying that memory becomes even more unreliable after time passes.
Findings:
- Reconstructive memory becomes even more unreliable with the passage of time and can be influenced by post event information
Evaluative:
- One limitation of this research is in its methodology in that it uses a really niche task that people are not accustomed to in order to test the impact of time passing on memory.
Study 2: Car Crash Study
Aim: To determine the impact of language on reconstructive memory
Procedure:
- Researchers described a video of a car crash with different words and then asked people to recall whether or not there was broken glass.
Results:
- The results were that people were more likely to remember broken glass when there was none if the verb used to describe the event was more violent.
Findings:
- Introducing information after an event has the potential to influence our actual memory of this event
Biases in thinking & decision making
Study 1: Judge Sentencing Study
Aim: To determine if a simple request for a certain length of prison sentence would unduly influence the decision made by a judge.
Procedure:
- Presented judges with identical cases of a rape trial and asked them to come up with an appropriate sentence for the criminal
- Only manipulated measure was that one group was given a higher recommendation from the prosecutor
Results:
- On average, when presented with a more severe sentencing recommendation the judge sentenced more time
Findings:
- We heavily rely on initial pieces of information presented, supporting the existence of anchoring bias and suggesting that over-reliance on system 1 processing can lead to faulty judgement
Study 2: Anchoring Effect Multiplication Study
Aim: To determine if changing the anchor in a math problem impacts the estimates people provide for it
Procedure:
- Present two groups of students with the same factorial but just in different orders (ascending or descending) and have them estimate an answer within 5 seconds
Results:
- The median score guessed by participants when their anchor was low was substantially lower than when their anchor was the highest number
Findings:
- Anchors have the ability to impact our thinking, especially when we are just using system 1 processing
The influence of emotion on cognitive processes
Study 1: Individualism and Collectivism FBM
Aim: To determine how people in individualistic vs collectivist cultures experience FBM differently
Procedure:
- Participants were asked to recall as many national events as possible from at least a year ago during their lifetime
- Then, participants were given a questionnaire asking about where the participants were when they heard of the event, what they were doing, etc and then they were asked how personally or nationally/internationally significant the event was and other questions about how much the person talks about the event, etc
Results:
- In collectivistic cultures, like China, personal relevance played less of a role in predicting the formation of a FBM than it did in more individualistic cultures that stress the importance of personally relevant events.
- National relevance was equally predictive across collectivist and individualist cultures
Findings/implications:
- In individualist cultures, the rehearsal of personally significant events is more common and frequent, and thus FBM memories are more likely to form for personally significant events in individualistic cultures, demonstrating that culture plays a role in the rehearsal of memory. However, this finding is undermined to some extent by the fact that FBM for nationally significant events were not more or less common in individualist or collectivist cultures.
Study 2: 9/11 FBM Study
Aim: To determine the neural basis for FBM as well as to understand the factors that are strong predictors of whether or not an FBM will be formed
Procedure:
- Asked questions regarding 9/11 a week, a year, and 2 years after the event.
- Looked for predictors of whether or not your 9/11 memories were exceptionally vivid
- Those with more vivid memories were looked at under an fMRI - compared activation when people were talking about random events from that summer vs the bombing
Results:
- The best predictor of whether or not someone had a flashbulb memory was how close you are to the world trade center
- More amygdala activation in those closer to WTC
Findings:
- Suggests the existence of a unique neural basis of FBM (fMRI amygdala activation)
