Cognition Flashcards
What does cognition mean?
THINKING- the process of perceiving and storing information, decision making etc
What is an eye witness?
Someone who has witnessed an event first hand
What is the assumption of the cognitive area?
Assumes behaviour is influenced by inner mental process
What 2 things can affect memories as an eyewitness?
- what we actually see
- information gained after an event (e.g leading questions)
What is the aim of l&f first experiment?
To investigate whether leading questions given after witnessing an event can Influence memory
What is the aim of l&f second experiment?
Whether memory of accidents can be changed/ distorted by verbs
What is a leading question?
The language used when questioning eyewitnesses May lead then to give certain answers
How many participants took part in l&f?
- 45
- 150 (50 in each category)
Where were the participants from? L&f
- students from university of Washington
What was the procedure for l&f 1st
7 film clips were watched of traffic accidents
They were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe what they saw and answers a ‘hidden’ critical question
The very changed depending on condition
What was the critical question for 1st l&p?
How fast were the cars going when they… into each other?
Estimated in mph
What were the 5 verbs?
Smashed Hit Collided Bumped Contacted
What was the mean estimate of speed when the cars SMASHED?
40.8mph
What was the mean estimate of speed when the cars CONTACTED
31.8mph
What was the conclusion of l&p experiment 1?
Memory is affected by leading questions- the intensity of very changed memories
What was the procedure for l&p experiment 2?
All participants watched a 1 min film clip of multiple 4 second accidents
They were asked a question - “how fast were the cars going even they…. into each other?”
Allocated 3 conditions
Went home for 1 week
Asked the closed question
What was the 3 conditions for l&p
Smashed
Hit
Control
What was the closed question? L&p
“Did you see any broken glass? Yes or no”
What are the results for experiment 2 l&p?
Response. Smashed. Hit. Control
Saw. 16. 7. 6
Didn’t 34. 43. 44
What is the conclusion from l&p2
Leading questions after an event can reconstruct a persons memory
What is context dependent memory?
When we remember better if the context is the same at encoring and retrieval
Why did grant want to study cdm?
To build in research
To see if students memory recall in exams could improve by having the same context at e & r
What was the aim of grants study?
If performance on memory test is improved when the environment is the same at encoding and retrieval compared to different environments
Who took part in grants study?
- 40 participants - 39
- 17-56 age
- 17 female, 23 male
- mean age 23.4
What was the procedure for grant?
Participants were allocated 1 of the 4 conditions
8 experiments randomly assigned participants
A lead researched assigned one participant to remove bias
What were the 4 conditions?
Noisy noisy
Silent, silent
Silent, noisy
Noisy silent
What was the procedure for grant?
Standardised instructions (voluntary) Read an article on psychoimmunology Studied in silent or noisy All wore headphones Reading time was recorded 2 min break I between testing Rested without headphone Short & multiple choice questions Debrief
What does standardisation improve in a study?
Reliability
What is the conclusion for grants study?
Memory is improved by environment when context is the same
Students perform better if minimal background noise as not present in exams
