cognitive Flashcards
WHAT is the key question
How can psychologists understanding of memory help patients with dementia?
WHY is it a key question
850 000 people in the UK suffer from dementia having symptoms such as memory loss, slow thinking and low understandment
knowledge from psych applied
- Dementia patients begin by forgetting life events (more recent = most effected)
- explained by TULVING theory of LTM
- episodic memories (autobiographical) are effected before semantic (factual)
- This suggests dementia patients may need the help of external sources to remember events E.g. a diary or post it notes
knowledge applied
WM
WORKING MEMORY
- central executive impared
- dementia patients struggle to multi task and follow instructions
BADDELEY - alzheimers
1. verbal digit span
2. visual tracking
3. dual task (peformence declined)
- SIMPLIFY instructions so that stores arent working simultaniously
limitation to how cognitive psych can help
- Doesnt explain why newer memories are lost first
- models only help with stratergies to cope it doesnt provide a treatment
- models are oversimplified - doesnt give us gender differences
- tasks (dual tasks + digit strings) lack eco.v cant be applied to real life
Conclusion
Psychologist reaserch into cognitive psychology can help dementia patients through using external sources such as writing stuff down to help with episodic memory and can simplify instructions so that two stores arent working together simultaniously due to the impared central executive