Cognitive Area Flashcards
What are the defining principles of the Cognitive area?
Our mid is like an information processor, a computer that inputs behaviour, our behaviour (output) is influenced by the way we process information (input)
- Cognitive psychologists investigate thinking by manipulating what people take into their minds and observing their behaviour.
What are the strengths of the Cognitive Area?
- scientific, based mainly on laboratory experiments/ standardised procedures means that conclusions are reliable(external)
- experiments are likely to be high in internal validity, as they will attempt to control all EV to establish cause and effect.
- many useful applications in real world, therapy or eyewitness testimony.
- computer models can be made to test what we cannot on humans.
What are the weaknesses of the Cognitive area?
- Only looks for causes of our behaviour in our thought processes and so it is reductionist as it ignores that behaviour could be come from our social environment or our biology.
- Lab experiments low in ecological validity because they are artificial. Cannot be confident about generalising.
- Ignores individual differences, it thinks we all work the same.
- cognition is a hypothetical construct.
What are the applications of the Cognitive area?
- Eyewitness testimony
- cognitive interview
- Depression
- Therapies to address faulty thinking
- Education
What is the background to moray?
-Cherry (The cocktail party) introduced the idea of “shadowing” a dichotic message and found that participants would remember very little of the other message.
-Broadbent’s (1958) Filter model suggested that information from incoming stimuli enters a sensory buffer where it is selected on the basis of its physical characteristics for further processing and is passed through a filter.
What is the aim to Moray’s study?
To test Cherry’s findings more rigorously by using a dichotic listening task to determine the amount of information recognised in a rejected message, the effect of hearing one’s own name in an unattended message, the effect of instructions to identify a specific target in a rejected message and other factors such as if salient information.
What is the sample to Moray’s study?
Male and female undergraduates and research workers. For experiment 1 the number was not stated but 12 took part in experiment 2 and two groups of 14 in experiment 3. Small sample of undergraduates which is unlikely to be representative of everyone and so cannot explain everyone’s auditory attention and so results lack population validity.
What is the research method and design in Moray’s study?
-A laboratory experiment
-Experiment 1 used a repeated measures design where the IVs were the dichotic listening test and the recognition test and the DV was the number of words correctly recognised in the rejected message
-Experiment 2 used an independent measures design where the IV was whether or not instructions were prefixed by the participant’s own name and the DV was the mean number of affective (name) instructions vs non affective (no name) instructions
-Experiment 3 used an independent measures design where the IVs were whether digits were inserted into both messages or only one and whether the participants had to answer questions about the shadowed message at the end of the passage or whether participants had to merely remember all the numbers they could. The DV for this experiment was the number of digits correctly reported
What is the procedure to Moray’s study?
-stereophonic tape recorder modified with two amplifiers to give two independent outputs one going to each of the earpieces of a pair of headphones
-Before each experiment the participants were given 4 passages of prose to shadow for practice. All the passages throughout the study were recorded by one male speaker.
What happened in experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
-list of simple words was repeatedly presented 35 times to one of the participant’s ears whilst they shadowed a message to the other ear and the word list was faded in after shadowing had begun
-The participant was then asked to report all they could remember of the content of the rejected message. 30 seconds after this had finished they were given a control recognition test containing similar material present in neither the list nor the passage.
What happened in Experiment 2 of Moray’s study?
-to investigate the limits of the efficiency of the attentional block to see if anything could break through it. Participants were shown 10 short passages of light fiction and told that their responses would be recorded and the object of the experiment was for them to score as few mistakes as possible
-Half of the cases with instructions were prefixed by the participants’ own name. The table below shows the order of presentation. The ‘no instructions’ passages were inserted at random.
What happened in experiment 3 of Moray’s study?
this experiment aimed to test this further to see if other types of information would do the same. Participants shadowed one of two simultaneous dichotic messages; in some messages digits were inserted towards the end of the message and sometimes present in both messages and sometimes only in one. The position of the numbers in the messages and in relation to each other randomly varied and there was a control condition were no numbers were inserted. One group of participants were told that they would be asked questions about the content of the shadowed message at the end of each message and the other group was specifically instructed to remember all the numbers they could
What ere the findings of experiment 1 Moray?
Words from early in the shadowed message were recognised which suggests that the 30 second delay was unlikely to have caused the rejected material to be lost. Overall the findings support Cherry’s findings as significantly more words were remembered from the shadowed message
-4.9 out of 7- to the rejected 1.9 out of 7
What were the findings of experiment 2 in Moray’s study?
Heard 20 of the 39 of affective instructions and 4 out of 36 of inaffective.
What were the findings of experiment 3 in Moray’s study?
No significant difference in the number of digits recalled in either condition.
What were the conclusions of Moray’s study?
when a participant directs their attention to the message in one ear, almost non of the verbal content in the rejected ear can penetrate the block, ‘important’ messages such as a persons name can penetrate the block and it is very difficult to make ‘neural’ material important enough to break the block
What is the background to loftus and palmer?
Bartlett’s war of the ghosts
two young men went down to the river it became foggy and calm and they heard war cries. warriors went on river and they began to fight they were all ghosts. when sun rose he fell down and he was dead.
-Memory involves interpreting what is seen or heard, recording bits of it and then reconstructing these bits into memories when required.
-This study focuses on the effects of ‘leading questions’ on an individual’s ability to accurately remember events
How does loftus and palmer link to the cognitive area?
This study shows the impact that post-event information can have on memory, even to the point of producing false memories.
what were the 5 verbs used in Loftus and Palmers study?
hit, smashes, bumped, collided, contacted
What happened in experiment 1 of loftus and palmers research method?
- This was a laboratory experiment using an independent measures design.
- The independent variable (IV) was the wording of a critical question hidden in a questionnaire. This question asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they hit / smashed / collided / contacted / bumped each other?”
- The dependent variable (DV) was the estimated speed given by the participant.
What happened in experiment 2 of loftus and palmers research method?
- This was also a laboratory experiment using an independent measures design.
- The independent variable (IV) was the wording on a question in a questionnaire:
- One group was asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”
- A second group was asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”
- A third group was not asked about speed.
- One week later, all participants were asked to complete another questionnaire which contained the critical question, “Did you see any broken
glass?” - The dependent variable (DV) was whether the answer to this question was, “Yes/No.”
What was the sample of loftus and plamers experiment 1?
- 45 students were divided into five groups with nine participants in each group
What was the sample of loftus and palmers experiment 2?
150 students were divided into three groups with 50 participants in each group
Outline the procedure of experiment 1 in loftus and palmers study?
- All participants were shown the same seven film clips of different traffic accidents which were originally made as part of a driver safety film.
- After each clip participants were given a questionnaire which asked them firstly to describe the accident and then answer a series of questions
about the accident. - There was one critical question in the questionnaire: “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”
- One group was given this question while the other four groups were given the verbs “smashed’, ‘collided’, ‘contacted’ or ‘bumped’, instead of ‘hit’
Outline the procedure of experiment 2 in loftus and palmers study?
- All participants were shown a one-minute film which contained a four-second multiple car crash.
- They were then given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and answer a set of questions about the incident.
- There was a critical question about speed:
- One group was asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”
- Another group was asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”
- The third group did not have a question about vehicular speed.
- One week later, all participants, without seeing the film again, completed another questionnaire about the accident which contained the
further critical question, “Did you see any broken glass – Yes/No?” There had been no broken glass in the original film.
What were the key findings in loftus and palmers study?
-Smashed produced the fastest speed estimates and contacted the slowest.
-For the four staged films where speeds were accurately measured
-More participants in the ‘smashed’ condition (16) than either the ‘hit’ or control groups reported seeing broken glass
-The majority of participants in each group correctly recalled that they had not seen any broken glass
What are possible conclusions of loftus and palmers study?
-The verb used in a question influences a participant’s response ie the way a question is phrased influences the answer given.
-People are not very good at judging vehicular speed.
-Misleading post event information can distort an individual’s memory
What were the theories that Grant was based on?
- Context-dependent memory refers to improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval
are the same. - Context-dependency effects for memory recall are typically interpreted as showing that the characteristics of the environment are encoded as
part of the memory trace and can be used to enhance retrieval of other information in the trace
What was the background to grant?
- Research has shown that context-dependence may play an important role in numerous situations, such as memory for studied material.
- Grant et al were interested in determining whether environmental context-dependency effects would be found with the type of material and
the type of tests typically encountered in school. - Their focus is more on study conditions than on differences in class
What was the aim of grants study?
aimed to show that environmental context can have a more positive effect on performance in a meaningful memory test
when the test takes place in the same environment in which the to-be-remembered material was originally studied (the matching condition)
than when the test occurs in a different environment (mismatching condition).
What was the research method for Grants study?
- This was a laboratory experiment using an independent measures design.
- The independent variables (IVs) were:
(i) whether the participant read the two page article under silent or noisy conditions
(ii) whether the participant was tested under matching or mismatching conditions - The first IV – study context (silent versus noisy) and the second IV – test context (silent versus noisy) were manipulated in a between-subjects
factorial design, producing four conditions. - The dependent variable (DV) was the participant’s performance on (a) a short-answer recall test and (b) a multiple-choice recall test.
What was the sample for Grants study?
Eight members of a psychology laboratory class served as experimenters. Each experimenter recruited five acquaintances to serve as
participants.
* There were 39 participants, ranging in age from 17 to 56 years (M = 23.4, SD = 5.9), 17 were female, 23 were male. (1 participant’s results were
omitted from the analyses.)
Outline the procedure for grants study?
- Each experimenter ran one participant for each of the four conditions and an additional participant for one of the conditions as assigned by the
instructor. Experimenters randomly assigned their participants to their five conditions. - Stimuli
(a) Each experimenter provided his/her own cassette player and headphones, were exact copies made from a master tape of background noise recorded during lunchtime in a university cafeteria. consisted of occasional distinct words/phrases embedded within a general conversational hum that was with the sounds produced by movement of chairs, was played at a moderately loud
(b) A two-page, three-columned article on psychoimmunology (Hales,1984) was selected as the to-be-studied material.
(c) 16 multiple-choice questions, each consisting of a stem and four alternatives were generated, which tested memory for points stated in the text. 10 short-answer questions were derived from those multiple-choice stems that could easily be restated to produce a question that could be answered unambiguously by a single word or phrase. The order of the questions on each test followed the order in which the tested points were made in the text. The short-answer test was always administered first to ensure that recall of information from the article was being
tested and not recall of information from the multiple- choice test.
-Instructions, describing the experiment as a class project and stating that participation was voluntary, were read aloud. - Participants were asked to read the given article once were allowed to highlight and underline as they read.
- Participants were informed that their comprehension would be tested with both a short-answer test and a multiple-choice test.
- All participants wore headphones while they read. Those in the silent condition were told they would not hear anything over the
headphones whilst those in the noisy condition were told they would hear moderately loud background noise, but that they should ignore it. - Reading times were recorded by the experimenters.
- A break of approximately two minutes between the end of the study phase and the beginning of the test phase was incorporated to minimise recall from short-term memory.
- The short-answer test was given, followed by the multiple-choice test.
- Participants were tested in either silent or noisy conditions and were informed of the condition before testing. Regardless of testing
condition, all participants wore headphones. - At the end of the testing phase participants were debriefed concerning the purpose of the experiment.
- The entire procedure lasted about 30 minutes.
What were the findings to grants study?
-Results suggest participants in all groups spent roughly equal amounts of time studying the material. Therefore reading time was used as a
co-variable in the analysis of test performance.
-There was no overall effect of noise on performance
What are the possible conclusions of grants study?
-There are context-dependency effects for newly learned meaningful material regardless of whether a short-answer test or a multiple-choice test
is used to assess learning.
* Studying and testing in the same environment leads to enhanced performance.
* Students are likely to perform better in exams if they study for them with a minimum of background noise because, although there was no
overall effect of noise on performance, the fact that there was evidence for context-dependency suggests they are better off studying without
background noise as it will not be present during actual testing.
What were the theories that simon and chabris study was based on?
-Focused visual attention: the cluttered scenes of everyday life present more objects than an individual can respond towards simultaneously,
and often more than can be fully perceived at any one time. Accordingly, mechanisms of attention are required to select objects of interest for
further processing. In the case of vision, one such mechanism is provided by eye movements, which allow an individual to fixate on particular
regions so they benefit from the greater acuity of the fovea(Driver)
-Attention is necessary for change detection.
What was the background to simon and chabris study?
-Previous studies had shown increasing interest in the issue of the precision of visual representations. In these studies observers had to engage
in a continuous task that required them to focus on one aspect of a dynamic visual scene whilst ignoring others. At some point during the task
an unexpected event occurred
-This study therefore builds on classic studies of divided visual attention to examine inattentional blindness for complex objects and events in
dynamic scenes.
What was the research method to simon and chabris?
- This is primarily a laboratory experiment that used an independent measures design.
- The independent variables (IVs) were whether the participant took part in:
(i) The Transparent/Umbrella Woman condition
(ii) The Transparent/Gorilla condition
(iii) The Opaque/Umbrella Woman condition
(iv) The Opaque Gorilla condition
For each of the four displays there were four task conditions:
(i) White/Easy
(ii) White/Hrad
(iii) Black/Easy
(iv) Black/Hard
- Overall there were therefore 16 individual conditions.
*The dependent variable (DV) was the number of participants in each of the 16 conditions who noticed the unexpected event (Umbrella
Woman or Gorilla). - A controlled observation was subsequently conducted in which participants watched a different video and had to attend to the White team
and engage in the Easy monitoring task
What materials were used in simion and chabris?
-Four video tapes, each 75 seconds-Each tape showed two teams of three players, one team wearing white shirts, the other black shirts, players moved around in a relatively random fashion
-The members of each team passed a standard orange basketball to one another in a standardised order: player 1→ player 2 → player 3 →
player 1. Passes were either bounce or aerial
-After 44-48 seconds of action either of two unexpected events occurred: in the Umbrella-Woman condition, and a the Gorilla condition
-There were two styles of video: in the Transparent condition, the white team, black team and unexpected event were all filmed separately , and
the three video streams were rendered partially transparent and then superimposed by using digital video-editing software. In the Opaque
condition, all seven actors were filmed simultaneously and could thus occlude one another and the basketballs.
What was the sample to simion and chabris study?
*For the experiment: 228 participants (referred to as‘observers’throughout the original study), almost all undergraduate students. Each
participant either volunteered to participate without compensation, received a large candy bar for participating, or was paid a single fee for
participating in a larger testing session including another, unrelated experiment.
- NB: data from 36 participants were discarded so results were used from 192 participants. These were equally distributed across the 16
conditions.
*For the controlled observation: 12 different participants watched the video in which the gorilla thumped its chest.
Outline the procedure of simon and chabris.
-Twenty-one experimenters tested the participants. To ensure standardisation of procedures a written protocol was devised and reviewed with
the experimenters before data collection was begun.
-Before viewing the video tape, participants were told they would be watching two teams of three players passing basketballs and that they
should pay attention to either the team in white (the White condition) or the team in black (the Black condition).
-They were told to keep either a silent mental count of the total number of passes made by the attended team (Easy condition) or separate
silent mental counts of the number of bounce passes and aerial passes made by the attended team (Hard condition).
-They were then asked the following additional questions:
(i) While you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual in the video?
(ii) Did you notice anything other than the six players?
(iii) Did you see a gorilla/woman carrying an umbrella walk across the screen?
-After any “yes”responses, participants were asked to provide details of what they noticed. If at any point a participant mentioned the
unexpected event, the remaining questions were skipped.
-Participants were debriefed; this included replaying the video tape on request
what the findings of simon and chabris study?
-NB: data from 36 participants were discarded for the following reasons:
(i) they already knew about the phenomenon and/or experimental paradigm
(ii) they reported losing count of the passes
(iii) passes were incompletely or inaccurately recorded
(iv) answers could not be clearly interpreted
-Out of all 192 participants across all conditions, 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to notice the unexpected event.
-More participants noticed the unexpected event in the Opaque condition (67%) than the Transparent condition (42%).
-However there was little difference between those attending to the Black team and those attending to the White team in noticing the
Umbrella Woman (Black 62%, White 69%, per condition).
what are the possible conclusions of simon and chabris study?
*Individuals have a sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.
*Individuals fail to notice an ongoing and highly salient but unexpected event if they are engaged in a primary monitoring task.
*Objects can pass through the spatial extent of attentional focus (and the fovea) and still not be ‘seen’ if they are not specifically being attended
to.
*There is no conscious perception without attention.
Evaluation of the cognitive area: application to everyday life
-Cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they observe.
-Cognitive psychology, as a consequence, occasionally suffers from being too abstract and theoretical in nature.
-Experimental studies of mental processes are often carried out using artificial stimuli (such as memory tests with lists of words). They may not represent everyday memory experience.
-May lack external validity.
Evaluation of the cognitive area: less determinist than other approaches
-The cognitive approach is founded on soft determinism - it recognises that our cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know, but that we are free to think before responding to a stimulus.
-This is more of a reasonable “interactionist” position than the hard determinism suggested by some other approaches.
Evaluation of the cognitive area : reductionism
-Computer analogy: even though there are similarities between the human mind and a computer (inputs, storage systems, outputs, the use of a central processor) analogy used by many.
-Machine reductionism ignores the influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system, and how this may affect our ability to process information.
-Research has found that human memory may be affected by emotional factors, such as the influence of anxiety on eyewitnesses.
