cognitive area

Question 1

defining principles and concepts of cognitive area

Answer 1

humans are like computers that are information processors. the brain receives, interprets and responds to info, in a similar way to a computer and the response is displayed through an individuals behaviour.

Question 2

strengths of cognitive area

Answer 2

1. help improve our understanding of human behaviour, particularly the extent to which it is affected by the way we think and how our brain processes incoming sensory information
2. extremely useful, practical applications in the real world.
3. favours scientific method, using lab experiment. establishment of cause and effect and brings academic credibility to psychology as a discipline
4. emphasis on controlled scientific study which makes it easier to test studies for reliability, scientific value increases.

Question 3

weaknesses of cognitive ares

Answer 3

1. may not be true if studies lack ecological validity, as lab experiments are used.
2. limitations to the way data is gathered. can only be studied by inference or by interpreting recordings.
3. use of lab experiments increases chance of demand characteristics

Question 4

applications of cognitive area

Answer 4

if individuals receive, process and respond to information in different ways, then their behaviour will be different.

Question 5

loftus & palmer aim

Answer 5

investigate the effects of language on memory. established theory that witnesses are not very good at estimating the speech of vehicles

The effects of leading questions on an individual. ‘s ability to accurately remember events.

The expectation was that any information such reintroduced after the event through leading questions would distort the original memory.

Question 6

loftus & palmer research method

Answer 6

laboratory experiment with independent measures

Question 7

loftus & palmer sample

Answer 7

45 students with 5 conditions and 9 participants in each condition

Question 8

loftus & palmer apparatus

Answer 8

5-30 sec segments
4/7 were staged crashes
set of questionnaires corresponding to the film clips for each participant to complete after each clip

Question 9

loftus & palmer procedure

Answer 9

shown 7 clips of car crashes, presented in a random order and asked to give an account of the accident and of the other set questions, asked to estimate their speeds before the crash with each of the 5 groups having a different verb used in the leading question.

IV = changing wording of the critical question

DV = mean speed estimated in mph.

Question 10

loftus & palmer verbs

Answer 10

‘contacted’, ‘hit’, ‘bumped’, ‘collided’, ‘smashed’

Question 11

loftus & palmer results

Answer 11

people are not good at judging how fast a vehicle is travelling

the form of the question affected the witnesses’ answer

Question 12

loftus & palmer aim 2

Answer 12

see if participants asked the ‘smashed’ question would be more likely than 2 other groups to report seeing broken glass in a filmed accident, when tested 1 week later. they were compared to the ‘hit’ group

Question 13

loftus & palmer sample 2

Answer 13

150 participants with 3 groups and 50 in each group.

Question 14

loftus & palmer apparatus 2

Answer 14

clip lasted less than 1 min with accident lasting 4 sec.

each participant completed 2. 1 questionnaires was completed immediately after and they had to describe the accident in own words and answer a series of questions also estimating speed with different verbs (‘smashed’, ‘hit’)

second questionnaire a week later contained 10 questions and they were asked if they saw any broken glass

Question 15

loftus & palmer results 2

Answer 15

‘smashed’ condition, significantly higher speed estimate than ‘hit’ condition = wording of a question has considerable effect on the estimate of speed

‘smashed’ answered Yes to broken glass than ‘hit’ and control group

Question 16

loftus & palmer conclusions

Answer 16

questions asked subsequent to an event can cause a reconstruction in one’s memory of that event.

the verb used in a question can affect the speed a witness estimates a vehicle to have been travelling at and also whether they recall having seen any broken glass

Question 17

grant aim

Answer 17

investigate context-depedent memory effects on recall and recognition.

Question 18

grant research method

Answer 18

IV = background noise
DV = participants performance on short answered recall test (operationalised recall) and a multiple choice recall test (operationalised recognition) 

both test and study conditions were varied tonsure that it was not the case that ‘nose’ interferes with the encoding of material

independent measures design with controlled laboratory experiment

Question 19

grant sample

Answer 19

8 psychology students and each recruited 5 others to take part = 39 participants (one mans results were disregarded as they were low)

Question 20

grant apparatus

Answer 20

cassette player, headphones, 2 page, 3 column article on psychoimmunology, 10 short answer qs, 16 multiple choice qs

Question 21

grant procedure

Answer 21

each experimenter randomly allocated 1/5 of their participants to each of the 4 conditions and tested the 5th participant in one of the conditions instructed by the lead researcher;
'silent study', silent test'
'silent study', noisy test'
noisy study', 'silent test'
'noisy study, 'noisy test'

Recognition Test = 16 multiple choice, 4 choices

Recall Test = using items from the multiple-choice-test that could be easily rephrased as a question, 10 short answer qs were created to test recall. each was one word/short phrase answer.

Question 22

grant conclusion

Answer 22

there are context-dependency effects for newly learned meaningful material, with best performance being achieved when studying and testing take place in environments that have the same noise level.

although there was no overall effect of noise on performance, the fact that there was evidence for context-dependency, suggests that they are better off studying without background noise as it will not be present during actual testing

Question 23

moray background/aim

Answer 23

Cherry found that participants who shadowed one task could recall nothing of the content ‘rejected’ task, not even noting in which language the other message was being spoken. However, they could distinguish between speech, noise and tones, with changes in pitch.

Moray’s aim was to provide a ‘rigorous’ empirical test of cherry’s findings. moray was interested in what types of message, would penetrate the ‘block’ and be paid attention to by participants

Question 24

moray research method

Answer 24

3 laboratory experiments.. dichotic listening tasks that required participants to shadow one message which 2 messages were played on them, one in each ear.

Question 25

moray sample

Answer 25

undergraduate students and research workers of both sexes.

1st experiment = no sample size provided
2nd experiment = 12
3rd experiment = 14

Question 26

moray apparatus

Answer 26

Brenell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder modified with 2 amplifiers to give 2 independent outputs through attenuators, loudness was matched to the earpieces, completed 4 trial-shadowing tasks on passages of prose, all passages recorded by one male speaker.

Question 27

moray experiment 1

Answer 27

short list of simple words was spoken 35 times as the ‘rejected’ or ‘blocked’ message. at the end of the shadowing task, participants were asked to recall all they could remember of the rejected message. then, approx 30sec after completion of the shadowing tasks, participants were given a recognition test of 21 words.

7/21 were from shadow passage, 7/21 were from rejected message, 7/21 were similar words but not present in either passage (control condition)

Question 28

moray results 1

Answer 28

despite the fact that the short list of words were repeated many times during the intended message, the participants still could not recall them.

Question 29

moray experiment 2

Answer 29

This experiment was conducted to find out the limits of the efficiency of the attentional block.

Participants shadowed 10 short passages of light fiction. They were told that their responses would be recorded and that the object of the experiment was for them to try to score as few mistakes as possible.

In some of the passages, instructions were interpolated, but in 2 instances the participants were not warned of these.

In half of the cases with instructions these were prefixed by the participant’s own name. The ‘no instructions’ passages were interpolated in the table at random.

The passages were read in a steady monotone voice at about 130 words per minute. Participants’ responses were tape-recorded and later analysed.

Question 30

moray results 2

Answer 30

participants own name broke through the ‘block’ on the rejected message and was heard. this supports the claims that a person will hear instructions if they are presented with their own name.

when participants were given a warning at the start of the passage to expect instructions to change ears there was a slight increase in the mean frequency in which they heard instructions in the rejected message

Question 31

moray experiment 3

Answer 31

tested his theory that a pre-warning might mean you are more likely to hear material in the rejected message. This experiment 3, tested his theory.

(independent measures design) 2 groups of 14 participants were asked to shadow 1/2 simultaneous dichotic messages.

some of the messages, digits were spoken towards the end, sometimes numbers were in both, sometimes only in shadow and sometimes only in rejected. control passage had no digits.

IV = told they would be asked questions about the shadow message at end of each message, other group told to remember as many digits as possible.

Question 32

moray results 3

Answer 32

no difference in mean scores of digits recalled correctly between the 2 ‘set conditions’. author concluded that this was because the numbers were unlike the persons own name in experiment 2 and not important enough to break through the ‘block’ on the rejected message

Question 33

moray conclusions

Answer 33

In a situation where a participant directs his attention to the reception of a message from one ear, and rejects a message from the other ear, almost none of the verbal content of the rejected message is able to penetrate the ‘block’.

A short list of simple words presented as the rejected message shows no trace of being remembered even when presented many times.

Subjectively ‘important’ messages, such as a person’s own name, can penetrate the ‘block’: thus, a person will hear instructions if they are presented with their own name as part of the rejected message.

While perhaps not impossible, it is very difficult to make ‘neutral’ material important enough to break through the block set up in dichotic shadowing.

Question 34

simons & chablis aim

Answer 34

Find out whether events that are particularly unusual are more likely to be detected.

The level of difficultly of the focused task was also to be tested – would a more difficult task increase the rate of in-attentional blindness?

The effect of the unusual superimposition and ‘transparency’ of characters in the video used by Neisser: would a more realistic video recording give similar or different findings

Question 35

simons & chablis research method

Answer 35

based at Harvard Uni

controlled laboratory experiment with high-design validity

Question 36

simons & chablis sample

Answer 36

228 participants. some volunteered without payment, some were given large candy part and others received single payment for taking part in this study and another unrelated one.

Question 37

simons & chablis apparatus

Answer 37

4 video tapes with same actors, same day, same location. vid lasted 75sec. showed 2 teams of 3 players each with white and black shirts. passed a standard basketball between them using aerial and bounce passes (behaviour consistent with playing basketball). they passed the ball in a standard order 1-3 then 3-1.

3 x 5 meter area, between 44-48 sec into video the unexpected event occurred; gorilla condition or umbrella woman. there were 2 video conditions; transparent and opaque.

Question 38

simons & chablis procedure

Answer 38

scripted and standardised and a team of 21 experimenters gathered data on 228 participants. tested individually and were informed that the task would involve watching a clip of basket players and pay attention to either the black or the white team and count the number of passes.

task was easy (keep note of number of passes the team made) or hard (keep note of number of aerial and bounced passes the team made)

gave 16 test conditions in total and each participant was only tested in one. after watching the tape they had to record the number of passes on paper and were asked a number of questions including if they noticed anything unusual. if they said yes they were asked to provide details.

Question 39

simons & chablis results

Answer 39

36 results were not included for variety of reasons and left a total of 192. the overall level of inattention blindness recorded was 46% with 54% noticing the unexpected event = ‘substantial level of inattentional blindness’

the type of video had an effect on the level of inattentional blindness, that the transparency of the unexpected object did lead to higher levels of inattentional blindness. transparent = 46% noticed, opaque = 67% noticed

difficulty increased = inattentional blindness increased. 64% in easy, 45% in hard.

umbrella woman was seen more times 65% than the gorilla, 44% and the author suggests its because the woman was more associated to the task.

Question 40

simons & chablis conclusion

Answer 40

inattentional blindness occurs in dynamic events that are sustained, lasting more than 5 sec.

even in the opaque video, many missed the unusual event and the phenomenon of attentional bias cannot be accounted for as simply a response to the transparent video

objects can pass through our central field of vision and still not be seen if they are not specifically attended to. this is, according to simons & chablis, ‘consistent with the claim that there is no conscious perception without attention’.