Cognitive (Cognitive Processing) Studies

Question 1

Glanzer and Cunitz

Answer 1

Aim:
- investigating the relationship between the serial positioning effect and multi-store memory model

Procedure:
- list of 15 words presented 15 times to 45 Army enlisted men
- repeated measures design: 5 lists recalled immediately, 5 lists with a 10-second delay, and 5 lists with a 30-second delay (both delayed recall conditions also had a distractor task)

Results and Conclusions:
- immediate recall remembered beginning and end of the list, clearly demonstrating primacy and recency effects
- 10-second delay, recency effect diminished
- 30-second delay, recalled nearly no words from end of list, suggesting displacement from STM due to distractor task
- supports MSM argument that rehearsal is necessary for transfer from sensory to STM and LTM

Strengths and Limitations:
- replicable and ethical
- controlled with repeated measures design
- task is artificial and low ecological validity, relatively
- shows clear cause-and-effect relationship

Question 2

Robbins

Answer 2

Aim:
- study working memory in chess players of differing ability levels

Procedure:
- twenty chess players from two clubs at Cambridge with rankings ranging from 130 to 240 (weaker and stronger players divided)
- shown 16 pieces in positions from a real game left on the board for about 10 seconds, then asked to recreate the board
- 1 point for correct piece in correct position; 1 point deducted for each error
- repeated measures of 4 conditions:
control: no distractions
articulatory loop suppression: subject said “the” at rate of 1 second without stopping
visuospatial sketchpad suppression: subjects used nondominant hand to push buttons on keyboard out of sight
central executive suppression: subject said a random string of letters at 1 per second

Results and Conclusions:
- stronger players overall performed better, but equally impacted by condition as weaker playerws
- control and articulatory loop suppression did not show significant impairment
- visuospatial and central executive suppression drastically diminished performance

Strengths and Limitations:
- not needed, since WMM will only ever be SAQ

Question 3

Martin and Halvorson

Answer 3

Aim:
- to determine if pre-existing gender schemas will distort memories that are inconsistent with these schemas

Procedure:
- 24 girls and 24 boys aged 5-6
- shown 16 pictures of a person doing an activity (half gender congruent and half gender incongruent)
- children divided based on their knowledge of gender stereotypes
- each picture shown for about 10 minutes and then children were asked to indicate their confidence of their memories
- a week later they were assessed again and asked which gender was completing the specific activity

Results and Conclusions:
- significantly more reversals of gender in the schema-inconsistent images
- kids had the same confidence in gender swapped images as the accurate answers
- pre-existing stereotypes distorted the children’s memories of the gender incongruent images
- reversed gender to confirm their stereotypes

Strenghts and Limitations:
- extremely controlled
- replicable and reliable
- sample bias means no generalizability outside of American culture

Question 4

Tversky and Kahneman

Answer 4

Aim:
- explore the effects of anchoring bias in a mathematical estimation

Procedure:
- high school students were assigned to two conditions: ascending and descending
- asked to estimate the value of (1x2x3…8) or (8x7x6…1) respective to condition
- since we read from left to right, hypothesis was that the ascending group would use “1” as an anchor and predict a lower value than those that saw “8”
- first number seen would bias the estimate of the value by the participant

Results and Conclusions:
- the median for ascending group was 512
- median for descending group was 2250
- actual value: 40320
- those in the ascending condition estimated a significantly lower number than those in the descending condition, suggest anchoring bias
- quick estimate relied on System 1 thinking, using heuristic (mental short-cut) and estimating very far off from actual value

Strengths and Limitations:
- easily replicated to establish reliability
- high internal validity
- artificial, lacks ecological validity
- independent measures, participant variability may have impacted results