Cognitive Paper 1

Question 1

multi-store theory

Answer 1

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

Question 1

models of memory study

Answer 1

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Question 2

rational thinking study

Answer 2

Alter et al (2007)

Question 3

working memory theory

Answer 3

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Question 3

intuitive thinking study

Answer 3

Chou and Edges (2012)

Question 3

biases

Answer 3

Chou and Edges (2012)

Question 4

schema

Answer 4

Bartlett (1932)

Question 5

Cognitive Processing and technology ERQ

Answer 5

• Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014)
• Blacker et al
• Chou & Edge (2012)
• Neisser & Harsch (1992)

Question 5

ethics

Answer 5

Chou and Edges (2012)

Question 6

methodology

Answer 6

Bartlett (1932)

Question 6

emotion and cognition

Answer 6

Talarico et al (2017)

Question 7

reconstructive memory

Answer 7

Bartlett (1932)

Question 8

Emotion & Cognition and technology ERQ

Answer 8

• Chou and Edges’s (2012)
• Neisser & Harsch (1992)
• Coman et al (2016)

Question 9

Reliability of Cognitive Processing
and Technology ERQ

Answer 9

• Chou and Edges’s (2012
• Coman et al (2016)
• Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014)

Question 9

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Answer 9

Working memory explains the short term store component of multi-store memory
Working memory is “the small amount of information that can be held in the mind and used/processed/manipulated for the execution of cognitive tasks”
- Accessible information drawn from the long term memory that is consciously thought about and has our attention and is being processed
Problem solving would be an abstract component of working memory
Most working memory falls under visuospatial sketchpad or phonological loop
- Visuospatial sketchpad e.g. navigation involves manipulation or processing of visual information
Phonological loop e.g. music involves manipulation or processing of auditory information

• A lot of visual, and auditory information is drawn out from the long-term memory, but since information can be too large for the working memory at once (e.g. a whole entire song), the episodic buffer retrieves bits of information from the long-term memory into the working memory—rather than consciously thinking about the entire piece of information.
• Allows only small bits of information which is relevant into the working memory to be processed to prevent cognitive overload
• The visuospatial sketchpad, and phonological loop—and thus episodic buffer—are both commanded by the central executive
• Central executive commands the working memory to focus and be attentive to differing pieces of information in the working memory
• Central executive is the conscious effort or direction of attention, to imagine something—visuospatial, or hear something—phonological

Question 10

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

Answer 10

3 stores of memory: sensory, short-term, long-term

Sensory stores {broken up into sensory registers} are information incident on our senses.
- Capacity: unlimited
- Duration: milliseconds, however, depends on the sensory register type
- Transfer: sensory information transferred to short-term with attention on the input

Short-term store {working memory / attention span} is readily available, and consciously thought of information
- Capacity: limited information 5-9 pieces
- Duration: 15-30 seconds
- Transfer: if the short-term information is not rehearsed it can decay and be forgotten. If rehearsed repeatedly it will be transferred to long-term store.
- Short-term information is transferred to long-term from repetition, rehearsal, and attention on information in short-term store.
- Displacement: rehearsal buffer in short-term store which holds the chanel capacity, however, with new information introduced to short-term store the old information in chanel capacity is displaced and forgotten.

Long-term store {unconscious information that does not need to be constantly rehearsed to be known}
- Capacity: unlimited
- Duration: life-long
- Retrieval: long-term store information must be retrieved into the short-term store to become accessible—also causing displacement—which occurs by search processes

Question 11

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Answer 11

AIM
- To investigate the duration of short-term memory and it’s components

STUDY
- true experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 24 psychology students

METHOD
- Participants were asked to recall meaningless three-consonant syllables ‘trigrams’ which are hard to memorise, after varying time intervals
- To prevent rehearsal during the time intervals the participants had to count backwards from a random number until the time interval was over

RESULTS
- The longer the time interval was the less trigrams were recalled
- 80% of trigrams were recalled after the shortest: 3 second time delay
- 10% of trigrams were recalled after longest: 18 second delay

IMPLICATIONS
- MSM: short-term store has a limited duration for echoic memory, as more information was recalled with a shorter time delay, when information is not transferred to long-term by preventing rehearsal and repetition. This supports MSM that short-term memory has a short duration, and information cannot be transferred to long term if there is an interference preventing rehearsal
- Working memory: phonological loop in working memory is being used to recall the trigrams, however, as during the time intervals the central executive is focused on the abstract problem solving task of counting down, the working memory is no longer activating the phonological loop by the central executive, thus more of the information is lost

Question 12

Bartlett (1932)

Answer 12

AIM
- to determine the distortion of foreign stories or information due to schema theory

STUDY
- true experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 20 British people (unaware of native American concepts)

METHOD
- researchers would tell participants Native American legend w/ foreign concepts & names

• the participants were then asked to retell the legend a few days, then few weeks, then few months later

RESULTS
- the participants increasingly forgot parts of the legend with time

• as more time progressed the names and concepts of the story also converted to concepts more familiar to westerners

IMPLICATIONS
- new information & foreign concepts are altered to fit into pre-existing schemas

Question 13

Alter et al (2007)

Answer 13

AIM
- to explore the effect of difficulty in comprehension—disfluency—in activating rational thinking

STUDY
- True experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 40 student volunteers
- 2 groups
easy to read font—cognitive fluency
Hard to read font—cognitive disfluency

METHOD
- The participants were either given a text an illegible text or a legible text of a cognitive reflect test (CRT)
- The CRT had 3 questions which included obvious answers using intuitive thinking to be incorrect as they were framed to have an incorrect answer, however with rational thinking and cognitive effort the answer could be correct and avoid the biases of the question

RESULTS
- The participants in the illegible group got more answers correctly
- With legible font 90% answered at least 1 CRT incorrectly
- With illegible font only 35% answered at least 1 CRT incorrectly

IMPLICATIONS
- Disfluency requires more cognitive effort to understand the questions which triggers rational thinking, which results in logical thinking which overcomes biases producing correct, discerned answers
- Fluency and ease propagated intuitive thinking which caused incorrect responses as people did not exert cognitive effort and thus fell into mental shortcuts and thus biases of the questions

Question 14

Neisser & Harsch (1992)

Answer 14

AIM
- evaluate the notion that flashbulb memories are highly accurate, as they can be influenced by media discussions after the event

STUDY
- true experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 106 americans

METHOD
- recall 1986 space shuttler disaster 24 hours after event & then 2 years after

RESULTS
- participants recalled the space shuttle disaster with conviction 2 years later,

• the memory had on average distorted by 40% in accuracy

IMPLICATIONS
- flashbulb memories are highly influenced by external discussion of the event

• flashbulb memories can deteriorate in accuracy like normal memories

Question 14

Chou and Edges (2012)

Answer 14

AIM
- To determine whether availability heuristic of social media Facebook posts causes other people to evaluate their social lives disproportionately to those who experience less availability heuristic from less social media usage
Availability heuristic is a bias where more available examples in memory causes people to overestimate the frequency of the example

STUDY
Survey

PARTICIPANTS
- 425 US students

METHOD
- Participants gave details on how long they spent on Facebook a day, and how long they’d used FB, and how many FB friends they didn’t know personally
- Also gave details about the average time spent with real life friends
- Participants completed a survey with a 10 point scale to measure how strongly they agreed with statements such as: “many of my friends are happier than me”

RESULTS
- The participants who spent more time on FB were more likely to agree other people were happier than them
- Those who spent more time seeing their real life friends were less likely to believe their friends were happier than them

IMPLICATIONS
- The more time spent on FB means that examples of people having fun social lives were more plentiful or available and thus more likely to disproportionately compare themselves and assume less happiness of their own lives

Question 14

Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014)

Answer 14

AIM
- to investigate how electronic devices and technology effect cognitive processes of memory and learning

STUDY
- true experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 109 students
In two groups: laptop to take notes OR pen and paper to take notes

METHOD
- The participants were instructed to take notes on 4 lectures with the note taking device they were assigned
Participants were tested the following week on the lectures, and could not revise their notes at home
- Half of the people in the laptop condition, and handwritten condition were then randomly assigned to revising their notes for 10 minutes before being tested
- The test included a mix of factual and conceptual questions on each lecture

RESULTS
- Both participants in handwriting and laptop conditions which did not revise their notes did poorly on factual knowledge and well on conceptual knowledge with no significant difference in performance
- However, when the handwritten participants which revised their notes did significantly better than those who revised their computer notes

IMPLICATIONS
- Digital technology negatively effects memory by reducing the depth of encoding when learning information, as information can be transcribed instead of synthesised and summarised due to the seeming advantages of technology
- Taking notes by hand is slower which forces students to process the information and synthesise, and deeper semantic processing during encoding thus better memory causing better test results
- Whereas, laptop notes which are fast thus conducive to transcription, causes the information to be processed only at a shallow level thus easily forgettable

Question 15

Sparrow et al. (2011)

Answer 15

AIM
- To investigate the whether digital technologies induce transactive memory—reliance of memory storage in a collective group Wegner et al—by making declarative knowledge accessible

STUDY
- true experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 60 students

METHOD
- Participants typed 40 trivia facts ranging from obscure facts to well-known facts into the computer
- Half of all the participants were told that their trivia facts would be saved and accessible later by hitting the spacebar
- The other half were told the trivia fact would be erased by the spacebar
- Afterwards the participants were given 10 minutes to recall all the trivia facts

RESULTS
- The participants who were told their answers would be saved recalled significantly less trivia facts than the participants without saved answers

IMPLICATIONS
- The participants who expected to be able to access information later put less effort to remembering the information due to this reliance, thus remembered less and knew less, hindering declarative memory due to reliance on technology
- This implicates the theory of digital amnesia or the google effect which is the tendency to forget information that is readily found online, whilst information not retrievable online is more likely to be encoded

Question 16

Blacker et al (2014)

Answer 16

AIM
- To investigate the effects of the digital technology of video games on visuospatial working memory

STUDY
- true experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 34 male students who hadn’t played games within the last year
- Split into 2 conditions: action game // non-action game

METHOD
- Visuospatial working memory was tested, before and after gaming, by a change detection task involving discerning whether cards were the same or different.
- The participants played the game for 1 hour everyday for 30 days

RESULTS
- The action game group showed significant improvement in the change detection task
- The non-action group did not improve in the change detection task

IMPLICATIONS
- Visuospatial working memory improved as a result digital technology of an action game

Question 17

Coman et al (2016)

Answer 17

AIM
- To investigate how social media’s widespread discussion and dissemination of information may produce collective memories susceptible to bias

STUDY
- True experiment

PARTICIPANTS
- 140 students

METHOD
- Participants were divided into groups and read about fictional information
- Prior to conversations, the participants had individual recall tests
- Then the groups joined and together and recalled information together on an online chat—half of the groups were in one large group (non-clustered) the other half were in smaller groups (clustered)
- Post-conversation, individual recall tests were conducted identical to before

RESULTS
- Recalled information converged to be similar for participants apart of both groups, but more significantly in non-clustered group

IMPLICATIONS
- Social network structures cause information and memory recall to become alike due to discussion, which may reveal how misinformation spreads over social media if memory convergence of false information occurs