Cognitive Psychology Flashcards

Question

standardised instructions

Answer 1

every participant receives the same instructions

Answer 2

participants are matched based in characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity

Answer 3

experiment carried out in a highly controlled setting, normally lab, researcher manipulates IV to see if there is a change in DV. Due to high level of control all extraneous variables are controlled for.

Answer 4

standardised procedure - conducted in highly controlled setting of a lab, allows a specific procedure to be written and followed the same way for each participant high control - internal validity, lab experiments conducted in highly controlled setting, extraneous variables controlled, researcher can be sure the manipulation of IV is causing change in DV. therefore cause and effect can be established to have high internal validity.

Answer 5

lacks mundane realism - lab experiments highly controlled setting, participants asked to complete unrealistic tasks, therefore behaviour displayed is not naturally occurring lacks ecological validity - lab experiments highly controlled setting, artificial. therefore behaviour displayed is not naturally occurring, cannot be generalised beyond lab setting, reducing external validity experimenter effect - internal validity, as laboratory experiments in a highly controlled setting means prescience of researcher may alter the behaviour of the participant, can lead to demand characteristics, pp aware they are being researched

Answer 6

mundane realism - conducted in natural setting of the participants often means task is realistic, therefore behaviour displayed is naturally occurring and can be generalised to everyday behaviour. ecological validity - field experiments are conducted in natural setting of participant, unaware they are being observed. therefore behaviour displayed is naturally occurring and can be generalised beyond the setting no experimenter effect - internal validity, conducted in natural setting lot of the time participants unaware being observed, reduced chance of demand characteristics. therefore behaviour is naturally occurring.

Answer 7

not reliable - conducted in natural setting setting of participant. although standardised procedure can be used so all participants experience same procedure, hard to ensure that same experience is given, procedure is harder to replicate to establish consistent findings low control - internal validity, field experiments are conducted in the participants natural setting. this means it is hard to control all extraneous variables, so the researcher cannot be sure the manipulation of the IV is causing the change in the DV. therefore cause and effect cannot be established reducing internal validity.

Answer 8

when participants take part in all the experimental conditions practice effects, participants may become practiced at the test so their performance will improve fatigue, participants may become tired of the test so their performance will deteriorate

Answer 9

participants need to be divided equally between the conditions and complete the conditions in different orders, for example half the participants will be tested in condition A and then condition B and then the other half will be tested in condition B then condition A.

Answer 10

refers to the participants having a completely equal chance of being tested in Condition A or Condition B first, for example this will be determined by tossing a coin or pulling a name out of a hat

Answer 11

independent measures design is where different participants are used in different conditions within the experiment for example if we are trying to discover if girls are less aggressive than boys, need two seperate groups.

Answer 12

no order effects - the participants only take part in the experiment once, so will not display the practice effect or fatigue effect. demand characteristics - the participants only take part in the experiment once so this reduces the chances of demand characteristics as the participants have less chance of guessing the aim of the study when they only do one condition.

Answer 13

twice the amount of participants are needed compared to repeated measures design which means the experiment could take longer to carry out ad cost more to complete. participant variables - as there are different participants in each group there could be individual differences between groups such as age, gender and intelligence. this means he findings could be due to participant variables and not manipulation of the IV.

Answer 14

repeated measures design s where you use the same participants in all condition of your experiment. don’t have to worry about about individual differences but introduces other confounding variables such as practice effects and fatigue effects.

Answer 15

participant variables are controlled economical

Answer 16

order effects demand characteristics

Answer 17

if we cannot use a repeated measures design it is sometimes possible to match every participant in one group with very similar people in the other group.

Answer 18

no order effects demand characteristics

Answer 19

not economical participant variables

Answer 20

small trial version of a study to test effectiveness and make improvements, helpful in identifying potential issues early.

Answer 21

peer review is a process that takes place before a study is published to ensure that the research is of a high quality, contributes to the field of research and us accurately presented.

Answer 22

focuses on human thought and all the processes of knowing such and paying attention, remembering and problem solving. interested in how people take in information , how they mentally represent it and how it is stored.

Answer 23

compares human thought processes to the way a computer operates. acknowledges that we are both the product of our biology (hard wiring) and our experiences (programming) of both nature and nurture.

Answer 24

information processing occurs in three stages: encoding (input) - storage - retrieval (output)

Answer 25

converting the information we receive from our senses into something that we can represent mentally

Answer 26

holding information over a period of time in preparation for when it is needed

Answer 27

involves recovering stored information

Answer 28

sensory store, short term store, long term store the information we are presented with passes through these stores in order. recall occurs when things you have learnt pass from LTM back to STM

Answer 29

supporting evidence from case studies supported by chapman et al - chapman found that when they simulated a classroom environment, where participants viewed 3 different lectures on consecutive days, those participants that were given a short recall after each lecture could more accurately remember information from those lectures one month later than those who hadn’t positive applications to society - Butler and Roediger found that when they simulated a classroom environment, where participants viewed 3 different lectures on consecutive days, those participants that were given a short recall test after each lecture could more accurately remember information from those lectures one month later than those who hadn’t

Answer 30

anecdotal evidence - this model says we remember things by rehearsal. many things remembered without rehearsal. lots of memories do not depend on this process there may be more than one STM store - some amnesiacs only have a loss of STM for verbal items (list read out to them) and not non-verbal items (door bell ringing) reductionist - MSM says memory contains distinctively different stores. makes it easer to study memory experimentally but underplays interconnections between the different memory systems. alternative theories of memory - other theories can explain memory

Answer 31

to investigate the influence of acoustic and semantic word similarity on learning and recall in short term and long term memory

Answer 32

men and women recruited from the applied psychology research unit subject panel. participants then divided into 4 groups

Answer 33

lab experiment, test sequential recall (right order). 4 word lists: List A - 10 acoustically similar words (man, can, cat) List B - 10 acoustically dissimilar words matched in terms of frequency of everyday use to List A (pit, few, cow, mat) List C - 10 semantically similar words (great, big, large) List D - 10 semantically dissimilar words matched in terms of frequency of everyday use to List C (hot, old, late) each list was presented via projector at a rate of one word every three seconds in the correct order. after presentation of words participants complete 6 distracter tasks involving memory for digits. participants then asked to recall the word list in one minute by writing down the sequence of words in the correct order. repeated three more times so participants had seen the word list done a series of 6 interference tasks and then recalled the words in the correct order four times in total by the end of the experiment. participants then given 15 minute interference task and then given a surprise retest on word list sequence

Answer 34

although there were fewer correct acoustically similar words (A) recalled in comparison to acoustically dissimilar words (B) especially during trial 2, by the end of the experiment recall was the same for acoustically similar and acoustically dissimilar. (no stat sig difference in number of words recalled between lists A and B). shows acoustic encoding was initially difficult but did not affect long term memory recall recall was much worse for semantically similar words (C) than for semantically dissimilar words (D) (there was a statistically significant difference in the number of words recalled between lists C and D in the final retest, such that statistically more words were recalled from list D) shows that information is encoded semantically in LTM

Answer 35

STM primarily makes use of acoustic encoding, as shown by the difficulties that participants had in recalling the correct order of words that had similar sounds during the early learning trials. LTM primarily makes use of semantic coding as shown by the difficulties participants had in recalling the correct order of words that had similar meanings.

Answer 36

instead of all information going into one single store there are different systems for different information. consists of central executive which controls and coordinates operation of two subsystems, the phonological loop and the visuo spatial sketch pad. the phonological loop is assumed to be responsible for the manipulation of speech based information whereas the visuo spatial sketch pad is assumed ton be responsible for manipulating visual images. the mode proposes that every component of working memory has limited capacity and also that the components are relatively independent of each other.

Answer 37

most important component of working memory model, little known about how it functions. responsible for monitoring and coordinating the operation of the slave systems (phonological loop, visual spatial sketch pad) and related to long term memory. central executive decides which information get attended to. for example two activities sometimes come into contact such as driving a car and talking. rather than hitting a cyclist who is wobbling all over the road it is preferable to stop talking and concentrate on driving. the central executive directs attention and gives priority to activities.

Answer 38

deals with visual and spatial information. likely that the visuo spatial sketch pad plays an important role in helping us keep track of where we are in relation to other objects as we move through our environment. limited interference to our performance when a visual processing task and a verbal processing task are performed at the same time. more difficult to perform two visual tasks at the same time same applies to verbal tasks.

Answer 39

part of the working memory model that deals with spoken and written material. consists of two part: the phonological store, acts as an inner ear and holds information in speech based for for 1-2 seconds. spoken words enter the store directly. written words must first be converted into an articulatory code before then can enter the phonological store the articulatory control process, acts as an inner voice rehearsing information from the phonological store. circulates information round and round like a tape loop this is how we remember a telephone number we have just heard.

Answer 40

tulving proposed that there are different types of long term memory stores and that each were qualitatively different in terms of the nature of stored memories, time referencing, the nature of associations between memories held in each store and the nature of retrieving or recalling memories.

Answer 41

general knowledge, facts and concepts that are not linked to a specific time or place. includes things like vocabulary, historical facts, and understanding of concepts e.g. knowing that Paris is the capital of France or that a cat is a type of animal.

Answer 42

this refers to memory of specific events or personal experiences that are tied to a particular time and place. it includes details like what happened, where it happened, and when it happened. e.g. remembering your last birthday or your first day of school

Answer 43

tulving believed that episodic memory was dependant on time referencing whilst semantic memory is not.

Answer 44

episodic memories are inputted at one period of time, in contrast semantic memories can be inputted in a fragmented way such that seperate pieces of information about the same topic can be learnt at different times, but stored together.

Answer 45

episodic memories are recalled more accurately, if done so in the same context that the memory was originally made, however the accuracy of semantic memory is not affected by the context in which it is learnt/recalled.

Answer 46

semantic memory can operate independently of episodic memory e.g. we do not need to remember a classroom lesson about equations to be able to use the equations we learnt. however episodic memory does require access to semantic memory in other to draw in previous knowledge of people, objects and events in order to understand them. despite this apparent overlap between the two stores, Tulving argued that thy can be treated as two seperate stores.

Answer 47

Bartlett suggested memory isn’t passive process but constructive. suggests when we recall information we actively reconstruct the information, drawing on past experiences, previous memories, expectations and beliefs. rather like using a notepad in order to remember something we interpret an event and make brief notes on it.

Answer 48

mental framework that helps us organise and interpret information. fill in the blanks. draw from past experiences

Answer 49

to investigate the interaction between semantic and episodic memory to see whether schemas for particular natural scenes aided or hindered memory for objects within these scenes

Answer 50

random sample of 49 participants from the participant pool at the university of california

Answer 51

repeated measures design each p saw 1 set of stimuli, each set of stimuli contained 1 picture of an office, kitchen, urban, hotel, and dining area. the length of time that p saw each stimulus was manipulated in order to test differences in recall between episodic and semantic memory. p either saw stimulus for short duration (2 seconds) or long duration (10 seconds) assumed that if the p saw stimulus for 2 seconds then this would be too little time to produce an episodic memory, so recall would be reliant on semantic memory assumed that if the p saw stimulus for 10 seconds then this would be enough time to produce an episodic memory. 4 different experimental conditions: 1. 10,10,10,2,2 2. 10,10,2,2,2 3. 2,2,2,10,10 4. 2,2,10,10,10 additional control for order effects was used, randomised order that the images were presented in for each p.

Answer 52

mean number of object recalled during free recall: short duration condition - 7.75 items long duration condition - 10.05 error rates incorrect recall items would expect to see - 9% incorrect recall items wouldn’t expect to see - 18% demonstrates that memory for real life events is more accurate than for contrived scenes and shows the importance for high ecological validity in experiments. effect of prior knowledge prior to the study, 22 other p were asked to identify objects that they would expect to see in an office, kitchen, urban, hotel, and dining area. found that 55% of these items recalled wee accurate. this is a measure of their semantic memory. but in this experiment the number of objects recalled correctly was more than 80% given that the p were given pictures this is a measure of both their episodic and semantic memory

Answer 53

when recalling naturalistic scenes, prior knowledge from semantic memory can aid recall in episodic memory tasks. in familiar environments and the objects present are consistent with expectations and prior semantic knowledge, cognitive processing can be freed up to process novel and unexpected objects in a scene.