Cognitive psychology Flashcards

Question

Baddeley 1966B reliability?

Answer 1

This is a great example of a reliable study because it has standardised procedures that makes the study consistent and easy to replicate. • For example, each list contained the same number of words (10) and these were presented every 3 seconds via a projector. • However, as it was an independent groups design, it means that p’ts in each condition were different people. This means that individual differences may have affected the results, making them less reliable

Answer 2

Understanding that encoding in LTM is mostly semantic can help to improve long-term recall of information. • Who is this information useful for? • This is useful for students revising for exams. Rather than simply repeating info, they are better advised to think about it in an organised manner and how each piece relates to things they already know about. This can be done through creating mind maps, spider diagrams etc.

Answer 3

Baddeley took trouble to improve the internal validity of his experiment. He used controls to do this. Rather than getting participants to recall words, he asked them to recall word order (with the words themselves on display the whole time). This reduced the risk that some words would be hard to recall because they were unfamiliar or others easy to recall because they had associations for the participants.(internal validity). This means that the study has scientific value as it used minimised extraneous variables. Despite this, the ecological validity of this study is not good. Recalling lists of words is quite artificial but you sometimes have to do it (a shopping list, for example). Recalling the order of words is completely artificial and doesn’t resemble anything you would use memory to do in the real world. (external validity) However, Baddeley did improve this. For example, he made the 5th “forgetting” trial a surprise that the participants weren’t expecting. This is similar to real life, where you are not usually expecting it when you are asked to recall important information.

Answer 4

Alan Baddeley

Answer 5

This drives the whole system and is involved in the higher mental processes like decision making. It also allocates resources to the other two ‘slave’ systems of memory • It has very limited capacity- it cannot attend to too many things at once and is unable to store data This system can process information from all the senses.

Answer 6

Made up of two sub-components: • The articulatory control system-Linked to speech production-this is the verbal rehearsal loop that holds on to information we are about to say. Known as the ‘inner voice’. • The phonological store- auditory information (things you hear) holds information in a speech-based form (i.e., spoken words) for 1-2 seconds.– the ‘inner ear’

Answer 7

Helps rehearse spatial information, it analyses size, shape and colour. It is also able to process movement

Answer 8

A more recently added, extra storage system or ‘general’ component which stores holds visual, spatial and verbal information from the other components. • It integrates this information and sends it to the LTM. • It also has a limited capacity. This was added as Baddleley took account of the fact that the model needs a general store to operate properly. Integrates=amalgamates/combines

Answer 9

Researcher: Baddeley • A dual-task technique • Got pts to track a spot of light with a pointer (visual task.) At the same time half the pts had to describe the angles on a hollow letter ‘F’ (also a visual task). The other half did the tracking task with a simple verbal task • THE GROUP DOING THE TWO VISUAL TASKS FOUND IT MORE DIFFICULT to track the light (overloaded the VSS), whereas the group doing visual and verbal found it easier (using both the VSS and the PL). • This suggests that each component of the WMM can only cope with one task at a time. • Provides support for the separate components of the WMM and their limited capacity. • This evidence comes from a highly controlled lab experiment- scientific • But lacks ecological validity

Answer 10

What was done and found: Gave 1 set of p’ts (group 1) a reasoning task (does A follow B- BA) plus a simple verbal task (saying ‘the the’) and gave another group the same reasoning task plus they had to shout out random digits (also requiring thought). Group 2 struggled to perform both reasoning tasks, group 1 managed their two tasks. • Concluded: Group 2 struggled because both tasks required using the central executive. • Implications: Supports WMs proposal that there are different components of STM, including the central executive which has a very limited capacity.

Answer 11

Henry suffered severe damage to his spatial memory while his STM was relatively unaffected for verbal information. • This supports the idea that working memory has sub-systems to deal with verbal and visuospatial information relatively independently.

Answer 12

• Paulesu et al (1993) found... • That different areas of the brain were activated when undertaking tasks that employed the phonological store and the articulatory rehearsal system. • What this says about the model... – This provides evidence for the phonological loop and its separate subcomponents.

Answer 13

Can be applied to our understanding of conditions like amnesia. For example KF a severe amnesiac had poor STM functioning for auditory info but relatively intact for4 visual info. Implies amnesia not a ‘global’ condition and can be explained by referring to separate components of WMM.

Answer 14

Little really known about the function of the central executive although this is the most important component. (for example its capacity has never been measured accurately. Further research suggests that it may be more complex than the model proposes. It may even consist of separate components.

Answer 15

To investigate the development of the phonological loop in children between the ages of 5 and 17 years using the digit span as a measure of phonological capacity.

Answer 16

570 volunteer participants taken from schools in Madrid • Aged between 5 to 17 • All native Spanish speaking hearing reading writing • Impairments in hearing, reading, writing ability were controlled (excluded from experiment) • Divided into 5 different age groups • Increasing sequences of digits to be recalled in the correct order • Digits were read out at a rate of 1 per second and the list increased 1 digit per sequence Maximum length • Digit span was recorded as the maximum length recalled in the correct order without error • Digit span recorded for each age group

Answer 17

The table shows a developmental trend of increasing digit span with age. Children aged 5 (3.76) have a very low digit span that rises steadily until around 11 (5.18) where it slows. The digit span between 15 and 17 (5.83) remains fairly stable.

Answer 18

Digit span increase through childhood into adolescence- with starting point when children start to sub- vocalise (7-8) The digit span in Spanish children is significantly shorter due to the word length effect which impacts the phonological loop. In terms of older p’ts and dementia patients it is possible to speculate that poor digit span is the result of aging and not dementia

Answer 19

Large sample of children (575) so results can be generalized to wider population. (but all from Madrid- cultural bias?)  Big enough to spread across the 5 conditions.  Volunteers? Did teachers volunteer particular types of children?  Children with cognitive impairments removed- not representative of real-world population.

Answer 20

A strength is that they used standardised procedures. This makes the study reliable. For example, digits were read aloud at a constant rate of one per second for every p’t. This means that the experience for each p’t was as similar as possible, so the results could not be attributed to differences in how the study was conducted.

Answer 21

Digit span has been applied to understanding specific cognitive abilities. For example, people with longer digit span are also better readers and have higher general intelligence. Conversely shorter digit span is associated with learning disorders such as dyslexia. Therefore, findings from this study are useful to explain real life cognitive skills.  Findings are also useful for teachers in primary schools, allowing them to be aware of children’s cognitive capabilities at different ages.

Answer 22

V: Some important variables controlled for- impairments in reading writing and hearing. This means that the study has internal validity.  However, it was only reported that the children had no impairments. The problem here is that they were not directly tested- the researchers relied on reports from parents so if they were wrong, this means that any unknown impairments could have compromised the results.  Also means that a section of the population was not accounted for, only children with normal cognitive ability.  It could be argued that digit span tests do not reflect how we use memory in everyday situations, so the study lacks mundane realism. (but carried out in natural setting of school).  However, it was carried out in a real-life setting and digit span has been shown to be reliably linked to reading ability, so this implies that it does have some real-life value as a way of measuring capacity.

Answer 23

Ethics- children can not give consent due to their age so it can be argued that the study is not ethical.  However, the researchers would ask for parents/teachers consent instead which is seen as a reasonable compromise.  Also, it could be argued that dementia patients in the comparison study cannot give informed consent due to their cognitive deficits

Answer 24

Memories for facts; Like a mental encyclopaedia it stores facts, words, rules, meaning of words and general knowledge. For example, the structure of the multistore model of memory, the capital city of France is Paris. Semantic memories are not linked to a specific time when they were acquired. For example, we rarely remember when we learned that the capital of France is Paris, or the colour of Donald Trump’s hair we just know it. In terms of retrieval, semantic memories do not seem to be dependent on the context in which they are learnt. For example, you don’t think about where you were when you learned that Paris is the capital of France. Semantic memories can be pieced together from fragments learned at different times. For example, we will build up our knowledge of psychological research over time. Semantic memory is necessary for us to use language. According to Tulving, semantic memory is less vulnerable to distortion and forgetting than episodic memory EPI

Answer 25

Episodic memories are autobiographical in nature as they are personal memories of events. These memories usually include details of the event, the context in which the event took place and also include emotions associated with the event. For example, what you did on your last birthday and how you were feeling at that time. Tulving believed that episodic memories are ‘time-stamped’, which means they are linked to a time in which they occurred. These allow us to ‘time travel’- we can think back to past events and relive them. For example, we will recall when we celebrated our birthday with friends or travelled to Spain on holiday. Episodic memories are experienced as a whole and have a subjective quality. For example, we may not recall the exact details, but we are aware that it’s part of our experience and not a dream. Retrieval of episodic events relies on recalling the context for the event, where and when it happened e.g. what the weather was like on holiday If we don’t get the right retrieval cue, then... our memory of the event may be distorted or forgotten. PR

Answer 26

Tulving added this to his theory in 1985. It’s our memory of how to do things. These memories require a lot of repetition and practice. Procedural memories are automatic, requiring no conscious recollection. For example, how to drive a car, ride a bike , play the piano....

Answer 27

The Classic Cognitive Study by Baddeley (1966b) supports the existence of semantic memory. Baddeley found that participants struggled with word lists linked by a common theme, which suggests the semantic similarity confused LTM. Unrelated word lists were not confusing. This suggests at least part of LTM works semantically, therefore supporting Tulving’s idea of different types of LTM. Godden and Baddeley

Answer 28

Case study of HM: The case study of HM showed that he could make new procedural LTMs when he learned to draw the star using the mirror. However, he could never remember doing it showing that he could not make new episodic memories . This provides support for the existence of different types of LTM. Evidence from

Answer 29

Point: Research on type of LTM can be applied to real life Evidence/Example: Being able to identify different types of LTM allows researchers to target certain types of memory to better people’s lives. For example, in cases of cognitive impairment in older people, it has been shown that episodic memory is most affected, meaning that this can be targeted for treatment. For example, Belleville et al showed how older people who had training performed better on a test of episodic memory than a non-trained control group. This suggests that the research has important implications in the real world

Answer 30

• One problem with the theory is that some psychologists do not believe that episodic and semantic are entirely different forms of LTM. Although it has been shown, in cases of amnesia that patients can have fully functioning semantic memory despite a damaged episodic memory, it is not true the other way round. It is not possible to have a functioning episodic memory with a damaged semantic memory. • This suggests that the relationship between different types of LTM is a complex one and casts doubt on them being entirely separate.

Answer 31

THE STORY BECAME SHORTENED BECAUSE DETAIL WAS LEFT OUT; PHRASES REFLECTED MODERN CONCEPTS AND IT BECAME MORE COHERENT IN FORM. • A NUMBER OF TRANSFORMATIONS OCCURRED SUCH AS CHANGING OBJECTS TO SOMETHING MORE FAMILIAR, I.E. ‘CANOE’ BECAME ‘BOAT’ AND ‘HUNTING SEALS’ CHANGED TO ‘FISHING’. • MANY PARTICIPANTS DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE ROLE OF THE ‘GHOSTS’ SO LEFT THEM OUT.

Answer 32

memory is reconstructed each time it is recalled. it is rarely accurate. remembering is constructive in nature and influenced by the individual’s existing experience and knowledge.

Answer 33

Bartlett proposed a theory or reconstructive memory. He viewed memory as constructive using previous knowledge to interpret information when stored and then to actively reconstruct memories when recalled. Bartlett drew on the concept of schema to explain this.

Answer 34

‘mental representations’ built up through past experiences and prior knowledge which provide ways of understanding future experiences (generate expectations) schemas provide us with preconceived expectations to help make incoming information more predictable. these expectations can be fixed information or variable information.

Answer 35

• AIM: TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECT OF THE SCHEMA ON PARTICIPANTS’ RECALL OF AN UNFAMILIAR STORY • PROCEDURE: BARTLETT SHOWED 20 STUDENTS A NATIVE AMERICAN GHOST STORY (THE WAR OF THE GHOSTS) WHICH HAD UNUSUAL FEATURES. HE ASKED THEM TO READ IT THEN RECALL IT ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS AFTER A FEW HOURS, DAYS, WEEKS OR EVEN YEARS – A TECHNIQUE CALLED SERIAL REPRODUCTION. BARTLETT COMPARED HOW THE RECALLED VERSIONS OF THE STORY DIFFERED FROM THE ORIGINAL. • RESULTS: PARTICIPANTS SHORTENED THE STORY WHEN THEY REPRODUCED IT, WITH THE SHORTEST REPRODUCTION HAPPENING AFTER THE LONGEST GAP (TWO YEARS). PARTICIPANTS ALSO CONFABULATED DETAILS, CHANGING UNFAMILIAR PARTS OF THE STORY TO FAMILIAR IDEAS IN LINE WITH THEIR SCHEMAS: CANOES AND PADDLES BECAME BOATS AND OARS, HUNTING SEALS BECAME FISHING. PARTICIPANTS RATIONALISED THE STORY,. FOR EXAMPLE, IN LATER REPRODUCTIONS, PARTICIPANTS MISSED OUT THE “GHOSTS” AND JUST DESCRIBED A BATTLE BETWEEN NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES. • CONCLUSIONS: MEMORY RECALL IS INFLUENCED BY OUR PRE-EXISTING KNOWLEDGE, OR OUR SCHEMA, WHICH IS INFLUENCED BY OUR CULTURAL BACKGROUND.

Answer 36

THE IDEA OF SCHEMAS HELPS US UNDERSTAND SOME THINGS ABOUT PATIENTS IN THE EARLY STAGES OF DEMENTIA. THOUGH THEY MAY BE CONFUSED BY THEIR AMNESIA, THEY MIGHT STILL REMEMBER IMPORTANT SCHEMAS, AND THIS COULD BE USED TO HELP SUPPORT THEM (REFER TO BUS STOP STUDY) • THIS THEORY HAS BEEN USEFULLY APPLIED IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM. BARTLETTS RESEARCH SHOWS THAT MEMORY IS AFFECTED BY SCHEMAS THEREFORE IMPLYING THAT EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY USED IN COURT CASES IS NOT WHOLLY TRUSTWORTHY AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS THE ONLY SOURCE OF EVIDENCE.

Answer 37

COULD BE ARGUED THAT BARTLETTS RESEARCH HAD GREATER MUNDANE REALISM AS IT DIDN’T INVOLVE THE ARTIFICIAL TASKS THAT MANY OTHERS USED (E.G. P & PS ‘TRIGRAM STUDY). INSTEAD HE USED STORY-TELLING. ON THE OTHER HAND, BARTLETT’S RESEARCH WAS COULD ALSO BE SEEN AS UNREALISTIC, AS GETTING CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO RECALL NATIVE AMERICAN GHOST STORIES IS NOT SOMETHING THEY WOULD NORMALLY DO. HOWEVER, BARTLETT CLAIMED THE TASK HAD TO BE STRANGE SO AS TO PROMPT THE PARTICIPANTS TO LEVEL AND SHARPEN THE DETAILS IN THEIR MEMORIES. THE STUDY BY BARTLETT WAS NOT AT ALL SCIENTIFIC. FOR EXAMPLE, HE DID NOT FOLLOW STANDARDISED PROCEDURES. HE HAD NO SCORING SYSTEM FOR MEASURING CHANGES IN RECALL OTHER THAN COUNTING THE NUMBER OF WORDS. THIS MAKES HIS RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS SUBJECTIVE AND LACKING SCIENTIFIC CREDIBILITY

Answer 38

Is eyewitness testimony reliable?

Answer 39

Ron Cotton: Wrongly convicted of rape based on eyewitness testimony and served 11 years before being released

Answer 40

Eyewitness testimony refers to evidence provided by those who were present at the time that a crime was committed. EWT can have a profound effect on a jury and is particularly important in the absence of more objective physical evidence e.g. video evidence, DNA evidence, finger-print evidence.

Answer 41

1. The guilty person is not caught, remains free to commit further crime 2. An innocent person may be sent to prison

Answer 42

The Innocence Project is committed to exonerating wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing. They estimate that in the United States, between 2.3 and 5% of all prisoners are innocent.

Answer 43

Percentage of wrongful convictions that are down to inaccurate eyewitness testimony = 72%

Answer 44

A case study is an in-depth study of a single person or a small group that all share a single characteristic (like a family). •Case studies usually focus on unusual individuals or events (i.e. a person with brain damage) •Case studies are usually longitudinal studies - they take place over a period of time, so seeing how brain damage changes and effects behaviour. •Case studies usually use a mixture of methods; interviews, psychological tests, observations and experiments to test what an individual can or cannot do. The information might be collected from the case being studied or from other people involved such as friends or family. •Qualitative data (for example from open-ended questions) is usually collected but quantitative data may also be collected (i.e. IQ test scores) •Case studies allow a researcher to investigate a topic in far more detail than might be possible if they were trying to deal with a large number of research participants. Strengths Weaknesses o It is an ethical wa

Answer 45

o It is an ethical way to investigate instances of human behaviour and experiences that are rare or cases which could not possibly be created purposely in research. This is the case of brain damaged individuals- it has to be a naturally occurring event. o The method produces rich, in-depth data because many factors can be studied (whereas experiments have set variables). This means information is less likely to be overlooked and we can understand more about the effects of brain damage. o The case study method is important for psychologists who adopt a ‘holistic’ approach as it takes into account all aspects of the brain damaged individual – it is not reductionist. o High validity as the qualitative data represents real experiences of brain damaged individuals in real-life context.

Answer 46

It is difficult to generalise findings from individual cases as each one has unique characteristics and/or we can’t make before-and-after comparisons because we did not study them before an accident or illness which caused brain damage. o It is often necessary to use recollection of past events as part of a case study. Such evidence may be unreliable because people’s memories are inaccurate. o Researchers may lack objectivity as they get to know the case, or because theoretical biases may lead them to interpret data on the effects of brain damage less objectively. So qualitative data can be subjective. o There are ethical issues as brain damaged patients may be exploited for memory research. o Data analysis can take a lot of time and can be difficult due to lack of standardisation and its subjectivity.

Answer 47

Mann whitney U

Answer 48

Identify the IV & DV. 2. How will you operationalise these variables? 3. . Write an experimental hypothesis. One tailed or two tailed? Why? 4. . Write a null hypothesis

Answer 49

More acoustically dissimilar sounding words will be recalled in the correct order (out of 10) than acoustically similar sounding words. One tailed or two? Why is this?

Answer 50

There will be no difference in the number of acoustically similar and dissimilar sounding words recalled, any difference found will be due to chance.

Answer 51

Acoustically similar or dissimilar words. One group will be presented with 10 acoustically similar words, the other group will be presented with 10 acoustically dissimilar words.

Answer 52

Total number of words accurately recalled from the list in a free recall memory test.

Answer 53

Valid consent. 2. Right to withdraw 3. Risk (Protection from harm).

Answer 54

participants are paired based on similar characteristics and each member of the pair is assigned to a different condition

Answer 55

Reduced individual differences: By matching participants on relevant characteristics, researchers can minimize the influence of extraneous participant variables (e.g., age, intelligence) on the results, making it more likely that any differences between conditions are due to the manipulated variable

Answer 56

Participant attrition: If participants drop out of the study, it can disrupt the matching process and lead to data issues

Answer 57

Their results showed that the longer each student had to count backwards, the less well they were able to recall the trigram accurately. After 3 seconds 80% of the trigrams were recalled correctly. After 6 seconds this fell to 50%. After 18 seconds less than 10% of the trigrams were recalled correctly

Answer 58

Short-term memory has a limited duration (of about 18 seconds) when rehearsal is prevented. It is thought that this information is lost from short-term memory from trace decay. The results of the study also show the short-term memory is different from long-term memory in terms of duration. Thus supporting the multi-store model of memory. If a person is not able to rehearse information, it will not transfer to their long-term memory store.

Answer 59

24 Psychology students from an American University were used as participants in the study. • Each student was read a set of letters (a trigram: 3 consonants, e.g. FNL) to remember. • Then, they were read a three-digit number. The participant then had to count backwards from this number, in threes or fours. E.g. 709, 706, 703… to stop them rehearsing the trigram. This is called an interference task. • When signalled by a red light, the participant was asked to recall the trigram. This was after either 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds of counting backwards. • Each participant had 8 goes at each time delay, meaning they did the procedure 48 times in total with different trigrams!