cognitive studies Flashcards
Schema theory
The idea that all information we come across is filtered through our ‘schemas’, which organize information into a format that we understand based on prior experience. This can lead to distortion, as fitting memories to our expectations can lead to inaccuracies.
Schema study
Bartlett
Aim: to determine how schemas apply to reconstructive memory.
Procedure:
-a sample of British university students were told a native American story called ‘the war of ghosts’, which was full of unfamiliar names, places, titles, concepts and structure.
-Split into two conditions
1: Repeated reproduction: Participants were asked to duplicate the story after being told, and then to do so again to other people over a series of days, weeks, months or years.
2: serial reproduction: participants were asked to reproduce the story after being told and then to do so again for one other person
-researchers found no significant difference in results between conditions.
-the story was prone to change (distortion)
3 types of distortion:
1: assimilation: elements of the story were changed to closer align with participants cultural expectations
2: leveling: the story became shorter with each retelling as participants omitted details that they viewed as unimportant.
3: sharpening: the order of the story was changed to become structured like stories the participants were used to.
-emotions and details were also added
-remembering is an active process
-memory is not a copy of experiences, rather a reconstruction
-Schema’s directly influence reconstructive memory
multi store model of memory
The theory that memory is based in a series of stores. An experience first enters sensory memory. When it is given attention, it enters our Short Term Memory (STM), where rehearsal can transmit it to long term memory. Information stored in our LTM store can be retrieved and brought back to our STM as well as our attention.
working model of memory
Views the STM store proposed in the multi store model as an entire system. A presiding central executive determines which information should be given our attention. It works bidirectionally with a phonological (sound) loop, an episodic buffer, and a Visuo-spatial sketchpad. These three components aid in the consolidation of memory from the STM to the LTM store
working model of memory study
Landry and Bartling
Aim: to investigate if articulatory suppression can influence recall of a written list of phonologically dissimilar letters in serial recall.
procedure:
Participants were shown a list of letters that they had to recall.
2 conditions:
1: control, no articulatory suppression task. shown the letters for 5 s, told to wait 5 seconds and asked to write the correct order of letters on an answer sheet as accurately as possible
2: experimental: participants had to recall the letters while saying the numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’ at a rate of 2 numbers a second
each group was tested in 10 trials
each trial was scored for accuracy of recall
Results:
c accuracy: 76%
e accuracy: 45%
articulatory suppression prevents rehearsal in the phonological loop because it is overloaded. may display how multi-tasking is impractical because of overload
Cognitive biases
A systematic error in thinking that occurs when we interpret the world around us, often a result of information being simplified to fit our heuristics and schemas.
Cognitive bias study
Kahneman et al: peak-end rule
people are likely to judge an experience by what occurred at it’s peak and it’s end
aim: to determine how the end of an experience impacts ones perception of the entire event
procedure:
repeated measure design, every participant engaged in each condition at least once.
-participants were instructed to place one hand in a bath with painfully cold water and indicate out of five with their other hand how strong their pain was.
condition 1: 60 seconds in 14 degrees. After 60s, participants were instructed to remove their hands and were given a warm towel
condition 2: 60 seconds in 14 degrees, the researcher opened a valve which gave them 30 seconds of slightly warmer water
-participants were asked to choose between the conditions for a final repeat of the experiment
-80% of participants chose condition 2 because it ended slightly less painfully, even though it was longer and only marginally less painful
-they based both experiences on their endings
Transitive memory
The idea that some information is stored outside of our own cognition, and we rely on those outside sources for specific information. E.g., you might go to your mum to find out a family birthday because you know that she will know.
impartial Impacts of technology on cognition (HL)
Sparrow et al
Aim: to determine if the internet has become a massive transitive memory store
it was hypothesized that we spend less effort on remembering things if we believe it will be stored on google for us to find later.
Procedure:
-Participants were asked to type a range of trivia questions (some containing popular culture knowledge that they were expected to be aware of, some containing new knowledge) into a computer
-Half the participants were told that the computer would save the information
-other half were told that it would not
Within these conditions were another 2 (2x2 independent samples design)
-half were asked to remember the information
-the other half were not asked to remember
so there were 4 conditions
Participants were then tested on the trivia information
%of information remembered by:
-saved asked to remember 14%
-saved not asked to remember 22%
-erased asked to remember 29%
-erased not asked to remember 31%
no sig difference between asked and not asked. sig difference between saved and erased.
participants who believed they would be able to retrieve the information apparently made less effort to remember (there is no way to measure effort, so the correlation is uncertain)
negative Impacts of technology on cognition (HL)
Chou and Edge
Aim: to determine the influence of the availability heuristic on social comparison theory with regard to Facebook useage.
SOCIAL COMPARISON THEORY: the idea that humans constantly compare themselves to the people around them.
AVALIABILITY HEURISTIC: people base their judgements on the information that is most accessible to them, or most prominently presented.
procedure:
-a sample of 425 uni students were asked to complete a survey with a 1-10 scale to indicate how greatly they agreed with statements like ‘many of my friends have a better life/are happier than me’
-the also indicated how many hours a week they spent on facebook, how long they had been a user, the average time spent with friends in real life and the number of facebook friends they had whom they did not know in real life
RESULTS
-those who spent the most time on FB were more likely to agree that others were happier than them
-those who spent the most time in the real world were far less likely to have negative feelings
-those with a large number of non-personal friends were likely to agree that others had a better life but not that others were happier.
when more time is spent on FB we begin to see the high points of people’s lives that they choose to share. The availability heuristic dictates that we are likely to base our self-esteem on what we see around us, when we see mainly positive posts we are likely to be prone to upward comparison and our self-esteem will be lowered.
positive Impacts of technology on cognition (HL)
Bavelier
To investigate the connection between action games and decision making, Bavelier and her team first studied two groups of men and women, average age 26, who said they had not played video games in the past year. One group was told to play two action video games for two hours for a total of 50 hours. The second group was asked to play a simulation game in which they had to make decisions about a character’s life.
After the 50 hours of game time, members of both groups were asked to look at a computer screen and do a simple test. The computer screen showed a pattern of dots. Participants had to determine which way the majority of dots were moving by pressing a key on the keyboard. Some of the patterns were easy - with pretty much all of the dots heading in the same direction. Others were more complex.
Findings showed that although both groups could accomplish the task, those who had played the action video did the task faster and with fewer errors - that is, they were able to decipher a large amount of information more quickly and come to a decision.
Flashbulb memory
A highly vivid memory of a moment in which something emotionally significant occurred.
Flashbulb memory study
Brown and Kuliks
Aim: to determine if personal relevance was a factor in the formation of FBM
they argued that FBM is caused not only by emotional stimulation but personal relevance
procedure:
-A sample of 80 American (40 black 40 white) were asked to fill out a questionaire regarding the deaths of public figures like JFK and MLKJ as well as someone they personally knew.
-they were asked questions regarding their whereabouts, company and action at the time they heard about the event, as well as the means by which they found out
-they were asked how they felt when they heard about it (to indicate emotional response)
-about importance (to indicate personal relevance)
-and about how often thy talked about it (to indicate rehersal)
results:
90% of participants had remembered significant detail about the day these events occured
-75% of black participants of black participants had FBM regarding MLK death compared to 33% of white participants
Reconstructive memory
Memory is not a copy of experiences, rather a reconstruction of events.
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts which are used in order to process information quickly and efficiently. They allow people to make decisions without needing to think for a long time about that decision.
