Cogntive Level of Analysis (CLOA) Flashcards
Loftus and Palmer → Car Crash Study (1974)
Aim
To show what extent memory is reliable.
Procedures
45 students were shown videos of car crashes.
They were then asked a series of questions about the specifics of the car crashes.
The critical question was “About how fast was the cars going when they hit each other?”
The verb “hit” was replaced with “Smashed”, “Collided”, “Bump” and “Contacted” for different participants.
Results
Those who were asked with “Smashed” averaged the mean speed of 40.8 mph.
Those who were asked with “Contacted” averaged the mean speed of 31.8 mph.
The phrasing of the question brought a change in speed estimated.
Due to schema activated by the chose verb.
Shows schema can affect memory.
Shows the unreliability of reconstructive memory.
Evaluation
Confounding variable: Presumed ability to perceive the velocity of moving object.
Demand characteristics: Participants corrected their original answer according to the chosen verb.
Student sample. not enough to generalize to the mass population.
Ecological validity: Low, car crash was not real, therefore less emotion was involved affecting the level of detail retained.
Unethical and unfeasible to create real car crashes.
Forced participants to watch graphic car crashes.
Participants are generally desensitized because of the media.
No distress due to watching car crashes reported.
Barlett – War of Ghosts (1932)
Aim
To investigate whether people’s memory for a story is affected by previous knowledge (schema) and the extent to which memory is reconstructive.
Procedures
Participants’ memory for this story was tested by
using:
Serial reproduction- The first participant reads the original story and reproduces it on paper and this is read by the second participant who reproduces it for a third participant and continues until the sixth or seventh reproductions are completed by an equal number of participants
Repeated reproduction- The same participant contributes all six or seven reproductions, these reproductions or separated by intervals of 15 minutes to several years from reading the original story The two methods led to very similar findings.
Results
The participants remembered the main idea of the story (the gist) but they changed unfamiliar elements to make sense of the story by using terms more familiar to their own cultural expectations.
The story remained a coherent whole although it was changed.
It became noticeably shorter for each reproduction. Bartlett concluded that remembering is an active process.
Memories are not copies of experience but rather ”reconstructions”.
Evaluation
The results of the study confirm schema theory (and reconstructive memory), but it was performed in a laboratory and can be criticized for lack of ecological validity.
Participants did not receive standardized instructions and some of the memory distortions may be due to participants’ guessing (demand characteristics).
In spite of these methodological limitations, the study is one of the most important in the study of memory.
Bransford and Johnson - Laundry (1972)
Aim
Attempted to identify more precisely the processing stage or stages at which schema are likely to exert their influence.
Procedures
Study involved participants hearing a long speech under three different experimental conditions:
I. No title condition, participants only heard the paragraph
II. Title before, participants heard the same paragraph after being told “The paragraph you will hear will be about washing clothes”
III. The title after condition, participants were told the paragraphs about washing clothes after they had listened it After hearing the paragraph participants indicated how easy they found to understand the speech and tried to recall as much as they could
After hearing the paragraph participants indicated how easy they found to understand the speech and tried to recall as much as they could.
Results
Participants in the no title and title after conditions found the paragraph difficult to comprehend than the title before group.
Concluded that the title before condition participants activated schematic knowledge about what is involved in washing clothes and helped disambiguate the paragraph The title after information came too late to provide necessary context, so participants couldn’t comprehend it and forgotten it.
Evaluation
S: Research has three experimental conditions so effects and evidence of schemas to be more apparent
W: These participants don’t represent the general results are more objective and it allowed the population and so difficult to generalize
W: Lacks ecological validity and mundane realism in the no title condition as people would usually know what a speech they’re about to listen is about. Also, this was a laboratory experiment so this makes ecological validity and mundane realism worse.
Deffenbacher et al. (2004)
Conducted a meta-analysis of studies investigating the role of emotion on eyewitness testimony. They found that anxiety and stress reduces the reliable recall of crime details including information about the behavior of the main characters.
Other studies have shown that anxiety and stress and stress seem to improve eyewitness accuracy.
Deffenbeacher et al. suggests that increases of anxiety up to a certain level increase accuracy but further increase may produce the opposite effect.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
Found that real-life recall can be very accurate. They analyzed interviews from people who had witnessed a crime in which one person was shot dead and another was seriously injured. There were interviews with the police immediately after the crime and several months later with the researchers. Yuille and Cutshall found that the accuracy and amount of information recalled did not decrease over time. The eyewitnesses’ accounts were not distorted by leading questions posed by the police.
These findings suggest that post-event information may distort memory less in real life than in the laboratory.
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) → Multistore Model of Memory
Description
Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a model called multistore model of memory. Within multi memory model, he stated that there are three memory stores that affects memory.
Sensory – Information received by the senses enters its corresponding sensory stores and registers in a way reflecting its initial for. Visual information enters the visual sensory store, iconic memory. Auditory information enters the auditory sensory store, echoic memory.
Sensory stores have unlimited capacity but information stored will be forgotten unless attention is given. Attention is the control process responsible for the transfer of information of information from the sensory store to the STS. Only information given attention will transfer to STS.
Short-term stores (STS) – Has an extremely limited capacity and will be lost unless it is maintained through rehearsal. Information rehearsed enough get transferred to the LTS.
Long-term stores (LTS) – Has unlimited capacity and information and can last a life time, unless reconstruction has occurred which may alter the memory. Information in the LTS is recalled by the process of retrieval (LTS → STM).
Evaluation
Strengths
Supported by the other experiments.
Shows simplistic view of what the memory functions.
Weaknesses
Importance of rehearsal has been doubted.
The linear representation of memory is too simple as cognitive process is really complex.
Rehearsal is too simple process to account for the transfer of information from STM to LTM. The model does not account for effort, and strategy that subjects use when learning and does not account for the type of information taken into memory (LOP addresses this)
Craik and Lockhart (1972 – theory proposed) (Craik and Tulving 1975 experiment) – Levels of Processing
Aim
To demonstrate that memory is an automatic by-product of semantic processing.
Procedures
In one experiment, participants were shown a list of words and asked a question for each and the answer was yes and no, the questions were of three types:
Case (shallow processing)
Rhyme (phonemic processing)
Sentence (semantic or deep processing)
Participants were tested on either intentional or incidental learning.
Results
Words processed semantically were recalled best.
Words processed phonetically were recalled second best.
Intentional learners did better than the incidental learners but in both conditions semantic processing produced the highest results for that condition.
Evaluation
Strengths
Supported by other experiments
Weaknesses
No convincing measure of processing depth
Descriptive rather than explaining what it is about in detail.
Criticized that it is empirical.
Does not address retrieval part.
Participants may have expected what the aim of the study is about.
Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) | Recency Recall
Aim
To investigate recency effect in free recall (i.e. in any order).
Procedures
This was a laboratory experiment where participants first heard a list of items and then immediately had to recall them in any order.
Results
Participants recalled words from the beginning of the list (primacy effect) and the end of the list (the recency effect) best. The results showed a U-shaped curve.
If participants were given a filler task just after hearing the last words, the primacy effect disappeared but the recency effect remained.
The recency effect could be due to the words still being active in STM (working memory).
Rehearsal could be a factor in transfer of information into LTM.
Evaluation
The study supports the idea of multiple stores (STM and LTM).
This is a controlled laboratory study with highly controlled variables, but there is no random allocation of participants to experimental conditions so it is not a true experiment.
There may be problems with ecological validity.
Schacter and Singer (1962) | Two-factor Theory
Aim
To test the two factor theory of emotion (that emotion arises from a combination of cognition and arousal), using the hormone, adrenaline.
Procedures
184 college males
Divided into 4 groups
All groups were told that they were going to be given an injection of Suproxin in order to test its effects on vision
Even though men were really receiving adrenaline and:
Informed of the correct effects of adrenaline (under the impression that it was suproxin)
Given no information on effects
Given false effects
Last group was given a placebo
4 Groups divided into 2 subgroups
Condition 1 euphoria
Confederate encouraged participant to play with games inside the waiting room (with office equipment)
Condition 2 anger
Confederate completed a questionnaire at the same pace as the participant but became more and more angry as the questions became more personal
Participants were observed for changes in emotion
Participants were then asked to fill out a questionnaire detailing their state of emotion
Results
Showed that participants that were given information on the effects of adrenaline showed minimal changes in emotion because they had an accurate explanation of their emotion.
But those who had been told no effect showed much higher changes in emotion because they had no explanation for their state of arousal, so they used cues of the confederate’s behavior and labeled their emotions.
These participants changed their behavior according to cognitive appraisal of their emotions, rather than specific physiological arousal, indicating that only general arousal is required.
Evaluation
Researchers concluded that emotion occurs by a process of cognitive labeling: the interpretation of physiological cues is combined with contextual cues to construct a person’s subjective experience of emotion
This study supports that a combination of physiological change (adrenaline) and cognitive labeling (appraisal of the situation) can contribute to changes in emotion
Introduce importance of first theory – Lazarus’ Theory of Appraisal:
Cognitive researchers on emotion usually emphasize the importance of cognitive appraisal.
Speisman et al. (1964) – Appraisal theory
Aim
To investigate the extent to which manipulation of cognitive appraisal could influence emotional experience.
Procedures
In this laboratory experiment participants saw anxiety-evoking films, (e.g. a film of an aboriginal initiation ceremony where adolescent boys were subjected to unpleasant genital cutting).
This film was shown with three different soundtracks intended to manipulate emotional reactions.
The “trauma condition” had a soundtrack with emphasis on the mutilation and pain; the “internationalization condition” had a soundtrack that gave an anthropological interpretation of the initiation ceremony; the “denial condition” showed the adolescents as being willing and happy in the ceremony.
During each viewing of the film various objective physiological measures were taken, such as heart rate and galvanic skin response.
Results
The participants in the “trauma condition” showed much higher physiological measures of stress than the participants in the two other conditions. The results support the appraisal theory in that the manipulation of the participants’ cognitive appraisal did have a significant impact on the physiological stress reactions. The participants in the “trauma condition” reacted more emotionally.
Evaluation
This was a laboratory experiment with rigorous control so it may lack ecological validity, but research on the role of appraisal in real-life emotional events tends to find the same relationship as laboratory research.
The study could be a demonstration of how biological and cognitive factors interact in emotion and it illustrates LeDoux’s theory of the two pathways in emotional processing.
Lazarus (1981, 1991) – Appraisal theory
Description
His theory suggests that humans evaluate the situations according to the importance they have for us.
Primary Appraisal: We label whether the stimuli is harmful or beneficial.
Secondary Appraisal: After the initial interpretation, this part is how one cope’s with the given situation.
- Problem: reinterpreting to make situation less threatening.
- Emotion: reinterpreting to minimize emotional response.
Future: expectation
Brown and Kulik → Flash bulb-memory (1977)
Aim
To show the existence of flash bulb memory.
Procedures
Asked 80 American (40 white, 40 black) to answer questions about 10 events.
Nine were assassinations or attempted assassinations of well-known American personalities.
Tenth was a self-selected event of personal relevance and involving unexpected shock.
Participants were asked to recall the circumstances they found themselves in when they first heard the news about the 10 event.
Were also asked to indicate how often they had rehearsed (overtly or covertly) information about each event.
Results
Assassination of Kennedy led to the highest number of FBMs with over 90% of participants recalling its reception context in vivid detail.
African Americans reported more FBMs for leaders of civil rights movements than Caucasian Americans.
Most participants recalled a personal FBM.
Evaluation
The results shows evidence for flash bulb memory and the role of emotion in forming memory. The results suggest that emotional events that affect people emotionally in negative or positive ways to create a FBM effect.
But events such as JFK being assassinated my not be as emotionally significant to African Americans as the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Neisser and Harsch (1992) – Challenger space disaster
Procedures
Asked participants to about circumstances of their learning about the Challenger space disater.
Reported on this event twice a day after the disaster.
Reported again half years later.
Results
One day after event, 21% of participants reported hearing it on TV.
Two and half years later, this rose to 45%.
Evaluation
Participants memories of how they learned the news changed over time and that their memories about how they heard the news deteriorated during the two and half years.
Talarico and Rubin (2003) – Controlled reliability test
Description
Found that emotional intensity was often associated with greater memory confidence, but not with accuracy.
Procedures
Asked participants to recall of 911 on four different occasions.
1 day after
7 days after
42 days after
224 days after
They also tested participants memory for an everyday event that had happened around the same time with the attack. Memories were tested four time within same arrangement.
Results
Showed that the FBMs remained very vivid throughout the study and that participants were very confident about their accuracy but not more consistent than the participant’s everyday memories.
Evaluation
FBM may be just a result of extra attention and rehearsal being given to a certain event because of the emotional significant or shock of it. We are more likely to talk to people about a very shocking event and rehearse it in our head than more mundane events. Therefore creating the vividness in the memory and “accuracy” of it and as a result FBM is formed.
Huettel et al (2006) | Risky vs Ambiguous Decisions
Aim
To determine whether decisions involving risk and ambiguity are similar or different types of decision making processes
Procedures
Participants were placed within an fMRI machine and they were given pairs of monetary gambles. The pairs had ambiguous and risky decisions the participants had to choose from.
Results
The prefrontal and parietal cortex showed increased activation during the choices. The participants who had a preference for making the ambiguous choice had increased activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Participants who had a preference for choosing the risky decision had increased activity in the posterior parietal cortex.
Evaluation
S: The uniform method of collecting data and the many controls allow the study to be highly replicated. The study also has researcher triangulation since the results in the Huettel et al. study was supported by the Parrot, 2000 study.
W: This is a brain study so the data is correlation and a clear cause effect relationship between the activation of certain parts of the brain and the risky behavior cannot be determined. The other issue is since the choices being made do not affect the participants’ life outside of the study there is a lack of ecological validity.
