HL - Cognitive processing in the digital world

Question 1

Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014)

Answer 1

Aim ->
to determine whether taking notes on a laptop has an effect on academic performance and to consider whether verbatim note-taking can be considered an indication of shallow processing.

Method ->
Ppts picked whether to take notes using laptops or writing by hand. Across three studies M&O had students take notes from videos of TED talks or lectures, using either a laptop or handwriting. Ppts were then tested for factual and conceptual knowledge, either immediately or with a delay.

Results ->
Longhand note-takers performed significantly better on conceptual knowledge than those using laptops. Reviewing notes led to stronger performance for longhand note-takers but weaker performance for those using laptops.
Laptop note-takers produced significantly more notes with significantly more verbatim content than longhand note-takers.

Conclusion ->
Taking notes using hand-writing is better than using laptops.
Encoding hypothesis > external-storage hypothesis.

Evaluation ->

✔ Triangulation of methods -> used many different methods to be sure of results.

✔

❌
❌ low validity -> no random allocation

Working memory model/MSM -> processing for handwriting represented in the brain, connections reactivated. Type unthinkingly nothing really activated - no effort in.

✔ n/s ~ good positive evaluative point
❌ n/s ~ good negative evaluative point

Question 2

Henkel (2014)

Answer 2

aim ->
whether taking photographs of objects (either as whole objects or focusing on specific features) had a detrimental effect on memory compared to simply looking at the objects.

Method ->
In a repeated measures design participants took full pictures of some objects, zoomed-in pictures of others and just looked at a third set of objects. Memory for these objects (names, details/features, location in museum) was tested.

Results ->
Taking whole photos significantly impaired ppts’ memory for details of the objects, while focusing on detail or simply looking at the object was equally effective for recall.
Zooming in had a negative effect on ppts’ memory of where in the museum an object was.

Conclusion ->
Explanations for these results included:
Taking a photograph (whole object) leads to a dismissal of the memory because of a confidence that the image remains on an external device (arguably an example of transactive memory);
The additional attentional and cognitive processes involved in focusing on a specific detail of an object overcomes this effect.

The suggestion was offered that, in the same way that research has demonstrated the positive effect on memory of reviewing one’s notes, there is likely to be a similar benefit to reviewing one’s photographs in terms of this activity providing more retrieval cues. The difficulty with this is that digital photographs can be too numerous and too disorganised for people to want to spend time sorting them out.

Evaluation ->

✔
✔

❌
❌

✔ n/s ~ good positive evaluative point
❌ n/s ~ good negative evaluative point

Question 3

Falconer et al (2016)

Answer 3

aim ->
To see if a VR activity that teaches increased self-compassion and decreased self-criticism would work with patients with depression.

Method ->
A VR programme was used whereby ppts first offered compassion to a crying child (acting through the virtual body that represented them). After this, they were given the virtual body of a child and they received compassion from a virtual body that performed the ppts’ own actions and spoke the ppts’ own words. There were three such sessions.
Measures of depression, self-compassion, self-criticism and fear of compassion were used at various stages of the study.

Results ->
Ppts showed linear improvements in terms of increased self-compassion and decreased self-criticism over the course of the study. There were also linear improvements in depression scores.

Conclusion ->

Evaluation ->

✔
✔

❌
❌

✔ n/s ~ good positive evaluative point
❌ n/s ~ good negative evaluative point