Issues and debates: socially sensitive (cog)

Question 1

INTRO

Socially sensitive

Answer 1

Socially sensitive research, while potentially problematic, is important for raising awareness of societal issues and addressing them. Researchers must consider potential misuse, misrepresentation, and discrimination when interpreting and reporting findings.

Question 2

A01 & A03 (is)

Answer 2

A01:
- The study of memory is unlikely to illicit socially sensitive findings as it seeks to understand the processing of memory such as encoding, capacity and duration.

A03:
- For example studies involving learning word lists to investigate duration, capacity and encoding in memory cause no issues for participants or wider society.
- Baddeley (1966) found STM encodes acoustically and LTM encodes semantically which is not socially sensitive.

Question 3

A01 & A03 (isn’t)

Answer 3

A01:
- However, memory loss is a sensitive area for amnesic individuals and their family & friends concerned.
- Amnesia is life altering cognitive impairment that can cause an individual extreme distress because their intelligence remains virtually intact, leading to confusion and frustration due to their loss of memory.

A03:
- Research on patients with brain damage leading to severe memory loss such as HM/Clive Wearing may be considered sensitive due to the implications of understanding that memory loss is likely to be permanent and does affect semantic memory. This might lead family members and society treating these individuals differently which is socially sensitive.

Question 4

judgment

Answer 4

Overall, the majority of research in cognitive psychology does not have any socially sensitive issues.