Psychology A1 - concept four - cognitive

Question 1

types of cognitive priming

Answer 1

1. repetition priming
2. semantic priming
3. associative priming

Question 2

what is cognitive priming?

Answer 2

-see or hear on stimulus (‘prime’)
-affects response to later stimulus (process the later stimulus faster)
-prime triggers a network of related concepts in memory, when second stimulus occurs, activation is quicker
-occurs below level of awareness, don’t know response has been influences

Question 3

1. repetition priming

Answer 3

-encounter prime, process it more quickly when you see or hear it again
-example, overheard ‘avocado’ in conversation, word = prime, if you hear it later that day, you process it quicker than what you did earlier

Question 4

2. semantic priming

Answer 4

-‘semantic’ = two stimuli meaning same thing or having similar features
-process stimulus faster because you encountered a prime that was similar in meaning earlier
-example, see or hear word ‘computer’, earlier to recognise/recall word ‘laptop’ later, process ‘laptop’ faster because its meaning is similar to the prime

Question 5

3. associative priming

Answer 5

-prime and stimulus are associated but not semantically
-usually paired together in everyday experiences
-example, fish and chips are paired together so often, they are closely associated in memory, exposed to one, most likely to recall the other

Question 6

example of how cognitive priming works

Answer 6

-cognitive priming - ‘mentally setting you up in advance to behave in a certain way’
-psychologists believe this could explain how adverts affect behaviour
-watching TV adverts promoting snacking as fun, adverts prime you to associate snacks with something positive
-get to eat many snacks, eat quite a lot of them
-Harris et al (2009) investigated this, found that students who were primed ate more snacks than control group

Question 7

evaluation: practical applications (+)