Studies Flashcards
Describe and evaluate Murdock’s serial position curve study
The aim of Murdock’s serial position curve study was to prove the existence of separate short term and long term memory stores.
He gathered 16 participants (all male and female psychology students). They were read out a list of 20 words at the rate of 1 word per second and were then asked to recall as many words as they could in any order. This was repeated 80 times over different days.
It was found that words from the beginning (primacy) and ending (recency) were remembered more than words from the middle of the list, because words from the beginning of the list had time to be rehearsed and made it into long term memory and the words from the end of the list were still in short term memory.
He concluded that there are separate stores for short term and long term memory.
Strength - replicable (lab environment, standardized procedure)
Weakness - lacks ecological validity (focusing on artificial tasks like remembering a series of words)
Weakness - lacks generalizability (only done of psychology students, cannot be applied to the general public)
Describe and evaluate Bartlett’s war of the Ghosts study
The aim of Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts study was to investigate whether participants altered an unfamiliar story to make more sense to them.
All the participants in this study were male and female English Cambridge students. The participants were read a story aloud called the War of the Ghosts, and after 15 minutes were asked to retell the story to the person beside them, who told it to the person next and so on. Researchers recorded each story told so that they were aware of any alterations made.
He found that the passage of the story became much shorter, there were many omissions (no ghosts were mentioned), certain details were changed (canoes were changed to boats), and the order of events in the story changed.
He then concluded that his study supports the Reconstructive memory theory as the participants filled in gaps and changes the information to fit their own understanding of the world.
Strength - replicable (labe environment, standardized procedures)
Weakness - lack ecological validity (focusing on remembering a Native American folk story, not something we do in real life)
Weakness - not generalizable (only done of Cambridge students studying English)
What are the experiments Piaget used to investigate egocentrism, conservation and object permanence
Object permanence -
Piaget gave a child a toy to play with. While the child was watching, he took the toy and hid it under a blanket. He wanted to see if the child went looking for the toy or not.
He found that children that were younger than 8 months old did not look for the toy under the blanket whereas children older than 8 months did. This shows that children at around 8 months old develop object permanence.
Egocentrism -
Piaget showed children a model of three mountains and placed a doll at different sides around the mountains.
The child’s task was to look at different photos taken from each side of the mountains and choose the one that showed the doll’s view. He found that children younger than 7 typically chose the picture that matched their own view of the mountains and children older than 7 typically chose the picture that matched the doll’s view. This shows that children younger than the age of 7 displayed egocentrism because they could not see things from another person’s perspective
Conservation -
Children were shown two identical rows of counters and asked if the rows had the same number of counters. If children agreed, the counters from one row were spread apart while the child watched.
The child was then asked again if there are the same number of counters in each row. It was found that children in younger than 7 years of age said that the number of counters in the spaced out row was greater, and that children in older than 7 said that there were the same number of counters. This shows that children older than 7 years have developed or are developing conservation, because they know that though the appearance of something changes, the quantity stays the same
Describe and evaluate McGarrigle and Donaldson’s Naughty Teddy study
The aim of McGarrigle and Donaldson’s Naughty Teddy study was to investigate whether children developed conservation at an earlier age than Piaget suggested.
McGarrigle and Donaldson conducted a lab experiment where they gathered 80 children between the ages of 4 to 6 years. They were presented with two rows of counters and were asked if the two rows had the same number of counters (they did, and the children said this because each counter row was evenly spaced). Then, a puppet known as the ‘naughty teddy’ appeared and messed up the second row of counters so that they looked different than the first row. The researcher then asked the child again whether the counters had the same number of counters.
It was found that 62% of all the children stated correctly that the two rows still had the same number of counters, refuting Piaget’s study which said that only 16% of the children correctly stated this.
In conclusion, children younger than 7 years of age are capable of conservation.
Strength - replicable (lab environment, standardized procedures)
Strength - further supporting evidence (Children under 7 were shown two rows of counters in silence and the researcher then spread out the counters from one row. After this, the child was asked once – ‘Is there the same amount in each row?’. It was found that the children were able to use conservation and stated that there were the same number of counters in each row)
Weakness - lacks ecological validity (focuses on artificial tasks)
Describe and evaluate Hughes’ Policeman doll study on egocentrism
The aim of Hughes’ Policeman doll study was to investigate whether children are able to see things from the perspective of others at an earlier age than Piaget suggested (grow out of egocentric behaviors at an earlier age).
He gathered 30 children between the ages of 3 and 5 years old. These children, in preparation for the real experiment, were shown a model with two intersecting walls that formed a cross. A policeman doll was placed at one position around the cross-model and the child was asked to place a boy doll so that the policeman could not see him. The procedure was repeated with the policeman hidden at different positions till the child understood the task (even if they got it wrong). In the actual experiment, two policeman dolls were placed around the model and the child had to hide the boy doll so that neither policeman could see him. This was done three times.
It was found that 90% of the children in the study aged 3 ½ to five years old were able to hide the boy doll from both the policemen.
In conclusion, children grow out of egocentrism at an earlier age than Piaget suggested if they understand the task and if the context of the task is familiar to them. This goes against Piaget because his theory states that children younger than 7 are still egocentric.
Strength - replicable
Strength - supporting study (Grover doll study)
Weakness - lacks ecological validity
Describe and evaluate Bruner and Minturn’s Broken B study on how expectation affects perception
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Describe and evaluate Von Frisch’s Bee study
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Describe and evaluate Yuki’s study of emoticons
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Describe and evaluate Penfield’s interpretive cortex study
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Describe and evaluate Tulving’s gold study
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Describe and evaluate McGarrigle and Donaldson’s study on motivation and perception
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