Cognitive Psychology Questions

The Baddeley and Hitch working memory model:-proposed by Bradly and Hitch, that there are MULTIPLE STORES to the brain than STM, and that these 'slave systems' are more anatomically separated-PHONOLOGICAL LOOP: stores auditory information-visual spatial sketchpad: visual and spatial info-episodic buffer: how we INTEGRATE INFORMATION FROM DIFF MEMORY STORES

cognitive behavior in which ideas, images, mental representations, or other hypothetical elements of thought are experienced or manipulated. In this sense, thinking includes imagining, remembering, problem solving, daydreaming, free association, concept formation, and many other processes. Thinking may be said to have two defining characteristics: (a) It is covert—that is, it is not directly observable but must be inferred from actions or self-reports; and (b) it is symbolic—that is, it seems to involve operations on mental symbols or representations, the nature of which remains obscure and controversial (see symbolic process).

to say that you're measuring what you're actually measuring

When making decisions, we often rely on past experience or the information that is immediately available to us. This is referred to as "system 1 thinking." In order to reduce the amount of thinking required, we often rely on "heuristics" or mental short-cuts to make decisions. Heuristics are a cognitive bias - and although they often help us to make decisions, they sometimes lead to illogical or incorrect decisions or conclusions.One example of a cognitive bias is anchoring bias. Anchoring bias is when the first piece of information we receive influences our decisions. For example, when we hear that the original price of a good was 100 dollars but is now marked down to 80 dollars, we find that more attractive than walking into a store and seeing the same thing for 80 dollars. Seeing the 100 first makes us feel like we are getting a better deal. The value of a good is ambiguous - that is, we don't know how much it should be, so this information helps us to form an opinion and make a decision.One study that showed this cognitive bias was done by Englich and Mussweiler. They wanted to see if anchoring bias would affect a jury's verdict. A sample of law students was given a rape case and was asked, based on the evidence, how long the punishment should be. In one group they were told that the prosecution recommended a 34-month sentence; in the other group a 12-month sentence. The study showed that when given the suggestion of 34 months, the students recommended on average a longer sentence. Since they would not have an absolute sense of how many months to punish the offender, they used the "anchor" that they were given to make their decision. This is an example of how a cognitive bias may affect one's behaviour.English and Mussweiler studied anchoring bias and its effect on courtroom sentencing. Anchoring bias is a heuristic, a mental shortcut that humans use due to being cognitive misers. When we engage in System 1 thinking we make a quick decision without considering all the information that is available and rely on previous knowledge or schemas, as well as using heuristics to make decisions. Anchoring bias is a shortcut by which a decision is influenced by an "anchor." This is a value that is presented and which we then use as a basis for judgment. For example, when bargaining in the marketplace, if you are told that the original price is 1000 dollars, you are more likely to assume that the item has a higher value than if the original price was given as 600 dollars.

-theory says that there must be a special mechanism because FBM's are a different type of memory -reception context-theory doesn't address Kulkofsky study; says the opposite

the ability to access information from memory when you need it.

a process through which groups collectively encode, store and retrieve information.

Not reliable:Brewer and Teyrens(1981):AIM: the role of schema in encoding and retrieval of memorysample: 86 University psychology studentsPROCEDURE: were asked to sit and observe a room that looked like that of an office-consisted of objects which were commonly found in offices as wellCONDITIONS: drawing condition, recall condition & VERBAL RECOGNITION CONDITIONRESULTS:participants who were in the RECALL condition and the DRAWING condition REMEMBERED MORE ITEMS IN THE OFFICE based on their schema of an office,SHARPENING/RATIONALIZING:had a HIGHER RATE OF CHANGING CERTAIN DETAILS of the objects (E.g. such as a yellow pad, or a table) that were congruent to their schema but weren't in the room.ASSIMILATION: Based on the participants' pre-existing knowledge of an office, the "expected items" were recalled more often, even when they weren't in the room. Participants in both the drawing and recall condition even changed the details of the objects,The findings of this study further supports the role of schema in memory processes to a great extent, as schema was prevalent in the encoding and recall of the objects in the office.LIMITATIONS:-Hard to test in experiments;-doesn't have a construct/separate components to study specifically to predict assmiliation, accommodation, etc.-hard to predict when one will use their schema, unlike other cognitive processes→ describe whether it is a valid model or not in comparison to other cognitive modelsRELIABLE: Yuille and Cutshall:Aim: demonstrate the reliability of memory (challenged the findings of Loftus & Palmer (1974)). determine whether leading questions would affect memory of eyewitnesses at a real crime scene. In other words, the aim was the same as Loftus & Palmer's (1974) study, but in this case, the event that they observed was real and had an emotional impact on those that observed it.PROCEDURE: The crime scene was in Vancouver. A thief entered a gun shop and tied up the owner before stealing money and guns from the shop. The owner freed himself, and thinking that the thief had escaped, went outside the shop. But the thief was still there and shot him twice. Police had been called and there was gunfire - and the thief was eventually killed. As the incident took place in front of the shop, there were eyewitnesses - 21 were interviewed by the police.-The researchers chose this incident to study because there were enough witnesses and there was forensic evidence available to confirm the stories of the eyewitnesses.-The researchers contacted the eyewitnesses four months after the event. 13 of the eyewitnesses agreed to be interviewed as part of a study. They gave their account of the incident, and then they were asked questions. Two leading questions were used. Half the group was asked if they saw "a" broken headlight on the getaway car. The other half were asked if they saw "the" broken headlight. In fact, there was no broken headlight. The second question asked half the group if they saw "the" yellow panel on the car, and the other half was asked if they saw "a" yellow panel on the car (the panel was actually blue). They were also asked to rate their stress on the day of the event on a seven-point scale.RESULTS:It was found that eyewitnesses were actually very reliable. They recalled a large amount of accurate detail that could be confirmed by the original police reports. They also did not make errors as a result of the leading questions. 10 out of 13 of them said there was no broken headlight or yellow quarter panel, or that they had not noticed those particular details.FINDINGS: The researchers found that the accuracy of the witnesses compared to the original police reports was between 79% and 84%. It appears that this research contradicts the study by Loftus & Palmer (1974). It could be that the lack of emotional response to the video that was shown in their study played a key role in the influence of the leading questions. The witnesses reported that they didn't remember feeling afraid during the incident, but they did report having an "adrenaline rush."

:an individual to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (known as the "anchor") when making decisions.

One research method used at the cognitive approach is experiments. Experiments are used to establish a cause and effect relationship between two or more variables. In an experiment, the research manipulates an independent variable and measures its effect on a dependent variable while all other variables are held constant. Participants are randomly allocated to conditions and the environment in which the study is done is controlled to make sure that extraneous variables do not have an effect on the results of the study.One example of an experiment is Loftus & Palmer's study on how leading questions may affect one's memory of an automobile crash. Participants watched a movie in which two cars hit one another. The participants were given a questionnaire with several questions about the accident, but only one question was actually important. One question asked the participants how fast the car was going when the accident occurred. For some participants, the question ended with "when the two cars smashed into each other." For other participants, the word smashed was replaced with bumped, hit, collided or contacted. The IV was the intensity of the verb in the leading question. The DV was the speed that the participants estimated. The researchers used an independent samples design, so the participants experienced only one condition. Otherwise, they would not have been able to carry out the experiment because the participants would have figured out the actual goal of the study. Therefore, deception is sometimes used in experiments to avoid the participants demonstrating demand characteristics, where they do what they think that the researcher wants them to do. As part of the experiment, when the task is completed, the researcher must debrief the participant and reveal any deception.The results of the experiment showed that the stronger the intensity of the verb, the higher the estimate of the speed of the car when the accident happened. As the data was quantitative, statistics could be calculated to see if the results were significant or due to chance. This showed that the wording of the question had a direct cause and effect relationship on the estimation of speed made by participants.

bransford and johnson- schema worked at the encoding stage--when given the schema before the study Bartlett's (1932) schema processing as part of reconstructive memory--occurred during retrieval

are two components of the Serial Positioning Effect. Primacy effect results in a participant recalling information presented earlier in a list of information better than information presented later on. It is believed that covert rehearsal has already moved this information to LTM. Recency effect results in a participant recalling information presented at the end of a list of information better than information presented in the middle of a list. It is believed that this is because the information is still in STM and has not been displaced.

The part of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model responsible for the control and regulation of cognitive processes. It binds information from a number of sources into a coherent "episode", coordinates the "slave systems", shifts between tasks and handles selective attention and inhibition.

holds information about what we see. It is used in the temporary storage and manipulation of spatial and visual information, such as remembering shapes and colors, or the location or speed of objects in space. It is also involved in tasks which involve planning of spatial movements, like planning one's way through a building.

Loftus and Palmer:In Loftus and Palmer's study, the aim was to determine if leading questions would affect the participant's estimation of speed. In this study, participant's watched films of car accidents and were then provided with a questionnaire regarding details on what they had seen. In five different conditions, though, the participants were asked the same leading question of, "how fast was the car going when it hit the other car?" but with rephrased verbs such as "smashed" "collided" "bumped" "hit" and "contacted". However, the researchers did not tell the participants what they were testing exactly.Why it is reconstructive memory: "The results indicate that the critical word in the question consistently affected the participants' answers to the question. The researchers argued that it may be that the different speed estimates are the result of response-bias, i.e. the participants are uncertain about the exact speed, and therefore a verb like "smashed" biases their response towards a higher estimate. It may also be that the way the question is formed results in a change in the participant's mental representation of the accident, i.e. the verb "smashed" activates a cognitive schema of a severe accident that may change the participant's memory of the accident. This distortion of memory is based on reconstruction so that it is not the actual details of the accident that are remembered but rather what is in line with a cognitive schema of a severe accident. This interpretation is in line with Bartlett's suggestion of reconstructive memory due to schema processing."In conclusion, it seems that participants' memory of an accident could be changed by using suggestive questions.

participants are asked to repeat a word such as "the" or a number such as "one" while memorizing a list of words.

. a self-contained phenomenal experience. Feelings are subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them. They are inevitably evaluated as pleasant or unpleasant, but they can have more specific intrapsychic qualities, so that, for example, the affective tone of fear is experienced as different from that of anger. The core characteristic that differentiates feelings from cognitive, sensory, or perceptual intrapsychic experiences is the link of affect to appraisal. Feelings differ from emotions in being purely mental, whereas emotions are designed to engage with the world.2. any experienced sensation, particularly a tactile or temperature sensation (e.g., pain, coldness).

relying too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions.--often found in system 1 as a heuristic in making an impulsive decision--making QUANTITATIVE judgments under conditions of uncertainty,

FLASHBULB MEMORY THEORY on memory processes:Brown & Kulik (1977)intro: strong, emotional experiences lead to memories that are vivid, accurate;two key components: 1. "special mechanism" hypothesis: participants must be surprised in order for the mechanism of neural memory to register a permanent record of the event.2. events need to have personal meaning for the participantsANALYSIS: Adrenaline plays an important role in creating "emotional" memories, as it activates the amygdala in the limbic system. sending a message to the brain that something dangerous and/or dangerous is happening.aim: to test the validity of FBM on memory processes, as they postulated that the mind can remember an importance-driven event as vivid as a photographSample: 80 Americans, half of which were white, the other half African AmericansProcedure: asked them through a questionnaire to recall descriptive memories from the ASSASINATION of both PRESIDENT JOHN F KENNEDY and MARTIN LUTHER KING: involved where the participants were, what they were doing, and how they found out about this assasination-75% of the African American participants demonstrated a higher emotional response to the assasination of Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for racial inequality.-EMOTIONALwas processed through both a personal and cultural relevance of the event to the participants, THUS CREATING A FLASHBULB MEMORYResults: -Responses involved significant details of the event especially in regards to the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. --EMOTION MAY HAVE AN AFFECT ON THE ACCURACY OF ONES MEMORY LIMITATION: did not undergo an fMRI scan to measure this activity, therefore their recollection may not be fully accurate highly emotional event;doesn't show cause and effect; participants could also be lying about how much they remember of the evente

accommodation, assimilation, mental script, categorization, sharpening, memory distortion/rationalization, leveling (story gets shorter but doesn't disintegrate)key terms for schema