Exam questions

• Explain one reason why using a schema might be useful when processing information from the world around us

  • Schemas help to predict what will happen in the world based on our experiences
  • Schemas enable us to process vast amounts of information rapidly
  • Schemas prevent us from becoming overwhelmed with environmental stimuli
• Explain one reason why schemas are not useful when processing information in the world around us

  • Schemas can distort our interpretation of sensory information
  • Schemas can lead to perceptual errors or inaccurate recall of memory
  • Schemas can cause biased recall
  • Negative schemas may also have a negative impact on mental health
• Write a brief explanation of inference that would help Adil understand what his teacher means


  Inference is a process of studying mental processes indirectly by observing peoples behaviours, this leads to conclusions being drawn about internal mental processes based upon external behaviours
• Why are the standard deviation values a useful descriptive statistics for the cognitive psychologists?

  • Standard deviation values are useful to inform the psychologist about the spread of the scores.
  • Standard deviation values also indicate participant variables as group 1 are more variable than group 2.
• Outline one problem of studying internal mental processes from conducting experiments?

  • The direct observation of memory is not possible and must be inferred from the results.
  • the tasks given is rarely how normal memory functioning occurs because it is specifically designed to make a measurement possible, therefore the researcher only collects data that is related to memory processing under experimental conditions.