Cognitive Studies

• Baddeley: what were the aims of this study?

  to investigate the influence of semantic and acoustic word similarity on learning and recall in STM and LTM
• Baddeley: explain the procedure of this study

  there were x4 word lists of 10 words, these were acoustically and semantically similar/ dissimilar
• Baddeley: explain the procedure of this study

  words were presented to participants visually every 3 seconds
• Baddeley: explain the procedure of this study

  in between learning and recalling the word lists participants had a distraction task of recalling digit sequences
• Baddeley: what were the conclusions of this study?

  short term memory is encoded acoustically and long term memory is encoded semantically
• Baddeley: what was the sample of this study?

  mixed men and women from applied psychology research unit
• Baddeley: what was the sample of this study?

  it was a volunteer sample
• Bartlett: explain Bartlett's study of perception

  he showed participants line drawings and asked them to draw them
• Bartlett: what were the findings of his study of perception?

  participants spontaneously gave verbal labels or names for each shape or object, subsequently their drawings reflected more the label than the original image.
• Bartlett: what did Bartlett find through his study of imaging

  participants used their stored images to find a description of an inkblot. He called this "effort after meaning"
• Bartlett: what did "effort after meaning" mean in Batlett's study of imaging?


  this implies they spend time/ effort trying to connect a stimulus with something they already posses
• Bartlett: explain Bartlett's study of remembering

  Bartlett chose an unfamiliar folk tale in order to test the extent to which it could be transformed into something more logical for participants
• Bartlett: what were the findings of Bartlett's study of remembering?

  memory is prone to: distortion, rationalisation, transformation and simplification
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what were the aims of this study?

  to investigate the development of the phonological loop in children between the age of 5-17 years using the digit span as a measure of phonological capacity
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: explain the procedure of this study

  increasing sequences of digits were read aloud to participants to see how many could be remembered in the correct order
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: explain the procedure of this study

  digits were read aloud at a rate of x1 digit per second as the list increased x1 digit per sequence
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: explain the procedure of this study

  the digit span was recorded as the max length of digits recalled in the correct order without error, digit span was recorded from each group
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the sample of this study?

  570 volunteers taken from schools in Madrid
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the sample of this study?

  participants were aged between 5-17 years
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the sample of this study?

  all participants were native Spanish speaking
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the sample of this study?

  all reading, writing and hearing impairments were excluded
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the sample of this study?

  participants were divided into 5 different age groups
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the conclusion of this study?

  digit span was found to increase with age, the starting point of this development occurs when children are able to sub-vocalise at the age of 7
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the conclusion of this study?

  the study showed a consistent increase in digit span over time, in the Spanish population
• Sebastian and Hernandez-Gill: what was the conclusion of this study?

  the average digit span was far lower in the Spanish population compared to the digit span of anglo saxon studies, this is due to the Spanish digits being longer in syllables
• HM: explain the case study of patient HM

  Scoville localised patient HM's epilepsy as stemming from the hippocampus, suggesting removing this structures would stop the seizures
• HM: explain the case study of patient HM

  After the surgery when Scoville removed HM's hippocampus, he no longer suffered seizures, but his memory was significantly impaired
• HM: explain the case study of patient HM

  HM had retrograde amnesia, he had the inability to recall past memories which had occurred before surgery
• HM: explain the case study of patient HM

  one of the tasks HM undertook during the case study was the maze task, this was where he traces the correct route of a maze from start to finish. HM attempted to do this task, using the same maze each time to see if he was able to remember the correct route
• HM: explain the case study of patient HM

  HM improved over time when practicing the mirror star tracing task. He improved even though he could not remember doing the task, this improvement showed his procedural memory was intact