cognitive approach

• Schemas


  developed by bartlett in 1932 - cognitive or mental structures that represent/organise information about different aspects of the world
• Different types of schemas


  Scripts - information about an sequence of events occuring in a particular context

  Self-schemas - organising information about yourself - strengths and weaknesses and how we see feel about them

  Social schemas - information about groups of people - can be stereotypes
• Assimilation


  new information being integrated into old information
• Accommodation


  schemas being altered or formed due to new information
• schema formation + application


  Bottom up processing forms schemas - information is taken through senses and pieced together by the mind as a whole, giving mental representations of something

  Top down processing refers to the way schemas affect behaviour and cognition
• study for schema theory


  Brewer and Treyens
• Brewer and Treyens - psychologist, aim, participants, when

  Psychologist: Brewer and Treyens

  Aim: to explore whether a stereotypical schema of an office would affect memory (recall) of an office

  Participants: 30 university students

  When: 1981
• Brewer and Treyens - procedure

  participants were taken to an office individually and asked to wait for the psychologist. The office consisted of "office-like" objects and random, out of the place objects like human skulls and wine bottles etc. They were taken out after exactly 35 seconds and taken to a room where a psychologist told them the real aim of the study and asked them to recall the objects in the office.
• Brewer and Treyens - results, conclusion


  results - participants remembered significantly more "typical office objects" than non-office objects.

  conclusion - The study supports schema theory as the participants schema of an office caused them to list more "office like" things than non-office like things, therefore affecting their memory of the office
• Flashbulb memories


  Vivid, long lasting memories about the context/circumstances of surrounding an event in which you received emotionally arousing information
• Flashbulb memories are formed by


  1. Receiving / encounter of emotionally arousing or shocking information

  2. Maintained by rehearsal to keep in memory permanently

  3. Vivid and longer lasting memories of the context of the event are formed
• study for flashbulb memories

  Brown and Kulik
• brown and kulik - psychologist, aim, participants, when

  Psychologist: Brown and Kulik

  Aim: to investigate whether surprising and emotionally arousing events can lead to vivid, long lasting and more detailed memories = flashbulb memories

  Participants: 80 US participants → 40 african american + 40 european american, 20 - 60 years old

  When: 1977
• brown and kulik - procedure

  participants were given a questionnaire to assess their memories and the circumstances in which they learnt about 10 public events - the assassination of John F. Kennedy and 8 others (mostly assassinations). They were asked to choose one event of their liking. They were also asked how many times the events were rehearsed.
• brown and kulik - results, conclusion

  Results: the results showed that these memories were very detailed, vivid and long lasting due to the emotional aspect of them. Participants remembered where they were, what they were doing and how they heard about the event. The emotion in relation to the events caused them to be more vivid and long lasting / produced particularly vivid + realistically seeming memories

  Conclusion: the memories were increasingly vivid and detailed therefore support the theory the emotions produced due to the events mentioned allowed participants to remember the context and circumstances of the event more vividly - allowing the memory to be heavily contextualised. Supports flashbulb memory theory as the memories are qualitatively different from other memories allowing them to remember minor details that you would otherwise forget.
• Memory


  defined as the 'mental process of encoding, storing and retrieving information.
• Different types of Memory


  declarative, procedural
• Declarative memory


  knowing what - memory of facts and events, refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled.

  
  

  two types:

  - Episodic memory: memory of specific events that have occurred at a given time and in a given place.

  - Semantic memory: contains general knowledge of facts and people and not linked to time and place.
• Procedural memory


  knowing how - unconscious memory of skills and how to do things.
• Multi-store model of memory


  The multi-store model of memory (MSM) consists of three memory stores:

  - Sensory memory (SM)

  - Short-term memory (STM)

  - Long term memory (LTM)
• Sensory memory


  Sensory information enters sensory memory, which is a storage system that holds information for fractions of a second, plays a vital role in filtering out useless information, enabling us to focus our attention on important details.

  If information in SM is noticed it is transferred to STM
• Short term memory


  is a limited-capacity memory system for storing information for brief periods of time (about 15-30 seconds).

  If information is rehearsed it moves into LTM, otherwise new information displaces it.
• long term memory


  LTM holds a vast quantity of information, which can be stored for long periods of time.

  Information is diverse and wide-ranging, including all our personal memories, general knowledge and where our knowledge about the world is.
• Evidence to support the MSM


  the serial position effect
• The Serial Position Effect

  the words at the beginning and end of the list are recalled better than those in the middle.

  - supports the idea of ST and LT memory stores: words at the beginning will be rehearsed and go into LT memory and words at the end will remain in ST memory.

  - the primacy effect: better recall of the first few items

  - the recency effect: better recall of the last items
• 1/2 study for The Serial Position Effect


  Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)
• Glanzer and Cunitz - psychologist, aim, participants, when


  Psychologist: Glanzer and Cunitz

  Aim: to investigate the serial position effect and whether there are two separate stores of memory

  Participants: 240 US Army enlisted males

  When: 1966
• Glanzer and Cunitz - procedure


  participants were presented lists of words one at a time and asked to recall the words and could do so in any order (free recall).

  Independent variable: Presence or absence of a 30 second "distraction task."

  Dependent variable: Number of words correctly recalled from different positions in the list (beginning, middle, end)

  Half of the participants were asked to recall the words immediately after memorising them (immediate recall)

  and other half of the participants counted backwards for 30 seconds before recalling the words (recall after distraction)
• Glanzer and Cunitz - results, conclusion

  Results - in condition 2, delaying recall by 30 seconds destroyed the recency effect, however, it did not influence the primacy effect. In condition one, where there was no distractor task, both the primacy and recency effect were shown.

  Conclusion - The study supports the serial position effect and therefore the Multi-Store Model of Memory, as it demonstrates that there are separate ST and LT memory stores.
• 2/2 study for MSM


  clive wearing by sacks
• Clive wearing - psychologist, aim, participants, when

  Psychologist: Clive wearing

  Aim: investigate which aspects of memory were impaired and which parts of the brain were damaged

  Participants: clive wearing, a musician who developed a viral infection, encephalitis leaving him with serious brain damage causing memory impairment (retrograde and anterograde amnesia).

  When: 2007
• Clive wearing - procedure

  Researchers used a variety of methods including Neuropsychological tests (IQ tests, tests of verbal fluency, and a digit span test, which tested STM and LTM), interviews, observation and a MRI scan.
• Clive wearing - results, conclusion

  Results: Clive's memory lasts 7-30 seconds, and he is unable to form new memories. He cannot transfer information from STM to LTM. Semantic and episodic memory are damaged, but procedural memory is intact - he is still able to play the piano.

  Conclusion: In support of the MSM, this case study shows that STM & LTM are separate stores and STM has limited duration.
• Thinking


  process of using knowledge and information to make plans, interpret the world, and make predictions about the world in general.
• decision making


  process of identifying and choosing the best possible option, based on the values and preferences of the decision-maker.
• automatic thinking style


  impulsive decisions, unconscious decisions (similar to system 1 in dual process model)
• controlled thinking style

  involve deliberating the pros and cons and really thinking about decisions (similar to system 2 in dual process model)
• Dual process model


  System 1 - faster, automatic, and intuitive mode of thinking, often uses heuristics (used more than system 2)

  System 2 - slower, conscious and rational.
• Alter et al - psychologist, aim, participants, when

  Psychologist: alter et al

  Aim: to investigate the effects of cognitive disfluency of the use of system 2 over system 1

  Participants: 40 undergraduate volunteers

  When: 2007
• Alter et al - procedure

  Both groups completed The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) - task designed to measure a person's tendency to override an incorrect "gut" response and engage in further reflection to find a correct answer.

  Group 2 was requested to complete The CRT in an easy-to-read font (fluent condition) and group 1 completed it in a difficult-to-read font (disfluent condition).