Psychology Paper1 1

• Murdock's serial postion study
• Murdock's serial position study


  Aim- to see if memory was affected by the number of words a person has to remember

  Method- Randomly selected words from 4000 most common words. 103 Ppts each session the Ppts listened to 20 lists each containing different words- list varied from 10 to 40 words. After they listened they were asked to recall the words.

  Results- Higher recall for the first few words than the middle- Primacy effect. Highest recall for the final few words- Recency effect

  Conclusion- Demonstrate serial position effect the position of words determines the likehood of recall
• Murdock's evaluative points


  Strength- controlled lab study ; controlled extraneous variables; high internal validity

  Weakness- artificial task ; list of words aren't very reflective of day to day society; low mundane realism
• Bartlett's war of ghosts study


  Aim- to use from a different culture to see how cultural expectations affect memory

  Method- He told one Ppts a native American story and asked them to recall it later. That version was then told to another Ppts. The changes were recorded

  Results- Ppts remembered the meaning of the story but changed some terms to fit their cultural knowledge e.g canoes to boats

  Conclusion- We don't remember details but fragments and fill in the missing places with cultural knowledge
• Bartlett's evaluation


  Weakness- lacks control; not standardised; low reliability

  Weakness- Biased results; bartlett's beliefs may have affected how he interpreted the data; can't trust results low validity
• Procedural, episodic, semantic memories

  P- skills you have done muscle memory e.g riding a bike

  E- events of your life e.g concerts

  S- the meaning of things e.g what a fork is for
• Bruner and Minturn's study


  A-see weather expectations is a important factor in perceptual sets

  M- ambiguous figure B or 13 independent groups design Ppts shown number or letters ask to draw and repeat

  R- group saw numbers more likely to see 13 and group saw letters more likely to see B

  C- expectations is an important influence on perceptual sets
• Bruner and Minturn's study evaluation


  Weakness- artificial task; ambiguous figure not reflective of day to day life; lacks mundane realism

  Weakness- independent group design; people may have been too different due to Ppts variables; lack internal validity
• Gilchrist and Nesberg study


  A-what food deprivation would have on the perception of food related pictures

  M- 26 undergrads volunteered to go without food for 20 hours and control group not starved shown 4 slides of a meal for 15 seconds each. Then they were shown a dimmer version Ppts had to adjust knobs to match the brightness they saw beforehand

  R- starved group perceived pictures brighter than they were

  C-suggests that hunger is a motivating factor that affects perception
• Gilchrist and Nesberg evaluation


  Weakness- ethical issues; harm worth more than the study; leds to future Ppts not trust future reseachers

  Weakness- artificial task; not reflective of everyday society; low mundane realism
• Policeman doll study


  A-to see if tasks made social sense kids would be able to be less egocentric

  M-30 Edinburgh kids (aged 3 and a half to 5) have an X 3D structure where a policeman doll would be placed in one quadrant and the kids would have to hide the doll from the policeman the researcher would point out errors and they restarted

  R- 90% of kids did it correctly

  C- shows that Piaget underestimated kids ability and if the task is made to represent everyday tasks than children are able to see some else's perspective
• Policeman doll evaluation


  Weakness- the sample; all the kids are from Edinburgh; llacks population validity

  Strength- realistic task; similar to everyday life of playing will dolls and hiding from people ; high mundane realism
• McGarrigle and Donaldson's study

  Examined a child's reaction to a change in a row of coloured counters, when the change was accidental vs deliberate
• Study details


  • 80 Edinburgh children (primary and nursery)
  • Two rows of coloured counters
  • A teddy accidently and then deliberately transformed one row
  • Kids were then asked if one row was smaller or they were the same
• Results

  • 41% of kids said they were the same deliberately
  • 68% of kids answered correctly accidentally
  • Primary school kids figures where higher than nursery kids
• Naughty teddy study


  Weakness- the sample; all can from the same school in Edinburgh; Lacks population validity

  Weakness- change not noticed in accidental; children were distracted by the teddy and weren't focused on the coins; meant they weren't conserving
• Different types of learning styles


  verbalisers- prefers to deal information in words

  Visualisers- prefers pictures to words

  Kinasetic- hands on learning, refers to touch
• Difference between Assimilation and Accommodation


  Assimilation- similar schema, just a slight change to schema

  Accommodation-change to a different schema or a new schema
• Multi-store memory model


  Stimulus from the environment - sensory register - STM (back to STM is maintenance rehearsal) - prolonged maintenance rehearsal - LTM

  Sensory register- encoding; using the 5 senses, capacity; high capacity, duration; less than half a second

  Short term memory- encoding; acoustically, capacity; 5 to 9 chunks of info, duration 30 seconds

  Long term memory - encoding; semantically, capacity; unlimited, duration; up to a lifetime
• Multi- store memory model evaluation 


  Strength - supporting research; supported by Baddeley; increases validity

  Weakness - model too simple; says there is only one type of STM and LTM; reductionist theory
• Reconstructive memory


  We store fragments of information and when we need to recall something we build these fragments into a meaningful whole. The results is that elements are missing and memories are not an accurate representation of what happened

  The information that we had store in our LTM has been changed before it is 'recorded'. We record small pieces of info and later when recalling the event we recombine the pieces to tell the whole story each time you retell the story the elements are combined slightly different gained from social and cultural experiences
• Interference in memory 


  Proactive interference - present

  Retroactive interference - recent
• Context in memory 


  context cues act as triggers for memories learn and recall in the same place increases the accuracy of memory
• Perception and Sensation


  Sensation is the information we receive through our senses they are processed by our sense receptors: our 5 senses

  Perception is how we organise, interpret and make sense of sensory information - from the world
• Illusions 


  Fiction is an illusion when they an object, colour or movement is perceived but the construction is not actually there

  Ambiguity is an illusion where there is more than one possible ways to interpret the image
• Illusion examples


  Necker's cube - an ambiguous cube which can be interpreted in many ways one way is the cube pointing upwards to the right or pointing downwards to the left

  Rubin's vase - an ambiguous picture this can be again interpreted in two ways some people dee two vases and others see a vase

  The kanzia triangle - a fiction image as people or object is perceived but is not actually there many people see a triangle that isn't real, just at out of airlessness
• Visual cues - monocular depth cues 


  monocular depth cues - perceptual cues that can be detected with one eye about distance and depth

  Height in plane - distant objects are seen or shown as being higher in the visual field in relation to items that are nearer,

  Relative size - the larger object in the visual field appear to be closer than the smaller objects

  Occlusion - when an object covers part of another object this makes it appears to be closer

  Linear perspective - when parallel lines appear to converge or join at some point in the distance the closer the lines get the further away
• Visual cues - binocular depth cues 


  Retinal disparity - the way that the left and right eye view slightly different images, the size of the difference gives the brain info about depth and distance, the greater the difference the closer an object is

  Convergence - the closer an image/object is, the more the eye muscles must work to focus on the image as the eyes have to come together