Psychology Paper one things i have forgotten

starting with perception

describe interference theory as a factor affecting the accuracy of memory

-interference is when we have difficulty recalling info due to other info getting in the way

-more likely to occur when two memories are similar

-reduces accuracy when recalling

Proactive:

-old info interferes with new info, preventing recollection of new info

Retroactive:

-new info interferes with old info, preventing recollection of old info

Explain why interference studies may lack validity

-studies often involve the use of artificial materials such as word lists, which may not represent real-life memory tasks, reducing ecological validity

-interference studies are conducted in controlled lab settings, may not reflect how memory works in natural uncontrolled environments, questioning external validity

Describe Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory

-the way we store and recall info is an active process

MEMORY IS INACCURATE:

-memory of an event will be different to a friend, as you store memory in fragments in a different. way to them

RECONSTRUCTION:

when we need to recall an event, we take the small fragments of info stored and actively rebuild the memory, each time we tell the story, we reconstruct the fragments differently

SOICAL AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES:

-when storing and retrieving memories, we adjust them to fit our social and cultural understanding of the world. These could include stereotypes about people, or changing words in a story that makes it more culturally relevant to the storyteller. Bartlett called this ‘the social psychology of remembering’.

EFFORT AFTER MEANING:

-we focus on the meaning of a memory or story first, then we make an effort to interpret the meaning of these memories by changing them into more familiar terms

Evaluate Bartlett’s theory

-supporting research is representative of memory in the real world, War of the Ghosts study used storytelling activities with real stories, increased external validity as it can be applied to real-life storytelling

-real world applications, can be used to explain disparities in two eyewitness testimonies of an event, and how they can each be different to what actually happened, increases external validity

-some memories are accurate and not reconstructed, some are highly personal eg first day of school and are rarely altered, cannot be applied to all memorise as some do not go through the reconstructive process

Evaluate Dweck’s Mindset Theory

-research support: conducted a study with low achieving students, half attended a session

about how they can apply a growth mindset to their learning, whilst the other half

attended a control group session with just facts about memory, The students in the

growth mindset group had improved motivation and grades compared to the

control group, showing growth mindset leads to success, and can be taught

-can inform effective teaching practices, praising students for effort leads to a growth mindset, can be used to help students succeed

-may unfairly place blame on the child for low performance, if too much emphasis is placed on their mindset and not other factors such as poor quality teaching, places too much pressure on children.

Describe praise and self-efficacy

-expressing approval or admiration for the effort into, or the standard of a piece of work, receiving praise gives a rewarding sensation, making us want to repeat the action that was praised, because it increases our self-esteem and motivation.

-self-efficacy is the belief in your own capabilities to succeed at a specific task or to produce certain levels of performance

-shaped by our past experiences with a given task

-sense of our own competence can also come from what others say

-self-efficacy affects motivation - high efficacy leads to greater task persistence & more resilience to failure

Evaluate our understanding of praise and self-efficacy

-research to support the idea that higher self‐efficacy leads to higher academic performance, researchers found that students high in academic self-efficacy participate more in lessons, work harder, and show more task persistence, increases validity

-practical applications, researchers found that students previously praised for effort coped better when faced with challenges than those praised for performance, teachers can learn to use praise more effectively to improve self-efficacy and therefore outcomes of students

-praise might actually reduce motivation, researchers found when children had been offered a reward for doing something they were less interested performing the task than if they had not been offered the reward in the first place, they learned to do the task for the external reward rather than for their own interest, reducing motivation in the long term.

Evaluate learning styles

-practical applications to teaching, argued that traditional methods focussed too much on verbal techniques alone, best strategy is to adopt a mixed approach, beneficial to children’s outcomes.

-lack of supporting evidence, no methodologically soundidence that shows accommodating learning styles can improve performance, undermines the validity of the approach

-too many learning styles for us to practically implement effective learning strategies, as many as 71 different learning styles, questions the validity of the concept.

Describe Willingham’s learning theory