IB Psychology HL - Cognitive Approach Case Studies

Loftus and Pickrell (1995)

Aim: Investigate whether it was possible to implant a false childhood memory in an adult

Method: Twenty-four participants (3 men and 21 women) ranging in age from 18 to 53 completed the study, in which they were presented with the false memory of being lost in a shopping mall.

A booklet containing descriptions of childhood incidents was prepared.

Three of these were descriptions provided by relatives and they were of real events.

In this story the child became lost.

The participants were told that the four incidents in the booklets were provided by their relatives. They were asked to read the booklets and write what they remembered of each event.

If they did not remember the event, they were told to write "I do not remember this."

Results: The researchers found that 7 of the 24 participants 'remembered' the false event, either fully or partially.

While two participants changed their minds, 5 participants out of 24 were convinced that they were lost in a shopping mall as a child.

Sacks (2007a,b)

Aim: Study Clive Wearing (CW) who contracted herpes viral encephalitis in 1985.

Method: At the time CW was a musician.

The disease destroyed parts of his central nervous system especially the hippocampus. Sacks wanted to understand how this illness affected CW's mental processes.

To find areas of damage, brain scans were used. Sacks also observed and interviewed CW.

He concluded that CW suffered from both anterograde amnesia (failure to store memories after the illness) and retrograde amnesia (failure to recall memories before the illness).

Results: CW recalled little of his life before the illness but he retained his ability to play the piano. This suggested areas of the brain associated with procedural memory were undamaged.

CW has a strong emotional response every time he sees his wife.

This suggests that emotional memory (related to the amygdala) was not damaged.

He recalls he had children from an earlier marriage but cannot recollect their names.

Bartlett (1932)

Aim: To test the effects of schema on recall. Bartlett asked English participants to read "The War of the Ghosts", a Native American folk tale

Method: Participants' memory for this story was tested by using:

Serial reproduction- The first participant reads the original story and reproduces it on paper and this is read by the second participant who reproduces it for a third participant and continues until the sixth or seventh reproductions are completed by an equal number of participants

Repeated reproduction- The same participant contributes all six or seven reproductions, these reproductions or separated by intervals of 15 minutes to several years from reading the original story

Results: The two methods led to very similar findings With the serial reproduction method, the stories became shorter each time and there were distortions in the story that participants introduced.

These distortions made the story more understandable from the participants experiences and cultural background, things cultural unfamiliar to the participants were replaced with familiar ones. (Hunting seals to fishing). Shows that schemas were used

Evaluation - Strength:

Provides us with evidence that the way we remember depends on our prior knowledge in the form of schemas

Ecologically valid

Evaluation - Limitation:

- Only used English participants, different cultures may produce different results and these participants are not of the general population - Bartlett didn't give very specific instructions to his participants; as a result the distortions were due to conscious guessing rather than deficient memory.

- Gauld and Stephenson (1967) found that instructions stressing the need for accurate recall eliminated almost half the errors usually obtained - His approach to research lacked objectivity, psychologists believed that well controlled experiments are the only way to produce objective data.

- Bartlett's methods were casual as he simply asked a group of participants to recall the story at various intervals and there were no special conditions for this recall

- Possible that other factors affected their performance such as the conditions around them at the time of recall.

- The distortions could be simply guesses by participants who were trying to make their own recall seem coherent and complete rather than genuine distortions

Tuckey and Brewer (2003)

Aim: Investigate schema theory in terms of crime

Method: Participants were showed a video of a bank robbery with three different aspects: one that fit the schema (e.g. robbers were men, hit and run scenario), opposed the schema (e.g. robbers didn't carry guns), were irrelevant to the schema (e.g. wearing hats, different getaway vehicles)

Results: Participants remembered facts that were either true to the schema or the exact opposite, forgetting irrelevant things.

Mamede et al. (2014)

aimed to determine if unconscious thought (intuitive and automatic thinking) led to better performance than conscious thought (rational and controlled).

Aims: Determine whether "educated intuition" led doctors to make more accurate estimations about the survival probabilities of patients compared to more deliberate thought.

Type of study: Experiment

Participants: 86 medical experts and 57 novices selected by purposive sampling from internal medicine of academic and non-academic hospitals and from a university medical centre in the Netherlands between April 2009 and May 2011.

Procedures: The participants were presented with four fictitious medical case histories. The four case histories were presented by computer in the form of statements and clinical test results.

Half of the participants were encouraged to engage in conscious thought for four minutes about the patient's life expectancy.

The other half were distracted by performing an anagrams task for four minutes.

The participants were then asked to estimate the probability that each patient would be alive in 5 years' time.

Results:

There was a significance difference in task performance between novices and experts. There was no significant difference in accuracy between the conscious and unconscious thinking conditions.

Conclusion:

Unconscious, intuitive thought did not lead to better performance compared to deliberate conscious thought.

Fox (2006)

Aim: Understand how the availability heuristic (or in this case the unavailability of information) influences judgments about the quality of university courses.

Method: In this field experiment, 64 business students at an American college completed a mid-course evaluation form.

They were randomly assigned to two conditions. Half of the participants were asked to list two ways the course could be improved before they provided an overall rating for the course from 1 to 7 with 7 being the highest.

The other participants were asked to list 10 ways the course could be improved before they gave their overall evaluation.

Results: The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean score of 4.92 for the group asked to list two improvements and the mean score of 5.52 for the group asked to list 10 improvements.

Fox explained this paradoxically (paradoxically = not what is expected) in terms of the availability heuristic.

When participants struggled to think of 10 ways to improve the course they misinterpreted the difficulty of recalling problems with the course as evidence that there were not so many problems after all.

Loftus and Palmer (1974) - Study 1

Aim: To test the effects of leading questions and schemas on memory

Methods: Participants watched seven film clips of different car accidents.

After each clip, participants described what they saw and answered questions about it.

The critical question asked about the speed of the cars in the accident.

The experiment involved five experimental conditions which were defined by the verb used to ask the question about the car's speed.

The critical question was "About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?"

For the other conditions the verb hit was replaced with contacted, collided, bumped and smashed into.

Results: The average estimates of speed increased when a stronger verb was used in the critical questions

Conclusion: Leading questions affect memory and may negatively affect it. Schemas may be argued to have been used as the verb may have activated a certain schema.

Loftus and Palmer (1974) - Study 2

Aim: To test the effects of leading questions and schemas on memory

Methods: Participants were presented with a one-minute film showing a multiple car accident and were then asked questions about it with a critical question about speed.

Three conditions were used and two groups were asked questions about the speed by using either smashed or hit.

The control group was not asked anything about speed. One week later, all participants were asked: "Did you see any broken glass?"

There were no broken glass

Results: 32% of those who had been asked about the car's speed with the verb smash claimed to have seen broken glass compared to only 14% of the participants in the hit group.

Conclusion: The schema activated by the verb smashed must have aroused a stronger expectation of broken glass than that activated by the verb hit.

But 12% in control group also reported seeing glass.

Hess et al. (2003)

Aim: meta-analysis of studies into the memories of older people

Method: Hess asked older adults to read mock newspaper articles on recent findings related to ageing and memory.

Half of the articles presented actual negative findings that suggested that mental decline was inevitable, and the other half did the opposite. After reading the articles, the subjects were given a basic memory test in which they had to recall a list of words.

Results: Individuals who read the positive article performed about 30% better on the memory test than those who read the negative article.

Hess argued that some of the age differences found in standard laboratory studies may be due to stereotype threat, a fear that one's behaviour will reinforce a negative stereotype that exists about a group to which one belongs (self-fulfilling prophecy)

Hill et al. (2008)

Aim: investigate the role of confirmation bias in interviewing a suspect to a crime.

Method: They designed a study to examine whether an expectation of guilt on the part of the interviewer influenced their behaviour.

Sixty-one undergraduate students were asked to make up questions they wanted to ask a person suspected of cheating.

Before they wrote their questions they were lead to believe that the suspect was either guilty or innocent.

Results: Those participants who had heard that the suspect was guilty formulated more questions that presumed the suspect was guilty than presumed the suspect was innocent.

These results indicate that expectations of guilt can have an effect on questioning style.

Hamilton & Rose (1980)

Aim: investigated illusory correlations in the maintenance of social stereotypes

Method: three experiments were conducted with 73 male and 77 female high school and undergraduate students and adults. In the first experiment, participants read sets of sentences that described different occupations with pairs of adjectives related to the stereotype.

In the second experiment, the trait adjectives were either consistent with stereotypic beliefs about one of the occupational groups or unrelated to the group's stereotype; in the third study, traits were either inconsistent with or unrelated to a group's stereotype.

Participants estimated how frequently each of the trait adjectives had described members of each of the occupational groups.

Results: Each study revealed systematic biases in the participants' judgments so that the perceived correlation between traits and occupations was more congruent (congruent = similar to or in agreement with something) with existing stereotypical beliefs than the actual correlation.

Risen et al. (2007)

Aim: explore the phenomenon of "one-shot" illusory correlations.

Method: 4 studies; These correlations were formed from a single instance of unusual behaviour by a member of a rare group.

In Studies 1, 2, and 3, unusual behaviours committed by members of rare groups were processed differently than other types of behaviours.

They received more processing time, prompted more attributional thinking, and were more memorable.

In Study 4, the authors obtained evidence from two implicit measures of association that one-shot illusory correlations are generalized to other members of a rare group.

Results: The results suggest that one-shot illusory correlations arise because unusual pairings of behaviours and groups uniquely prompt people to consider group membership as the explanation of the unusual behaviour. (i.e. "The only reason for this strange behaviour must be that they are members of this particular unusual group").

Brown and Kulik (1977)

Aim: To show evidence for flash bulb memory

Method: Asked 80 American participants (40 white and 40 black) to answer questions about 10 events Nine were mostly assassinations or attempted assassinations of well-known American personalities.

Tenth was a self-selected event of personal relevance and involving unexpected shock Participants were asked to recall the circumstances they found themselves in when they first head the news about the 10 event.

They were also asked to indicate how often they had rehearsed (overtly or covertly) information about each event

Results: Assassination of Kennedy led to the highest number of FBMs (flash bulb memories) with over 90% of participants recalling its reception context in vivid detail

African Americans reported more FBMs for leaders of civil rights movements than Caucasian Americans

Most participants recalled a personal FBM

Conclusion: The results shows evidence for flash bulb memory and the role of emotion in it.

The results suggest that emotional significant events that affect people emotionally in negative or positive ways create a "FBM" effect.

But events such as JFK being assassinated may not be as emotionally significant to African Americans as the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Talarico and Rubin (2003)

Aim: To investigate FBM theory.

Method: On September 12th, 2001, 54 university students recorded their memory of first hearing about the terrorist attacks of September 11th in New York and also for their memory of a recent everyday event.

This is the first study into flashbulb memory that has used memory of an everyday event as a control. Participants were interviewed again either one, six, or thirty-two weeks later.

Results: Consistency for the flashbulb and everyday memories did not differ, in both cases declining over time.

However, self-ratings of vividness, recollection, and belief in the accuracy of memory declined only for everyday memories.

Initial emotion ratings correlated with a later belief in the accuracy, but not consistency, for these flashbulb memories. Initial emotional ratings also predicted later posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.

The researchers concluded that flashbulb memories are not special in their accuracy, as previously claimed, but only in their perceived accuracy.

Kaspersky Lab (2015)

- conducted an internet survey of 6,000 consumers aged from 16 to over 55.

- Males and females were equally represented, with 1,000 participants from each of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Benelux. Participants were asked to recall important telephone numbers.

- They were also asked how and where they stored information they located online.

An analysis of their data found that:

- More than half of adult consumers could recall their home phone number, 53% of parents could recall their children's phone numbers and 51% their work phone number.

- One in three participants reported they were happy to forget or risk forgetting information they can find - or find again - online.

- 36% of participants reported that they would turn to the internet before trying to remember information.

- 24% reported they would forget an online fact as soon as they had used it.

The results were consistent across male and female respondents but higher rates of amnesia were prevalent in older age groups.

The overall conclusion of the study was that connected devices enrich lives but they can result in digital amnesia.

Blacker, Curby, Klobusicky and Chein (2014)

Aim: research if video games could expand the capacity of VWM (Visual Working Memory)

Participants: 39 male undergraduates with a mean age of 20

Procedure: participants randomly assigned to an action game group or control group. Both groups played their games for one hour per day for 30 daysAfter training, the participants' VWM was tested.

Results: Individuals who played an action game showed significant improvement on measures of VWM capacity compared with those who played the control game.

Conclusion: exposure to rich visual environments over an extensive period is a distinctive form of training that may allow individuals to extend the capacity of VWM

Henry Molaison (H.M.)

Small et al. (2009)

Aim: Find out if internet searching can stimulate brain activity in middle age and older adults.

- conducted a study to see if internet searching can stimulate brain activity in middle-aged and older adults. - Twenty-four adults (age 55-76 years) were divided into two groups based on their experience with computers and the internet: one group had extensive experience and the other minimal.

Each group performed two different tasks: in one task, they used the computer to read a book, using the keyboard for simple tasks like advancing the page.

- In the second task participants used Google to research a particular topic.

- As they performed these tasks, a functional MRI (fMRI) recorded their brain activity.

- The participants with minimal digital experience showed the same levels of activation for both tasks.

- The results for the participants with more extensive computer and internet experience showed no difference in brain activation in the reading task compared to the participants with little experience. - When these participants were engaged in an internet search, higher levels of activation in the parts of the brain associated with complex reasoning and decision-making were recorded.

- Concluded that though the findings needed to be interpreted with caution, internet searching may engage more neural circuitry than just reading but only in people with prior computer and internet search experience.

- For middle-aged and older adults prior experience may alter the brain's responsiveness in neural circuits controlling decision-making and complex reasoning.

Uhls et.al (2014)

Aim: Determine if preteens' ability to recognise non-verbal emotions could be improved by restricting access to digital devices and encouraging more face-to-face interaction.

- carried out a field experiment to determine if preteens' ability to recognise non-verbal emotions could be improved by restricting access to digital devices and encouraging more face-to-face interaction.

- The sample consisted of fifty-one preteens who spent five days at an overnight nature camp where television, computers and mobile phones were not allowed; this group was compared with school-based matched controls that retained their access to digital devices.

- All participants attended a US school.

- Both groups took pre- and post-tests that required participants to infer emotional states from photographs of facial expressions and videotaped scenes with verbal cues removed.

- In the first test, participants were shown 48 pictures of faces that were happy, sad, angry or scared. Participants were asked to identify the feelings.

- They also watched videos that depicted scenes typical of student life. They were asked to describe the characters' emotions.

- After five days interacting face-to-face without the use of any screen-based media, preteens' recognition of nonverbal emotion cues improved significantly more than that of the control group for both facial expressions and videotaped scenes.

- The findings applied equally to both boys and girls. - Concluded that the short-term effects of more opportunities for social interaction, combined with time away from screen-based media and digital communication tools, may improve a preteen's understanding of nonverbal emotional cues.

Manago et al. (2012)

Aim: investigated how using Facebook impacted life satisfaction and perceived availability of social support.

Method: They designed an online survey for eighty-eight undergraduate students from an American university with a diverse ethnic population.

The ages of the 67 female and 21 male students ranged from 18 years to 28 years.

Ethnic make-up was 36% Asian/Southeast Asian American, 27% European American, 19% Latino American, 8% Middle Eastern American, 2% Pacific Islander American, and 8% mixed ethnicities combining Asian, European, and African ancestries.

Participants answered questions about how often they used Facebook and how many friends they had. Questions also focused on status updates to determine their frequency, their nature and how many of their friends they estimated viewed these updates.

For 20 of their friends, the participants were asked how they would classify the friendship (e.g. acquaintance, family member, etc.), how often they communicated with that friend on Facebook, and whether they saw that friend in person.

Participants also responded to psychological tests designed to measure life satisfaction, self-esteem and perceived availability of social support.

Results: showed a correlation between larger Facebook networks and audiences for status updates and life satisfaction and perceived availability of social support.

There was no correlation between the number of close contacts and life satisfaction and perceived availability of social support.

The researchers argued that personal disclosures on Facebook were being used by students as a way of building a sense of intimacy with others which resulted in a greater sense of connection with friends.

- The researcher concluded that emerging adults are adapting psychologically to social network site tools.