Cognitive Approach - IB Psychology SL

Paper 1 - Cognitive Approach

The Cognitive Model

Define ‘cognitive processing’

• Refers to several tasks the mind does continuously, which are procedures in charge of processing all the information we receive from the environment

Define ‘cognition’

• Refers to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension

What are the base cognitive processes?

• Perception

• Sensation

• Attention

• Thinking

• Imagination

• Memory

• Learning

What are the advanced cognitive processes?

• Creativity

• Problem solving

Define ‘memory’

• ‘Memory’ refers to the process by which information is encoded, stored and retrieved

What is declarative memory?

• Memory of facts or events, and refers to memories that can be consciously recalled

What are the two subsets of declarative memory?

• Episodic memory: contains memories of specific events that have occurred at a given time or in a given time

• Semantic memory: contains general knowledge of facts and people, for example concepts and schemas, and is not linked to time and place

What is procedural memory?

• The unconscious memory of skills and how to do things

Models of memory

Concepts related to memory processing

What are the MSM and WMM?

The Multi-Store Model of Memory and The Working Memory Model provide a framework for an understanding of conceptualization of human memory processes over time. The working memory model is an elaboration of short-term memory, suggesting a number of components working together to process information.

Multi-store memory

• Proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

Sensory Memory / Register (SM) - MSM

Capacity? Duration? Condition for transferral?

• Doesn’t process information - detects it and holds it until either transferred to the STM or lost

• Capacity: limited by our perception

• Duration: Iconic (visual): around 1 second, echoic (sound): around 4-5 secs

• Condition for information to be passed to STM: Stimuli has to be paid attention to, else information decays to make way for new information

Short term memory (STM) - MSM

Capacity? Duration? Condition for transferral? Displacement?

Capacity: 5-9 chunks; Miller discovered the magic number of 7 ± chunks → breaking things down into chunks make them easier to remember

Duration: 15-30 secs

Condition for information to move from STM to LTM: Rehearsal:

• Maintenance rehearsal: The straight repeating of information to remember it. Keeps it in STM for a short period of time

• Elaborative rehearsal: Connects new information with information you already know, so creates a memorable, personalised association with the new piece of information. Maintains the information in LTM.

Displacement: Information in the STM is displaced by new information when your attention is taken away from the information in STM.

Long term memory (LTM) - MSM

Capacity? Duration? Condition for information retrieval?

Capacity: Unlimited, but not all information is easily retrievable

Duration: Unlimited

Condition for information to be retrieved: Information has to be moved from LTM to STM.

How is the Serial Position Effect support for MSM? (Glanzer and Cunitz (1966))

• Primary effect - time for rehearsal of those words allow them to move to the long-term store

• Recency effect - words at the end of the list are still in STM

• The words in the middle of the list did not have enough time to be rehearsed, so were displaced from STM

Research support for MSM - Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)

APFC?

Aim: To examine whether the position of words influences the recall (primary and recency effects) and to investigate the existence of short-term memory and long-term memory as two separate memory stores.

Procedure:

• 240 US Army-enlisted males were presented lists of words, one at a time. They were asked to recall the words in any order they liked (free recall)

• IV: Presence or absence of distractor task

• DV: Number of words correctly recalled from different positions in the list]

• Condition 1: Half of the participants were asked to recall words immediately after memorising them (immediate recall)

• Condition 2: The other half counted backwards in 3s for 30 seconds before recalling the words (recall after distraction)

Findings:

• Participants in Condition 2 remembered fewer words at the end of the list than those in Condition 1 → delaying recall destroys the recency effect, causing words to recall

Critical Thinking for Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) - What are some strengths?

• Offers support for the MSM and two separate memory stores

• High control - variables were controlled so high reliability

• Design was simple, so easily repeated by subsequent researchers

• Multiple iterations of the experiment resulted in mutually supported results

Critical Thinking for Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) - What are some weaknesses?

• Low ecological validity - memorising a list of words is artificial so what can it actually tell us about memory in a real life situation

• Sample was only male - can’t generalise to female memory. Rentz et al found that, in early midlife, women outperformed age-matched men across all memory measures, showing that men and women have different ‘memories’, so this study cannot be generalised to both genders

Research support for MSM - The case study of HM & Milner