Cognitive Approach Study Guide

Multistore Memory Model Study

The case study of HM

Aim: To determine the effects of damage toward the temporal lobe and hippocampus on memory

Participants: The participant was HM who had experiences a head injury at age 7 that lead to epileptic seizures and underwent a lobotomy at 27 where his medial temporal lobe, including his hippocampus was removed.

Procedure: After the surgery, he was studied by researchers. They conducted a lot of cognitive testing on him, including observations, interviews, and memory recall and learning tasks. This included a reverse mirror drawing task where he was shown a star reflected in a mirror and asked to trace its outline with a pencil. The longitudinal case study spanned over 50 years, and researchers conducted an MRI to determine the extent of damage done this brain.

Results: HM was shown to suffer from anterograde amnesia, being unable to form long term memories, but retaining already formed memories from his past. He retained his ability to learn and improve in procedural tasks, shown by an improvement in the mirror drawing task, despite him not remembering doing the task. Furthermore, his spatial memory was retained, shown by his ability to remember and draw his house floor plan. MRI scans revealed that he had suffered damage in his parahippocampal region, giving researchers a new insight into memory processes in the brain.

Working memory model Study

Landry and Bartling (2011)

Aim: The investigate if articulatory suppression would influence recall of a written list of phonologically dissimilar letters.

Participants: 34 undergraduate psychology students

Procedure: Participants saw a list of letters they had to recall while saying “1” and “2” at a rate of two numbers per second. The control group saw letters but did not carry out articulatory suppression. There were 10 lists of 7 phonologically dissimilar words. The experimenter presented one series at a time. Participants saw the list for 5 seconds, were instructed to wait 5 seconds, then told to write the correct order of letters on the answer sheet. Trials were scored on accuracy of recall.

Results: The mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was 75% compared to the mean of 45% in the experimental group.

Reconstructive memory and Schema Theory

Loftus Palmer (1974)

Aim: To investigate if asking leading questions would affect participants’ estimation speed

Participants: It was a 2 part experiment, in the first part 45 students were split into 5 groups.

Procedure: They were shown 7 different clips of car accidents, and then asked to fill in a questionnaire regarding it. The questionnaire had a critical question: “about how fast was the car going when they hit each other?” The verb “hit” was replaced with ‘collided,’ ‘bumped,’ ‘contacted,’ or ‘smashed’ in the other conditions.

Results: The mean estimation of speeds was highest in the ‘smashed’ condition and lowest in the ‘contacted’ condition

Second part

Aim: to test if whether participants’ with high speed estimations like in the first experiment would report broken glass at the scene

Participants: 150 participants in 3 groups

Procedure: Participants were again shown a clip of a car crash and answered a questionnaire. 50 people answered the critical question with the verb ‘smashed,’ 50 with the verb ‘hit,’ and the rest with no critical question. They then came in a weak later and were asked if there was broken glass at the scene, there was no broken glass.

Results: Again people in the ‘smashed’ condition showed a higher speed estimation then in the ‘hit’ condition. Although, most participants accurately reported there being no broken glass, participants in the ‘smashed’ condition were most likely to report broken glass.

Dual Processing Model and Cognitive Biases

Tversky and Kahneman (1974)

Aim: To determine how anchoring bias affects one’s ability to solve a math problem.

Participants: High school students assigned to one of two conditions.

Procedure: In the ascending condition, participants were asked to quickly estimate the value of a multiplication problem: 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8 and in the descending condition they were asked the same but in the reverse order of 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. In both conditions they were given 5 seconds to respond

Results: Results showed that the ascending condition on average estimated a lower value than the descending condition. Furthermore, both conditions of participants responses were far under the actual correct response of 40320.

Working memory model 2

Gathercole (1974)

Aim: To investigate the structure of working memory model and how the central executive, phonological loop, and visuo-spatial sketchpad develop across childhood.

Participants and Procedure: Over 700 children aged 4-15 from schools in England. Participants were divided into five age groups. Phonological loop was tested using digit recall, word recall, and non-word recall. Central executive was testing using a backward digit recall test, listening recall, and counting recall test. Visuo-spatial sketchpad was tested using block recall, visual patterns, and mazes. Some tests were exclusive to certain age groups due to a lack of cognitive ability in younger children to do them. Each child was tested individually in three sessions over 5-10 days, with the order of tasks being kept constant.

Results: All three components showed a statistically significant increase in recall as age increased and no significant differences in gender. However, in the older category (13-15) boys performed significantly better than girls on the visuo-spatial tests.

Reconstructive memory and Schema Theory 2

Bartlett (1932)

Aim: To investigate whether people's memory for a story is affected by schemas and the extent to which memory is reconstructive.

Participants and Procedure: Bartlett asked British participants to hear a story and reproduce it after a short time and then repeatedly over a period of months or years (serial reproduction). The story was an unfamiliar Native American legend called "The War of the Ghosts"

Results: The participants remembered the main idea of the story but they changed unfamiliar elements to make sense of the story by using terms more familiar to their own cultural expectations. They story remained a coherent whole although it was changed. It became noticeably shorter for each reproduction. Bartlett concluded that remembering is an active process. Memories are not copies of experiences, but rather "reconstructions."

Dual Processing Model and Cognitive Biases 2

English and Mussweiler (2001)

Aim: To determine if the request for a certain amount of time for a prison sentence would influence the decision made by a judge

Participants: 19 young courtroom judges with an average experience of 9 months.

Procedure: Advice was sought out from highly experiences judges to develop case materials and tested on a group of 24 senior law students serving as a pilot study. The average recommended term by law students was 17 months. Participants were given case materials along with the copies of the penal code to form an opinion about the case and then fill a questionnaire. Half of the participants were told the prosecutor demanded a 34 month sentence while the other half were told a 2 month sentence was demanded.

Results: when told that the prosecutor recommended a sentence of 34 months, participants recommended on average of 10 months longer in prison (29 months) than when told that the sentence should be 2 months (19 months) for the same crime.

Emotion on Memory 1

Brown and Kullik

Aim: To investigate whether surprising and personally significant events can cause flashbulb memories.

Participants: 40 black and 40 white American males. 

Procedure: They filled out a questionnaire regarding the death of public figures, such as President John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, as well as people they personally knew. They were asked a series of questions about the event specifically, what they were doing when it happened, how they heard about, its importance to them, etc. The study was carried out in 1977, JFK was assassinated in 1963 and Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.

Results: Researchers found that 90% of participants recalled a significant amount of detail about the day when the events occurred. Most participants had a very detailed memory of the death of a loved one. There was a difference between the memories of public officials based on personal relevance of the event to the participant. For example, 75% of black participants had flashbulb memories of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. compared to only 33% of white participants.

Emotion on Memory 2

Sharot et al.

Aim: To investigate the biological basis of flashbulb memory for the 9/11 attacks.

Participants: 24 participants who were in New York City during 9/11.

Procedure

• Quasi-experiment conducted 3 years after 9/11.

• Participants underwent fMRI scanning.

• They viewed word cues paired with either “Summer” or “September” to trigger memories related to the summer or 9/11

• Brain activity was recorded during recall.

• Participants later rated vividness, detail, confidence, and arousal, and wrote memory descriptions.

Results

• Participants closer to the World Trade Center showed greater amygdala activation and more detailed memories when recalling 9/11 memories.

• Those farther away showed similar activation for both memory types.

• About half reported flashbulb memories with high vividness and confidence.

Technology Positive 1

McAvinue et al.

Aim: To determine how a cognitive training program would affect the working memory of adults.

Participants: The participants of the study were 36 senior adults. The researchers utilized a 5 week online training program which was developed to improve both auditory and visuo-spatial memory. 

Procedure: The participants had been allocated to one of two groups. Participants in the treatment group were assigned to an adaptive training program. The online program was a game in which the difficulty increased as participants progressed through each level; cognitive effort increased as participants progressed. Participants in the control group were put in a non-adaptive training program; program did not increase in difficulty and great cognitive effort was not required. Participants had taken a battery of cognitive tests prior to and after the program. Further tests were carried out 3 and then 6 months later. 

Results: The results showed that there was an increase in the treatment groups' auditory short-term memory span. This means that participants were able to recall and repeat more digits after hearing them spoken than they could before they underwent training. The results pertained 6 months later. However, there was no significant improvement in working memory.

Technology Positive 2

Blacker et al.

Aim:  To determine how playing video games can help develop one’s visuospatial working memory. 

Participants: The study utilized a self-selected sample of 34 male university students. The participants were allocated to one of two conditions. 

Procedure: In the action game condition, participants were asked to play an action single-player game (Call of Duty). In the non-action game condition, participants were asked to play a passive game (The Sims) which served as a control group. The participants were asked to spend at least an hour daily for 30 days. Participants were asked their motivation to play and level of enjoyment both prior to and after the training. Additionally, both prior to and after the training, the participants working memory was tested through a change detection task where they were first given a series of coloured blocks that they are asked to remember.

Results: The results demonstrated that despite the fact that both groups had the same level of motivation and both improved in their game performance over time, the action game participants showed a significant improvement in the change detection task, while the non-action game participants did not.

Technology Negative 1

Sparrow et al.

Aim: To determine how the presence of technology affects one’s ability to commit information to memory.

Participants: The participants of the study were 60 undergraduate students at Harvard

Procedure: They were asked to type 40 trivia facts into a computer. Some of the facts represented new knowledge while other facts were likely already known by participants. The study utilized a 2x2 independent samples design, meaning independent variables were manipulated in two ways. Half of the participants were told that the computer would store everything they typed for later reference, while the other half were told the information would be erased. Within each of these groups, half of the participants were explicitly asked to try to remember the information. 

Results: The results showed that being told to remember the facts had no significant effect on recall. However, participants who believed the computer would save the information did not put much effort into remembering the information compared to those who were told that the computer would not save the information.

Technology Negative 2

Hembrooke and Gay

Aim: To determine how technological distractions could affect learning. 

Participants: The study utilized a sample of 44 American university students during a university lecture. The class had been split into two groups.

Procedure: Half of the class was moved to another room and were encouraged to leave their laptops open during the lecture. The first group then took a short test of 20 questions on the content of the lecture. Meanwhile, the second group was called in to listen to the lecture, but had not been allowed to have their laptops open. Afterwards, they were given the same test. Two months later, the study was replicated where group 1 had their laptops closed and group 2 had their laptops open.

Results: The results showed that participants in the open laptop condition performed significantly worse than those in the closed laptop condition.