Cog ERQs

Reconstructive memory

The theory of reconstructive memory suggests that memory is not passive retrieval of information from our long-term memory, but is rather an active recreation of an event in the mind every time it is remembered.

It recognises two pieces of information:

That was obtained during the perception of the event

And external information after the event.

So, reconstructive memory proposes that memory may be changed in storage, processing, and retrieval.

Schema theory

Individuals attempt to construct a memory using the information available to them from their schemas.

Schemas are cognitive structures that are derived from prior experiences and knowledge.

They simplify reality, setting up expectations about what is probable in relation to particular social and textual contexts.

Schema theory states that an individual’s prior knowledge will affect their interpretation and processing of new knowledge.

This is due to the process of assimilation, wherein the integration of new knowledge into existing schemas is edited so that it is congruent with an individual’s current expectations.

Bartlett (1932): Study

Aim: Bartlett aimed to investigate whether people’s memory for a story is affected by schemas, and the extent to which this memory may be reconstructed.

Sample: 20 British students were used as a sample with 7 women and 13 men.

Procedure: Participants were asked to read a Native American folk tale, ‘war of the ghosts’, as it was unlikely that they had existing knowledge of the story.

Participants were also not told the study’s aim regarding schemas but believed they were being tested on the accuracy of their recall through different techniques.

The study implemented two experimental groups:

The first group was tested under a repeated reproduction design, which is where participants read the story twice and recollected it under controlled time increments, ranging from 15 minutes to a a year.

The second group was tested under a serial reproduction design. Wherein, one subject was first shown the story and told to recall it, the second subject is told the first participants account of the story and instructed to recall it, and so forth.

Bartlett (1932): Results

Bartlett found that there was no significant difference between the two groups. It was found that 7/20 participants omitted and left out unfamiliar details like place names.

10/20 participants transformed the general contents of the story to make it more rational and of a writing style and rhythm more typical in British writing.

Participants also changed small details of the story, where for example canoes were recalled as boats, and hunting seals became fishing.

Anchoring bias

Decision-making is the process in which an individual chooses a belief or behavior from a variety of possible choices based on knowledge and thus biases, thinking being the process of consideration.

A model of thinking and decision-making is the dual processing model. Wherein, there are two distinct models explaining the ways in which decisions are processed:

System one processing is intuitive, fast, unconscious, and based on experiences, thus heavily subject to biases and heuristics.

System two thinking is rational, slow, conscious, and based on consequences.

During decision-making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgements, where this is a result of system one thinking.

Once an anchor is set, other judgements are made by adjusting away from the anchor, and there is a bias towards interpreting other information around the anchor.

Tversky and Kahneman (1974): Study

Aim: Tversky and Kahneman aimed to investigate the impact of cognitive biases on decision making when system one processing is employed.

Sample: In this study, high school students were used as participants.

Procedure: Participants were split into two conditions:
In the ascending condition, participants were asked to quickly estimate the value of 1×2×3×4×5×6×7×8 in 5 seconds.

Those in the descending condition were asked to estimate the sum of 8×7×6×5×4×3×2×1 in 5 seconds.

Tversky and Kahneman (1974): Results

It was found that those in the ascending condition estimated the value to be much lower than those in the descending condition.

Where, the median for the ascending condition was 512 and the median for the descending condition was 2250, and the actual value was 40320.

Working memory model

Working memory is the information that we are conscious of at any one time. It’s the information that we hold in our conscious minds.

The WWM suggests that individuals have a central executive. Where, the central executive controls two slave systems.

The visuospatial sketchpad, which is responsible for holding visual information.

As well as, the phonological loop for auditory information.

The theory also includes the episodic buffer, which is a short-term ‘waiting room’ of sorts of information, and keeps information there until it is needed, as well as being responsible for connecting the working memory to the long term memory.

Landry and Bartling (2011): Study

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate if articulatory suppression would influence the recall of a list of phonologically dissimilar letters in serial recall.

Sample: The sample consisted of 34 psychology students.

Procedure: There were ten lists, each consisting of a series of 7 letters randomly constructed from phonologically dissimilar letters.

The experimenter presented one letter series at a time. The participants received an answer sheet with seven blanks in a row.

In the experimental group, participants received instructions to repeatedly say the numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’ at a rate of 2 numbers per second from the time of presentation of the list, until the time they filled in the answer sheet, and this was repeated ten times.

The control group saw the list of letters, but did not carry out the articulatory suppression ask.

Each trial was scored for the accuracy of recall. The trial was scored as correct if the letters were in the correct position.

Landry and Bartling (2011): Results

The results showed that the scores from the experimental group were much lower than the scores from the control group.

Where, the mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was 76% compared to a mean of 45% in the experimental group.

Multi-store model

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s multi-store model of memory explains how memories are formed.

According to the multi-store model, memory is formed by information first entering the sensory store.

The sensory store holds all of our sensory information for a short time. If we pay attention to it, the sensory information travels to the short-term store.

Information can last in the short term store for about 20-30 seconds. If it is rehearsed it is transferred to the long-term store, but if not, it is lost.

Information in the long term store can last up to an individuals entire lives, and may be returned back into the short term store through retrieval.

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966): Study

Aim: Glanzer and Cunitz aimed to examine whether the position of words influences recall, and to see if there are two separate stores of memory.

Sample: The participants were 46 army enlisted men.

Procedure. The study used a repeated measures design. Participants were first given three five-word practice lists so that they could learn the procedure.

Participants were were then shown 15 15 word lists. The words were shown on a screen with a projector. The words were common one-syllable words. Each word was shown for 1 second with a 2 second interval between words. The experimenter read each word as it appeared.

When the list was don, the participants recalled the words in one of three conditions:

Immediate recall, wherein they immediately recalled the words.

Delayed recall (10), where they were asked to count down from a number until 10 seconds had passed.

And delayed recall (30), where they were asked to count down from a number until 30 seconds had passed.

All participants were tested individuals, and the order of reading the lists was randomized.

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966): Findings

When asked for immediate recall, both the primacy and recency effects were shown. With the 10 second distraction task, there was a significant reduction in the recency effect, and in the 30 second delayed recall, there was no trace of the recency effect.

Brewer and Treyens (1981): Study

A second study that supports schema theory is Brewer and Treyens “office study”.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the role of schemas in encoding and the retrieval of episodic memory.

Sample: The sample was made up of 86 university students studying psychology.

Procedure: The room consisted of objects that were typical of offices such as paper, and there were some items in the room that were incongruent to what you would expect to find in an office, such as a skull. Finally, there were objects were were omitted, including books.

Each participant was asked to wait in the professor’s office

The participant did not realize that the study had begun.

After 35 seconds the participants were called into another room and then questioned on what they remembered from the office under one of three conditions.

The recall condition: where participants were asked to write down a description of as many objects as they could remember from the office.

The drawing condition: in which participants were given an outline of the room and asked to draw the objects that they could remember.

The verbal recognition condition: where participants were read a list of objects and simply asked whether they were in the room or not.

Brewer and Treyens (1981): Results

It was found that when participants were asked to recall either by writing a paragraph or by drawing, they were more likely to remember items in the office that were congruent with their schema of an office. Whereas, the items that were incongruent with their schemas of an office were not often recalled.

When asked to select items on the list, they were more likely to identify the incongruent items. However, they also had a higher rate of identifying objects which were schema congruent but not in the room.

It was concluded that the schema played a role in both the encoding and recall of objects in the office.

Brewer and Treyens: Evaluation

Strengths:

The research produced both quantitative and qualitative data in order to provide a richer understanding of the role of the schema.

Limitations:

There is no way to verify the schema of the participants prior to the experiment, while the researchers did a pilot study by using a questionnaire with students to determine schema-consistent objects, however this is not directly applicable to the participants.

There are also ethical concerns about the deception used int he study. The participants had agreed to be in the study, but they were deceived about the true nature of the study and were not told when the experiment had begun. This was deemed necessary however to maintain ecological validity.

Bartlett (1932): Evaluation

Strengths:

Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory had several applications and explains many real-life situations. Thus, in spite of the fact it was carried out in a laboratory, it has high ecological validity.

Limitations:

The methodology was not rigorously controlled. Participants did not receive standardized instructions. There was no standardized time after which participants had to recall the story.

Although there were two conditions, there was no difference in the performance of the two groups, meaning that the IV did not affect the DV.

Although it did appear that culture affected how they recalled the story, there was no control group of Native Americans recalling the story to verify that memory distortion doesn’t happen to people within that cultural group.

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966): Evaluation

Strength:

A strength of the experiment is that it was well controlled with two clear, isolated conditions.

Limitations

However, the participants were all male, exhibiting androcentric bias which limits the studies findings applicability to the wider, female population.

Participants may possibly differ in brain capacity, which would affect their ability to remember/recall and is thus another factor impacting the dependent variable outside of the independent variable.

Furthermore, the study lacks ecological validity, as this memorization of a list of items does not represent every day ways of utilizing memory, thus rendering this process largely artificial.

Tversky and Kahneman (1974): Evaluation

Strengths:

Due to the independent measures design there were no order effects, meaning participants could not improve due to practice or worsen due to fatigue or boredom in the second condition, thus affecting the dependent variable, or guess the aim of the experiment.

Furthermore, since it was a laboratory experiment, causation was more confidently established and confounding variables were controlled or eliminated.

Limitations:

However, the task is oversimplified and is done in artificial conditions that do not reflect real life, thus the experiment has low ecological validity.

Furthermore, there is sampling bias as the sample is composed of solely high school students from the United states, hence lacking cross cultural validity, as it is limited to a specific demographic of people.

Also, due to individual participant characteristics, such as IQ, reaction time, and general mathematical ability, this would have affected their ability to answer the question as a factor outside of the anchor, thus impairing results.

Englich and Mussweiler (2001): Study

Aim: The aim of this experiment was to investigate if anchoring bias could play a significant role in determining sentencing in courtrooms.

Sample: The sample consisted of 44 German law students in their senior year.

Procedure: The participants were given a scenario of a rape case. After the participants had formed an opinion about the case, they were handed a questionnaire.

Half of the participants were told that the prosecutor demanded a sentence of 34 months for the defendant.

The other half of participants were told that the prosecutor demanded a sentence of 12 months for the defendant.

They were instructed to indicate whether the given sentence was too low, adequate, or too high, and then what sentence they would have given if they were the judge on the case.

Englich and Mussweiler (2001): Results

It was found that when told that the prosecutor recommended a sentence of 34 months, the participants recommended on average 8 months longer in prison, than when told that the sentence should be 12 months for the exact same crime.

Englich and Mussweiler (2001): Evaluation

Strengths:

A strength of the study is high internal validity as it evaluates the extent to which it can be claimed that research outcomes are a result of the experimental treatment.

High ecological validity, as this is a real-world application of anchoring biases in the context of the courtroom.

Limitations:

However, because the case concerned the reprehensible act of rape, the participants may have unconsciously been emotionally affected by the nature of the crime. Which would allow any personal opinions, experiences, or relations to the issue affect their decisions rather than the intended anchor.

Furthermore, the study evokes cultural biases, as the experiment was carried out in Germany on German students, thus the results cannot be generalized to other cultures.

Flashbulb memories

Memory is the encoding, storing, and retrieval of information and knowledge that has been acquired via learning.

It allows for information to be stored for extended periods of time.

Flashbulb memories were theorized by Brown and Kulik (1977), who defined flashbulb memory as ‘a highly detailed, exceptionally vid snapshot of the moment when a surprising and emotionally arousing event happened’.

They argued that there were two key components to the creation of a flashbulb memory.

First, there is the element of surprise. The researchers proposed the “special mechanism” hypothesis that suggested that there were biological factors that led to the creation of these memories, although they could not identify them.

Secondly, the researchers argued that the event had to have “personal meaning” for the person.

Hence, if there was a combination of a strong emotional response based on surprise and personal meaning, then the result is a flashbulb memory.

Sharot et al (2007): Study

Aim: The study aimed to determine the role of biological factors on flashbulb memories.

Sample: The sample was 24 people who were in New York during the 9/11 attacks.

Procedure: The study was conducted 3 years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Participants were put into an fMRI machine and whilst in the canner they were presented with cord cues on a screen alongside the word summer or September as to get the participants to link the words to either the summer holidays or the 9/11 attacks, some of the word cues included, afternoon, airplane, coffee, building, and weather.

Participant’s brains were scanned and recorded while they were recalling events.

The memories of personal events from the summer were used as a baseline of brain activity for evaluating the nature of the 9/11 attacks.

Afterwards participants were asked to rate their memories for vividness, detail, confidence in accuracy, and arousal. They were also asked to write down their personal memories.

Sharot et al (2007): Results

It was found that the participants who were in downtown Manhattan, closer to the twin towers during 9/11, exhibited greater selective activation of the amygdala when they recalled memories of the terrorist attack then when they recalled memories from the proceeding summer where 83% of the downtown participants showed higher activation of the left amygdala during the 9/11 trials compared to the summer trials.

However the participants who were further away from the event had fairly equal levels of response in the amygdala when recalling both events, where only 43% of the participant showed higher activation of the amygdala.

There was no difference across the groups for the summer trials.

Sharot et al (2007): Evaluation

Strengths:

The use of more than one method of data collection is triangulation which increases validity.

Positive correlation found between proximity of participants to the World Trade Center and the increased activation of the left amygdala opened a new field of information that opens creation depth to determine causation experimentally.

No significant difference in the controlled variable.

Limitations:
The study is correlational in nature and does not establish a cause and effect relationship

The experiment is highly artificial and thus low in ecological validity.

The sample size is small and culturally biased. Research indicates that individualistic cultures are more likely to have flashbulb memories than collectivist culture. This makes the findings hard to generalize to the world population as a whole.

The results were party self reported which introduces participant/response bias.

The study fails to provide an explanation why some people have vivid memories after seeing events on the tv.

Cannot be replicated as this was a unique event and hence cannot be proven to be more universally reliable.

Flash bulb memories: Evaluation

There are many different variables playing a role in flashbulb memories, such as emotional response, personal significance, and rehearsal, making it difficult to isolate variables to determine which plays the most significant role.

Studies can lack reliability as they cannot be replicated completely. Thus, psychologists cannot test to see how consistent the results are.

Also, much of the research is retrospective, and there is the issue that we cannot reliably measure how accurate people’s initial memories are.

Brown and Kulik (1977): Study

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the validity of flash bulb memories compared to recall of other events, and the effect of racial identity on this.

Sample: 80 participants aged 20-60 were interviewed in the study where 40 were African Americans and the other 40 were Caucasians.

Procedure: Participants were asked to answer questionnaires about how vividly they recalled, how they felt, and where they were when they found out about important public events, such such as the assassinations of prominent American figures, including John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. They were also asked to remember if they had any flashbulb memories of personal events, such as the birth of death of a family member. Answers were submitted in the form of free recall of unlimited length.

Brown and Kulik (1977): Findings

It was found that participants had very clear memories of where they were, what they did, and what they felt when they first learned about an important public occurrence such as the assassination of JFK or Martin Luther King Jr., where they also reported surprise and consequentiality.

The structural forms of these memories were very similar, demonstrating reception context.

75% of African American participants had a flashbulb memory of the assassination of Martin Luther King, versus 33% of Caucasian participants.

All but one of the 80 participants had flashbulb memories about the assassination of JFK.

73% said that they had typical flashbulb memories associated with a personal shock such as the death of a close relative.

Brown and Kulik (1977): Evaluation

Strengths:

Relatively cheap, quick, and efficient way of gathering information from a large sample of people

Higher ecological validity, and allowed for flexibility in answers.

Weaknesses:

Participants and the events were all American and thus cannot be generalized cross-culturally.

Flashbulb memories may be affected by memory, and is either enhanced through rehearsal or repressed thus it may be repressed if the memory is especially traumatic, thus it won’t be as vivid.

There is a potential psychological harm to participants as having to recall assassinations and the deaths of family members.

Contains participant bias in responses.

Sparrow et al (2001): Study

Aim: The study aimed to investigate whether continual access to google impacts memory processing and consolidation.

Sample: The same was composed of 60 undergraduate students, 37 females and 23 males from Harvard University.

Procedure: Participants were asked to type 40 trivia facts into the computer. Some of the facts were expected to represent new knowledge, such as that an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain, whilst other facts were more likely to be already known to participants, including the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas in February 2003.

The experiment used an independent samples design and two independent variables.

Participants were presented with trivia statements one by one on a computer screen. They were asked to read the statements, and then to type what they had read into a dialogue box that appeared below the statement.

Half of the participants were told to press the spacebar to save what they had typed into the computer, and that they would have access to what they had just typed at the end of the task.

The other half were told to press the spacebar to erase what they had just typed so that they could type the next statement.

Additionally, half of the participants were told to remember the statements, and the other half were told nothing.

They were then given a blank piece of paper and asked to recall as many of the facts as they could in 10 minutes.

They were finally given a recognition task where they were provided with 44 statements and to identify (yes or no) whether they were the same as what they saw on the computer screen.

Sparrow et al (2007): Results

When told the computer would save the information 19% of trivia facts were recalled when asked to remember and 22% when not asked to remember.

However, when told the computer will erase the information when asked to remember 29% of trivia facts were recalled, and when not asked, 31%.

Thus, result showed that being asked to remember the information made no significant difference to the participants ability to recall the trivia facts, however being told whether the computer would save or erase the information did make a difference.

Rosser et al (2007): Study

Aim: Rosser et al aimed to investigate whether playing video games would result in better surgery performance in laparoscopic surgeons.

Sample: 33 surgeons were used.

Procedure. As part of the surgeons regular training, they participated in a series of drills. For example, lifting and moving triangular objects from one point to another, but pulling a needle through a small loop at the top of each triangle.

Researchers measured the number of errors made, and the completion time. This served as an example of performance during surgery.

Playing video games was assessed in two ways:

A self report questionnaire was asked to assess the video game experience outside of the research.

They were asked to play three games for 25 minutes each and the total score obtained in these games were used to represent their mastery.

3 games were selected because they required fast reaction time and precise movements.

Rosser et al (2007): Results

It was found that videogame mastery was highly correlated with less time and fewer errors performing surgery drills with a P value of p<0.001.

Those who played video games for more than 3 hours a week made 37% fewer errors and were 27% faster than non-gamers. This suggests that playing video games as a form of digital technology improved fine motor skills and attention