Cognitive Approach

IB Psych 🧠

Sensory store

All sensory experiences are held in memory for a very short duration unless you consciously pay attention to them.

Short term store

If you do pay attention to sensory stimuli, info will enter short term memory. Only 5-9 items can be held at a time and only held for around 6-12 seconds.

Long term store

After rehearsing information, it enters long-term memory, where it can be held theoretically forever. Vast amounts of info can be stored in long term memory.

Encoding

The process of transforming information into a format that can be stored in long-term memory, involving the organization and integration of new data with existing knowledge.

Dual task technique

A method used to study cognitive processes by requiring participants to perform two tasks simultaneously, which helps to understand how attention and memory interact.

Central executive

The component of working memory that is responsible for directing attention and coordinating information from the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad, managing cognitive tasks.

Episodic buffer

Conveys messages between long term memory and the slave systems of the working memory model

Phonological loop

Stores and manipulates sounds for brief periods of time. 2 components: Phonological store (stores sounds for less than 2 seconds), articulatory control system (allows inner voice repetition/rehearsal)

Visual spatial sketchpad

A component of working memory that handles visual and spatial information, allowing for the temporary storage and manipulation of visual data.

Dual Processing Model

A theory that suggests two systems of thinking: one that is fast, automatic, and intuitive, and another that is slower, more deliberate, and analytical.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that simplify decision making and problem solving.

Anchoring Effect

A cognitive bias where individuals rely too heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making decisions, often affecting their judgment and estimates.

Availability Effect

A cognitive bias where people assess the probability of events based on how easily examples come to mind. This can lead to overestimating the likelihood of events that are more memorable or recent.

Framing Effect

a cognitive bias in which people's decisions and opinions are influenced by the way information is presented, rather than the information itself.

Representative

people judge the likelihood of an event by how much it resembles the stereotype or typical example of that category, often ignoring other relevant statistical information.

Peak End Rule

a psychological principle that suggests people tend to judge an experience based on two main factors: the most intense (peak) moment of the experience and its final moment (end), rather than evaluating the entire experience as a whole.

Misinformation effect

A person’s memory of an event becomes distorted due to exposure of incorrect or misleading information

Leading question

Questions that suggest to the witness which answer is desired

Forced choice question

There are a fixed set of possible answers and it is implied that one of the possibilities is the correct one

Reconstructive theory

We must consciously rebuild our memories every time we remember something, sometimes we are influenced by other factors which leads to wrong memories

Memory traces

Brie fragments of memory, rather than an entire complete record

Cognition

the mental action of acquiring knowledge and understanding

Cognitive Processes

Perception, thinking, decision making, problem solving, memory, attention, language

Bottom-up processing

Starts with sensory input, perception based on raw data from environment

Top-down processing

Starts with preexisting knowledge, expectations, or context to make sense of sensory information

Multi-store model of memory

Three memory stores: sensory, long-term and short-term

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

Levels of processing model

Three levels of processing: structural (physical characteristics of sensory information), phonological (sounds), and semantic (meaning of information)

The deeper info is processed, the more likely it is to be remembered

System 1 Processing

Fast, automatic, intuitive processing. Allows for quick decision making and is based on experiences.

System 2 Processing

Slow, deliberate, conscious. Used for complex problem-solving and tasks that requite more thought and consideration.

Peterson and Peterson

Aim: investigate the duration of short-term memory and provide empirical evidence

Procedure: 24 participants had to recall trigrams. Participants counted backwards by threes or fours from a specified random until they saw a red light. Participants were asked to recall trigrams after different intervals. The counting task aimed to prevent rehearsal

Results: the longer the interval delay, the fewer trigrams were recalled. Participants remembered 80% of the trigrams after 3 seconds and 10% after 18 seconds.

Conclusion: STM is limited and is distinct from LTM

Baddeley and Hitch

Aim: investigate if participants can use different parts of working memory simultaneously, based on the working memory model

Procedure: participants completed a dual task (remembering and recalling sequences of numbers/answering true or false questions). Participants asked to read prose and understand it while remembering sequences of numbers. Then a new task that required repetition of a random number or numbers 1-6.

Results: Participants who repeated random numbers performed the worst, this was interpreted as a central executive overload.

Conclusion: Verbal reasoning is the central executive, digit span is the phonological loop.

Bransford and Johnson

Aim: investigate how schemas help us store new information in our memory

Procedure: participants randomly divided into three groups, all participants are read a paragraph describing a procedure. group 1 told the paragraph is about doing laundry before they hear the paragraph, group 2 told the paragraph is about doing laundry after they hear the paragraph before asked to recall it, group 3 are not told what the paragraph is about

Results: group 1 had significantly better memory than the other two groups.

Conclusion: schemas help participants encode new information by making it possible to organize information. Memory involves actively interpreting what you hear

Kahneman and Tversky

Aim: test the influence of anchoring bias on decision making

Procedure: high school students assigned an ascending condition and a descending condition, the first number in the sequence influenced their final estimate

Conclusion: when the anchor was smaller, the final estimate was smaller and vice versa. System 1 thinking was used rather than logical reasoning. Anchoring bias played a significant role in decision-making.

Loftus and Palmer

Aim: investigate how leading questions can influence eyewitness memory

Procedure: American students were shown a video of a car crash, randomly divided into groups. Students asked how fast the cars were going with different key words (hit, collided, smash, etc) also asked if they had seen broken glass

Results: Participants estimate cars were traveling faster when the question involved “smashed” and more participants also reported seeing broken glass.

Conclusion: Leading questions can alter memory or an event, “smashed” is associated with severe accidents

Flashbulb memory

Brown and Kulik: vivid, intense memories recalled with detailed sensory information that are not always accurate

Selective memory encoding

fear prioritizes memories of threat related details, which helps individuals respond to similar dangers in the future