Cognitive Approach Case Studies

Bransford & Johnson, 1972

AIM: To see how prior knowledge (schema) can influence comprehension and memory)

• METHOD: Participants listened to a passage that was difficult to understand. Half of the participants were given a context before hearing the passage, while the other half received no context.

• RESULTS: Those with the context reported significantly better comprehension and memory of the passage, demonstrating the influence of schemas.

Applications: Schema theory

Research method: True experiment

Conclusions: Schemas can improve comprehension and memory of new information because they enable us to relate new information to our existing knowledge of a subject.

Peterson & Peterson, 1959

AIM: To test the duration of the short-term memory store

Methods:  Participants were given a trigram to remember, followed by a distraction task that required them to count backwards from 100 in threes. After varying intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 seconds, they were asked to recall the trigram.

Results: The findings indicated that as the interval/time delay increased, participants' ability to recall the trigram significantly decreased, suggesting that information retention diminishes over time without rehearsal.

Applications:

• Cognitive processes

• Models of memory- Multi-Store Model

Research method: True experiment

Conclusions: The study demonstrated that short-term memory has a limited duration and that information can be forgotten rapidly without rehearsal, supporting the Multi-Store Model of memory.

Stone et al., 2010

AIM: To see how stereotypes influence the perception of information

METHODOLOGY: 51 undergrads from Princeton listened to a 20-minute recording of a college basketball game with a transcript. They thought they were in a study about radio vs. TV. Half were shown a photo of a white athlete, the other half a Black athlete. They completed a questionnaire based on evaluations of natural ability, performance, and contributions of the player.

RESULTS: Participants who saw the photo of the white athlete rated him significantly higher in terms of intelligence compared to those who saw the Black athlete, while those who saw the Black athlete rated him as having more athletic ability and better at playing basketball, indicating that racial stereotypes significantly shaped their perceptions.

Applications:

• Reliability of cognitive processes

• Biases in thinking and decision making (confirmation bias)

• Schema theory

• (Can also be sociocultural regarding effect of stereotypes)

Research method: True experiment

Ethical considerations: Informed consent

Conclusions:

• Confirmation bias: participants focused on the details of the game that were consistent with stereotypes

• Stereotypes can lead to confirmation bias, which could reinforce the existing stereotype, making them harder to change.

Loftus & Palmer, 1974

AIM: To see if leading questions can create false memories.

METHODOLOGY: Participants were shown a film of a car accident and then asked a series of questions about the event, which included variations in wording to assess the impact of leading questions on their recollection. IV was the verb used and the DV was their speed estimates.

RESULTS: The results indicated that the phrasing of questions significantly affected participants' memory of the event; for example, those asked, "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" reported higher speeds than those who heard, "How fast were the cars going when they contacted each other?" This demonstrated that the wording could lead to the formation of false memories.

Applications:

• Reliability of cognitive processes

• Reconstructive memory

Research methods: True experiment

Ethical consideration: Informed consent

Conclusions:

• The higher intensity verb acts as false information and caused the misinformation effect by producing a false memory of something that didn’t happen (glass breaking). This suggests that memory is reconstructive in nature and the information we hear after an event can distort how we remember it.

Robbins et al., 1996

AIM: To see how interfering tasks would affect working memory performance.

METHODOLOGY: Participants were 20 male chess players. They had to view an arrangement of chess pieces and then recreate this arrangement on a new board.

• Verbal interference: repeated the word “the” while viewing the first chess set and also when recreating it

• Visual/spatial interference: tapped a sequence into a keypad in their laps while viewing the first board and while recreating it

RESULTS: The participants' performance was observed under both interference conditions, revealing that verbal interference significantly impaired their ability to accurately recreate the chess arrangement compared to the control group. Conversely, visual/spatial interference had a lesser impact, suggesting that chess players may rely more on verbal encoding strategies when processing visual information.

Applications:

• Models of memory- Multi-store model

• Slave systems

Research method: True experiment

Conclusions:

• Verbal interference leads to higher scores because participants can use 3 different working memory systems. Visual-spatial interference uses up more visuospatial sketchpad capacity.

• If working memory was all 1 system, there would be no difference in scores between the groups.

• Evidence for slave systems that control processes of different modalities of info.

Kahneman & Tversky, 1974

AIM: To see if people rely on intuitive thinking (system 1) more than rational thinking (system 2)

EXPERIMENT: Partiicpants had a scenario of 2 hospitals. The large one had 45 babies born per day, the smaller one 15. For 1 year, both recorded how many days had higher than 60% of one gender born. Participants were asked “Which hospital do you think recorded more such days? The larger one, smaller one, or about the same?”

RESULTS: Most answered “about the same” because the events are described by the same statistic and are therefore equally representative of the general population. Most assumed probability would be 50/50 due to birth rate of gender being 50/50. Correct answer is the smaller one.

Applications:

• Cognitive processes

• Thinking and decision making

• Intuitive and rational thinking

• Reliability of cognitive processes

• Biases in thinking and decision-making- heuristics

Conclusions:

• Participants used system 1 thinking instead of system 2.

• System 1 thinking is used when solving problems, even though it might lead to errors.