cognitive practical

Question 1

what is the aim of our cognitive practical?

Answer 1

to investigate the effect of word type on recall; whether neutral words are easier to recall than negatively emotionally charged words.

Question 2

what is the independent variable in our cognitive practical?

Answer 2

word type - whether the words are neutral or negatively emotionally charged

Question 3

what is the dependent variable in our cognitive practical?

Answer 3

number of words recalled out of 10

Question 4

state the directional (one tailed) hypothesis of our cognitive practical

Answer 4

Participants who try to memorise neutral words will recall significantly more words (out of 10) compared to participants who try to memorise negatively emotionally charged words.

Question 5

state the null hypothesis of our cognitive practical

Answer 5

There will be no significant difference between the number of words recalled (out of 10) for participants who try to memorise negative words words compared to participants who try to memorise negative words.

Question 6

what exp. method was used in our cognitive practical?

Answer 6

lab experiment

Question 7

what are the strengths of using our exp. method in our cognitive practical?

Question 8

Explain one weakness of using a lab experiment in your research (2)

Answer 8

P: One weakness of using a lab experiment for our investigation into the effect of word type in recall is low ecological validity
E: Participants had to recall a list of 10 emotionally charged OR neutral words in 1 minute
T: This is not how memory works in real life and so we cannot generalise the findings to real life memory recall [T].

Question 9

what experimental design did we use in our cognitive practical?

Answer 9

independent groups

Question 11

strengths of our cognitive practical investigation

Answer 11

(P) One strength of our practical to investigate the effect of word type on recall is there was a reliable procedure.
(E) Pps in both the negatively emotionally charged words and the neutral words saw 10 words for 3 seconds each.
(T) This means that the study can be replicated to check for consistent results on effect of word type on recall

(P) Another strength of our practical to investigate the effect of word type on recall is…
(E)
(T)

Question 12

weaknesses of our cognitive practical investigation

Answer 12

(P) One weakness of our practical to investigate the effect of word type on recall is low ecological validity
(E) Participants had to recall a list of 10 emotionally charged OR neutral words in 1 minute
(T) This is not how memory works in real life and so we cannot generalise the findings to real life memory recall

(P) One weakness of using opportunity sampling is that is is not very representative
(E) All 22 p’s were psychology students, studying in Portsmouth, so there could be something very similar about these people.
(T) This makes using the findings less useful