Cog : HL TOPIC Flashcards
INTRODUCTION
Technology is very prevalent in the modern era - the digital age. It is now a part of most, if not everyone’s, day to day lives . As computers have have now become not just a significant part of our social life, but also our day at school, at home, in public, and so on, the use of technology has raised many questions in the field of psychology. Although this an emerging area in psychology due to the ever developing nature of modern technology . Many researchers have claimed that technology has a negative and lasting impact on our brains, more specifically, on cognitive processes such as attention, decision making and memory. These negative affects could include lack of recall within memory, lack of attention as well as relying on what psychologists call ‘transactive memory’ - relying on an external source of memory for information. Now although this concept is not relatively modern, the nature of it has changed due to the introduction and development of technology into our lives, theoretically, we now depend on technology as that ‘external memory source’.
S1 RESEARCHER & AIM
Sparrow et al :investigate whether we put in less effort in committing information to our memory if we believe we can simply recall it from an external memory source
S2 PROCEDURE
Participants were asked to type 40 trivia facts into the computer. Some of the facts were expected to represent new knowledge (information that is less commonly known and less likely for the participants to be familiar with) whilst other facts were more likely to be already known to the participants. Half of the participants were told that the computer would save 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. This meant that four conditions were present in the study ‘save and remember’ ‘save and not remember’ ‘not saved and not remember’ ‘not saved and not remember’.
S1 RESULTS
. Results show that participants who believed they would be able to retrieve the information from the computer appear to have made way less effort to remember the information than those who knew they would not be able to do this.
S1 CONCLUSION
This research seems to suggest that the Internet is increasingly occupying an important role in human memory, acting as an external store in a transactive memory system. Furthermore, our confidence in this external store appears to discourage us from investing real effort and time into in encoding and/or retrieval of potentially important information in our individual long-term memory stores and therefore suggesting that technology does in fact have a negative effect on individuals.
S2 RESEARCHER & AIM
Rosser et al : playing video games that involve rapid visuospatial coordination may enhance related skills in performing real-life tasks as well as tasks in wider contexts not immediately related to the tasks performed in the game
S2 PROCEDURE
As part of their regular training, surgeons participated in a series of drills. EX: lifted and moved triangular objects from one point to another by putting a needle through a small loop at the top of each triangle. The researchers measure the number of errors and completion time (INDICATOR OF PERFORMANCE UDIRNG SURGERY)
Playing videogames was assessed in 2 ways
-> self report questionnaire for exp outside the research
-> ppts asked to play 3 games for 25 min and total score obtained was indicating game mastery (game chosen required fast reaction and precise movements)
S2 RESULTS
Videogame mastery highly correlated with less time and errors when performing the drills
those who played games for more than 3 hours a week made 37% fewer errors in the drills and performed surgery 27% faster than non-gamer surgeons.
S2 CONCLUSION
Suggests that when playing videogames ppts improved their fine motor skills and attention, subsequently being able to transfer these skills. however, these are highly specific tasks and can suggest they’re not applicable.
