cognitive psychology Flashcards

Question

Bartlett's Reconstructive memory theory (AO3) refuting evidence

Answer 1

STUDIES HAVE SHOWN MEMORIES ARE ACCURATE! - Wynn + Logie asked students to recall details of their first week at uni (unfamiliar story at the time). They did this at several times throughout the year --- the accuracy of their descriptions remained the same -REDUCTIONIST alternative explanations of memory such as the MSM inform us how LTM is forgotten through retrieval failure and interference rather than reconstructed falsly RM not credible, there are other valid explanations

Answer 2

sample- 570 volunteer, or volunteered children aged between 5-17 years from a range of schools (public + private) in madrid -ppts were divided into 5 diff age groups and then each child was read the digits independantly -each ppt was read increasing sequences of digits to recall in the correct order with digit span recorded as the maximum digits recalled in the correct order without error -digit span in the SPANISH POPULATION is significantly SHORTER than Anglo-Saxon culture, probably due to the word length effect associated with digits.

Answer 3

study can be replicated to test verbal digit span across cultures to understand cross-cultural development and individual differences in phonological loop processing and working memory high ecological validity as natural enviornment high validity as excluded ppts with learning, hearing, reading, writing difficulties that can affect digit span ppts gave informed consent = ethical no deception= ethical

Answer 4

not generalisable= as the sample is only a representative of spanish speaking children in the Madrid region, cant be generalised beyond this popuplation to speakers of other languages digit sequence recall is artificial and has low task validity as children are unlikely to lean random sequences of numbers in their day to day experiences lack of controls as the teachers did not test them for impairments, they relied on the parents for this information

Answer 5

to investigate the development of the phonological loop component of working memory in children aged 5-17 using (verbal digit span)

Answer 6

aim- to investigate the influence of acoustic and semantically similarity on LTM for word lists independant groups design 72 ppts (male and female uni psych students) assigned to 1 out of 4 conditions AS,AD,SS,SD IV- type of word list DV- number of words recalled in the correct order

Answer 7

1. 10 word lists presented visually, each word for 3 seconds 2. write down 8 digit sequences (preventing rehearsal 3. 60 seconds to recall word list in correct order 4. above repeated 4x 5. 8 digits presented and recalled for 15 mins (forgetting task) 6. 1 minute to recall the 10 words in the correct order (forgetting test)

Answer 8

all word lists confused at the start, but ppts soon started to catch up with the control group in the SD, AS, AD word lists SS WORDS WERE ALWAYS CONFUSING retrieval of SS info from the LTM is more difficult -ppts perform worse because the LTM gets confused retrieving words which are SS conc- LTM encodes semantically

Answer 9

Discuss whether eye-witness testimony are too unreliable to be used in court as evidence

Answer 10

-EWT is the account/recall of an event or crime given to the court or jury -Juries tend to rely on the information given by the eyewitnesses to reach a verdict especially when there is a lack of forensic evidence of CCTV footage - research on the INNOCENCE project in the US shows that 69% of false convictions are caused by inaccurate EWT -The DEVLIN REPORT was submitted after several cases where identity parades led to the misidentification of a suspect. (the report suggested that people should not be convicted based on EWTs) -A recent example of a wrongful conviction due to EW misidentification is RONALD COTTON who was wrongfully convicted of rape and lost 10 years of his life before he was lawfully exonerated due to DNA evidence. -There are HUGE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC RAMFACTIONS if people lose faith in the judiciary system. ( law and order will lose power are people are more likley to commit crimes) -Economies would suffer as the order of society would not be as secure, alongside costing the UK taxpayer 48,000 POUNDS for 1 prisoner annually.

Answer 11

1. Bartlett's reconstructive memory theory (war of the ghosts) 2. Loftus + Palmers EWT misleading qs

Answer 12

preschool children (5 years) : 3.76 secondary children (15-17): 5.83 -native spanish children of 5/6 year olds had shorter digit spans than elderly English ppts (7) but there were no differences in the older children -dementia ppts scores were similar to healthy elderly adults

Answer 13

-field setting: schools -tested individually at break times -ppts divided into 5 age groups and average digit spans were recorded for each group

Answer 14

-digit span increases with age up to adolescence -average digit span of native Spanish ppts was LOWER than english ppts (due to word length effect) as it takes more time to repeat and rehearse Spanish words, which takes up more space in the phonological loop, resulting in a shorter digit span. -but the word length effect begins when kids start to subvocalise at 7 years old so ppts younger than 7 showed no difference between Spanish and English scores -the dementia group demonstrated that the capacity of the phonological loop is affected more by AGE than dementia

cognitive psychology Flashcards

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