cognitive psychology

Question 1

What is the Yerkes Dodson Law

Answer 1

The idea that performance improves with increased arousal to an optimum point before declining with further increases in anxiety

Question 2

What did Loftus find about anxiety

Answer 2

36 students (half paid and half for extra credits) spent more time fixating on a gun (3.72) than a cheque (2.44) in the hands of the second person in the queue at a taco restaurant after watching 18 standardised slides which were 1.5 seconds long

Question 3

What did Christianson and Hubinette find about anxiety

Answer 3

58 real witnesses to a bank robbery were questioned and those who were threatened had greater recall after 15 minutes

Question 4

What did Yarmey find about age

Answer 4

When 657 adults were asked to recall the looks of a person they had spoken to for 2 minutes, 15 minutes ago the young and middle aged had better recall

Question 5

What did Anastasi and Rhodes find about age

Answer 5

Participants were put into three age groups ranging from 18 and 78 and were given 24 photos to rate attractiveness of, after a five minute filler task they were given 48 photos (24 original) and there was an own age bias and the young and middle ages had superior recall

Question 6

What did Loftus and Palmer find about misleading information

Answer 6

when 45 students partook in a lab experiment, they watched 7 standardised clips of a car accident and were asked a series of questions with a critical question about speed with the IV being the violence of the word used to describe the crash, the more violent the verb the higher the estimate (smashed was 40.8 and contacted was 31.8)

Question 7

What did Loftus find about misleading information

Answer 7

A week after 150 students watched a 1 minute film of a car crash, more people in condition one (smashed) reported seeing broken class

Question 8

What did Yuille and Cutshaw find about misleading information

Answer 8

In a field experiment, participants aged between 15 and 32 were asked if they saw ‘a’ or ‘the’ broken light, 10 out of 13 were correct in the fact there was no broken light

Question 9

What are the four parts of the cognitive interview

Answer 9

report everything
mental reinstatement of original context
changing the order
changing the perspective

Question 10

what is narrative chaining

Answer 10

linking unrelated items to one another to make a meaningful sequence or story

Question 11

what is the method of loci

Answer 11

using well known locations as retrieve cues for information that needs to be recalled

Question 12

what is acrostics

Answer 12

sentence where the first letter of each word forms the first letter of the item to be recalled

Question 13

what are the assumptions of the msm

Answer 13

structural model
linear model
sensory is entered first
if its attended to it moves to sum
if its rehearsed it moves to ltm
stores are unitary

Question 14

what did peterson and peterson find about the duration of STM

Answer 14

In a lab experiment, when participants were presented with trigrams before being asked to count back in 3s or 4s for varying amounts of time, recall was 90% after 3 seconds but just 2% after 18 seconds showng that information lasts 18 seconds at most if rehearsal is prevented

Question 15

what did Miller find about the capacity of STM

Answer 15

participants carried out a series of memory tasks such as recalling items after a short delay and on average recall was 5 to 9 items to the capacity is 7 plus or minus 2

Question 16

what did conrad find about the encoding of STM

Answer 16

in a lab experiment, 2 groups were given a list of 7 letters that either rhymed or didn’t, there were more errors in the rhyme group (ps for vs 18 times) so encoding is acoustic

Question 17

what did spelling find about the duration of sensory memory

Answer 17

in a lab experiment, pts saw a grid of letters for less than a second, average recall was 4 even though they claimed they saw more but the information was delayed so duration is 2 seconds or less

Question 18

what did Baddeley find about the encoding of LTM

Answer 18

in a lab experiment, pts were given a list of semantically similar or dis-similar words which they were asked to recall immediately and after 20 minutes, after 20 minutes recall for similar words decreased so encoding is semantic

Question 19

what did Bahrik find about the capacity and duration of LTM

Answer 19

In a lab experiment, 400 participants of all age ranges (17 to 74) were asked to recall photos in a year book, 48 years on recall was 70%, and less than 15 years on recall was 90% so the duration and capacity is unlimited

Question 20

evaluate “three separate stores”

Answer 20

FOR
Brainscans showed that the prefrontal cortex was active during STM task (beardsley) but the Hippocampus was active during LTM tasks (squires)

AGAINST
Ruchkin found there was more brain activity when participants saw real words than pseudo words so some stores work together

Question 21

evaluate “maintenance rehearsal”

Answer 21

FOR
the first word in a list has superior recall due to primacy effects

AGAINST
Craik and Lockhart found that when asked questions that required deep processing, recall was better than when asked questions that required shallow processing so it should be elaborative rehearsal

Question 22

evaluate “LTM is a unitary store”

Answer 22

FOR
Beardsley- there was less recall for similar words due to semantic encoding

HM damaged his Hypothalamus and his motor skills existed but he was unable to make new memories (because different stores were affected)

Question 23

Outline the role of the central executive

Answer 23

Directs attention and allocated information to slave systems, limited capacity

Question 24

Evaluate the central executive

Answer 24

for: Craik and Lockhart- elaborative rehearsal
against: Eslinger and Damasio found good reasoning but bad decision making in a brain damaged individual which indicates that the CE should have components
for: Baddeley and Hitch found when participants were given a reasoning, then a verbal then another CE task, conditions one and two were completed more efficiently due to the limited capacity

Question 25

Outline the role of the Phonological loop

Answer 25

Phonological store- words you hear
Articulatory process- seen and repeated

limited capacity

Question 26

Evaluate the phonological loop

Answer 26

for: KF had good motor skills but bad auditory memory showing the use of different components of memory

Question 27

Outline the visa-spatial sketchpad

Answer 27

temporal store

limited capacity

holds info about spatial orientation and what things look like

Question 28

Evaluate the visit-spatial sketchpad

Answer 28

Simon and Chabris found that when participants had to count the passes a basket ball team made, they were unaware of the gorilla that passed through the screen due to the limited capacity

Question 29

Compare the WMM and the MSM

Answer 29

MSM: 
STM is unitary, 
maintenance rehearsal is compulsory, 
structural model
WMM:
STM has components,
maintenance rehearsal is optional,
functional model
BOTH:
STM is included