Key practical - cognitive psychology Flashcards
(12 cards)
What is the title?
To see whether age has an effect on digit span
What is the aim of the study?
Is there a difference between digit span (out of 10) between 16-17 year olds and 40+ year olds
What is the IV and DV?
IV - The age of the participants
DV - Digit span
What is the hypothesis?
Experimental - 16-17 year olds have a higher digit span because as you age you tend to lose memory
Null - No correlation between the digit span out of 16-17 year olds compared to 40 year olds
What is the sampling method?
Opportunity sample
What was the procedure?
-Ask the first 10 16-17 year olds who are available in the 6th form common room to participate in our study
-Ask the first 10 40+ year olds who are available at the local train station to participate in our study
-All participants sign a consent form, outlining details of the experiment
-Each participant is taken into a quiet room, where they are given a digit span test starting from 4 and ending at 10. Participants will be stopped if they can’t remember in the correct order.
-Digits are presented on a screen, 1 second interval between each digit
-Participants debriefed at the end
-All scores recorded for both groups and a Mann Whitney U conducted
-Results presented in a bar chart
What is the conclusion?
The calculated value of 14 was less than the critical value of 27 meaning the results are significant. This means the 16-17 year olds had a higher digit span compared to 40+ year olds, suggesting age has an effect on digit span, for a one tailed test where P < 0.05
Evaluation
-A weakness is it lacked generalisability. This is because our sample was very small, consisting of 10 in each condition. Therefore we aren’t able to apply our findings about digit span and age to people in other areas or countries because the sample isn’t representative
-A strength is we used a standardised procedure. This means the practical can be easily replicated allowing us to draw comparisons increasing reliability
-Strength is it is ethical. Participants all signed a consent form. They were also debriefed at the end. This increases reliability
-Practical lacks ecological validity because it was conducted in a lab setting making it an artificial environment. This means participants won’t behave naturally
-Lacks internal validity as we didn’t eliminate any psychology students from our sample.
What is the title of the key question?
Is eye-witness testimony reliable?
What is eye-witness testimony?
Used in court trials where a bystander who’s witnessed an event has to state their account of things
Unjust accusations can lead to innocent people being wrongfully convicted which can have negative impacts on health
What is a real-life example of eye-witness testimony?
Ronald Cotton was accused of sexually assaulting someone because the woman’s eye witness testimony was inaccurate. Forensic DNA allowed Cotton to be freed later
Application of eye-witness testimony
Bartlett - Bartlett said memories aren’t reproductions but instead reconstructions. This means memories are subject to inaccuracies and affected by our schema. The real assaulter and Cotton had a few similarities so her schema assumed it was him
Loftus and Palmer - Conducted a study to test how leading questions affect eye-witness testimony. When they changed the verb in a car crash video to make it sound more aggressive, participants estimates of speed changed. This could explain why Jennifer (victim) made the wrong decision, as police asked her leading questions to sway her memory
MSM - When asked several years later to identify between Bobby Poole (assaulter) and Ronald Cotton (accused) she was unable to do so as she didn’t elaboratively rehearse. This shows eye-witness testimony isn’t unreliable but rather memories are faulty if not rehearsed
