IB PSYCHOLOGY PAPER 1 –

COGNITIVE LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

(CAL)Carlos Cardini May

TABLE OF CONTENTS Principles Studies supporting principles Research methods used in CLA Limitations of research methods How to overcome limitations Ethical considerations in research methods Schema theory Memory Models How biological factors affect memory How do social or cultural factors affect memory Reliability of memory Technology used to investigate memory Technology used to investigate language Cognitive and biological interaction Memory and emotions – flashbulb memory

PRINCIPLES1) Human beings are information

processors and that mental representations guide behaviour.

2) Mental processes can and should be studied scientifically.

3) Social and cultural factors affect cognitive processes.

1) HUMAN BEINGS ARE INFORMATION PROCESSORS AND THAT MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS GUIDE BEHAVIOUR.

Information input to the mind set it via bottom-top processing (from the sensory system).

Stereotypes may guide behaviour (Social Identity Theory)

Reconstructive nature of memories – false memories.

2) MENTAL PROCESSES SHOULD BE STUDIED SCIENTIFICALLY. Multi-store memory model (Atkinson and Shiffrin

(1968). Memory consists of three parts: sensory memory,

short-term memory STM and long-term memory (LTM). Only some information from the sensory passes to STM and only some info from STM passes to LTM (through rehearsal). When someone forgets from their STM, the info is lost, if he forgets from their LTM the info is still there but cannot be retrieved.

3) SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FACTORS AFFECT COGNITIVE PROCESES.

Factors such as religion, cultural tradition, beliefs and morals affect memory

Schema theory by Bartlett (1932) Bartlett found that English participants

altered culturally unfamiliar words into culturally familiar ones [schemas] (i.e. substituting canoe for boat).

RESEARCH METHODS IN CAL Since cognitive psychologists study

intangible processes, research methods in this branch are limited to experiments and case studies.

Experiments: laboratory experiment, natural experiment and field experiment. See Loftus & Palmer (1974), Frencha & Richards (1993), etc. -> lab experiment.

Case studies: See H.M. (1996), Curtiss (1981), Shallice & Warrington (1974).

LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH METHODS Confounding variables – uncontrolled

variables that influences effect sought. Demand characteristics – participant

knows what it is expected from him. Research bias – the research sees what

they are looking for and consciously or unconsciously affects the findings.

Observer bias (Hawthorne effect) – participants act differently due to the consciousness of being observed by people.

HOW TO OVERCOME LIMITATIONS Triangulation – use 2 or more

research methods of investigation to explore the same aspect

Single blind procedure – where participants do not know which treatment they received.

Double blind procedure – where neither participants or researchers know which treatment participants have received

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN RESEARCH METHODS

5 Ethical concerns: Informed consent is mandatory. Withdrawal – Right to withdraw is

obligatory. Deception – Intentional deception

must be avoided. Debriefing – Participants must leave

the experiment in the same mental state.

Protection of participants – There should not be any physical or mental harm.

Animal ethics – Welfare of subjects is compulsory.

•See Curtiss (1981), Clive Wearing (2007), Blackmore & Cooper (1970), Gardner and Gardner (1969).

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN RESEARCH METHODS – EXAMPLE Curtiss (1981) investigated the sensitive

period hypothesis using Genie who was discovered with no apparent language skills at the age of 13. Ethical concerns:

Participant protection: Once the study was concluded, Genie was left to live in an adult foster home. She might experienced mental distress due to dramatic change in environment.

Consent: Genie could not be fully informed or give consent due to mental restrictions.

Withdrawal: Genie would not be able to express desire of withdraw

Debriefing: Genie was not debriefed and ended up living in an adult foster home.

SCHEMA THEORY Schemas are cognitive structures that

organise knowledge stored in our memory.

Supporting studies:Bartlett – “War of the Ghosts” (1932)Anderson & Pichert (1978)Brewer & Treyens – “picnic basket” (1981)French & Richards (1933) 

Reality

Interpretation of reality based on schemas

BARTLETT (1932) Aim: Determine how social and cultural factors influence

schemas. Procedure: Participants of an English background. He tested

their memory of a story using a) serial reproduction and b) repeated reproduction -> a) a participant read the story and reproduce it on paper, another participant reads it and reproduces the reproduction; this followed for six or seven participants. b) the same participant reproduces the story six or seven times from their own previous reproductions. These reproductions occurred over several intervals from 15 minutes to as long as several years.

Results: As number of reproductions increased, the story became shorter and there were more changes to the story (i.e. canoes became boats). Alterations occurred with culturally unfamiliar things which turned them into culturally familiar and acceptable (rationalisation).

Conclusion: Memory is very inaccurate. People use their own schemas to understand the world.

SUPPORTING STUDIES Brewer and Treyens (1981) found that, when

shown an office with stereotypical and unusual objects, participants only recalled things of a typical office but not the wine or picnic basket.

Frencha and Richards (1933) found that when told participants that they had to draw a clock from memory, participants tended to alter unusual things (the number four written looked like this on the clock “IIII” but participants changed it to “IV”. Participants that were asked to simply draw it did not altered such details ->link to misleading questions, Loftus and Palmer (1974).

MEMORY MODELS1. Multi-store memory model (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968)

2. Working memory model

(Baddeley and Hitch, 1974)

1. MULTI-STORE MEMORY MODEL – ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN Composed by 3 memory stores:

Sensory memory (SM) – Filters out useless information and stores unlimited stimulus for fractions of a second. Information is picked up by senses (iconic, echoic and haptic).

Short-term memory (STM) – Limited-capacity memory that stores 7 ± 2 units from 15 to 30 seconds. Information is encoded acoustically.

Long-term memory (LTM) – Holds unlimited info for a long time. Primarily, coding is semantic, but it can also be acoustic and visual.

Supporting studies: Millner – H.M. (1966) and Clive wearing.Strengths Weaknesses

Stimulated further research Reductionist

Considerable evidence Assumes stores are unitary

Supports theory of anterograde amnesia Focuses on structure rather than explaining how it works

Differences in encoding Focused only on declarative memory; ignores procedural knowledge

Lack ecological validity

Most people don't rehearse in daily life

2. WORKING MEMORY MODEL – BADDELEY AND HITCH Similar to Multi-store memory model in SM and

LTM; however, the STM is divided in four different systems of information:1. Central executive: coordinates the 3 slave

systems, binds info from different sources into coherent episodes. Selective attention and inhibition.

I. Visuospatial sketchpad: visual and spatial information.II. Episodic buffer: events and procedures.III. Phonological loop: sounds.

Strengths Weaknesses

Explains the actual functions of STM Does not explain how memories are retrieved

Memory is divided into different components (not unitary)

There is no tangible evidence

Explains why patients with anterograde amnesia can remember procedures (i.e. How to talk, walk, etc)

Does not explain functions of long term memory

Focuses on both declarative and procedural memory

Lack ecological validity

Disregards functions of SM. Does not explain mechanism of encoding nor decay.

HOW BIOLOGICAL FACTORS AFFECT MEMORY Alzheimer disease (AD) is a serious and

progressive degenerative brain disease, which leads to the loss of neurons and often leading to dementia.

Schwindt and Black (2009) did a meta-analysis of fMRI studies on episodic memory in AD patients and compared them to normal patients. They found that there was greater brain activity in the Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) in the control group and that AD patients showed decreased activation in the MTL and increased activation in the prefrontal cortex.

Other studies: Mosconi (2005) for deterioration of neurons and Murphy and Levine (2010) for amyloidal plaques.

HOW DO SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FACTORS AFFECT MEMORY - CULTURAL Cole and Scriber (1974) compared non-schooled

children from the Kpelle tribe in Liberia with US school children and found that Kpelle children did not improve their free recall after the age of 10 in the same way as US children; after 15 trials they only remembered 2 more items. When items were presented as a story, Kpelle children had equally good recall.

Wang (2004) compared Chinese and European American children remembered events. Americans remembered events as longer, with more detail and an emotional focus; they tended to focus on themselves. Chinese provided less detailed and less emotional accounts; they focused on daily routines and society rather than themselves.

HOW DO SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FACTORS AFFECT MEMORY - SOCIAL Bodenhausen (1998) studied negative stereotypes held by some

Americans about people of Spanish origin. Participants were “jurors” and were told that the defendant was called Carlos Ramirez or Robert Johnson. He found that, with the exact same pieces of evidence, Ramirez’s group rated him more guilty than Johnson’s group. Participants recalled evidence which fitted the stereotype and ignored evidenced that was against it.

Buckhout (1974) studied participants who saw a picture of an altercation between a white man and a black man; the white man is holding a razor threatening the black man, after seeing the picture, 50% of participants remembered seeing the black man holding a razor.

Howard and Rothbart (1980) found that people have better recall for facts that they are critical of out-group members than facts that are favourable: negative memory bias.

Duncan (1976): White participants were shown a heated discussion between two males until one shoved the other (2 white, 1 white & black and 2 black). Participants classified the shoving of the black man as violent, especially if he shoved a white man.

RELIABILITY OF MEMORY Loftus and Palmer (1974).

Aim: To determine how leading questions may alter memories. Procedure: Participants were shown films of car accidents,

after each clip, participants were divided into groups and given a questionnaire asking to give account of the accident by answering certain questions including the critical question “How fast were the cars going when they ___”. The verb in the critical question was changed to smashed/ collided/ hit/ bumped/ contacted for each group.

Results: The more severe-sounding verb produced higher speed estimates.

Conclusion: Misleading questions may alter memories.Strengths Limitations

Supported by schema theory Culturally bias

Supported by WMM and MSMM Lacks ecological validity

Uses multiple participants and recreated event across the years in USA and Europe

Not applicable to participants that lack driving knowledge

Supported by further studies (ie. Loftus: [1975], anxiety [1979], consistency of misleading questions, etc. Pickel weapon focus [1998]).

If participants know it is real life, they have a better recall (Foster et al, 1994). People who experienced genuine robberies remember more accurately (Christianson and Hubinette, 1993).

Researcher and observer bias

Witness show more accuracy if their decision is not forced upon choices (Koriat and Goldsmith, 1996)

TECHNOLOGY USED TO INVESTIGATE MEMORY Technology:

PET: Positron Emission Topography MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging fMRI: functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging EEG: Electroencephalogram CAT: Computerised Axial Tomography 

Supporting studies: Maguire et al. (2000) used MRI scans to observe the

brain structure of taxi drivers. He found that their left and right hippocampi had a larger volume compare to non-taxi drivers. The redistribution of grey matter is due to regular use of spatial memory skills.

H.M. – Milner (1957 -1997) used MRI scanning to find that there was damage to the hippocampus, amygdale and areas close to the hippocampus -> this correlated with his anterograde memory.

TECHNOLOGY USED TO INVESTIGATE LANGUAGE Same technology Supporting studies:

Tierney et al (2001) used PET scans to evaluate the bilingual language compensation following early childhood brain damage of MA (name of subject). He found that MA’s right hemisphere was more active than the controls during the production of both speech and sign language. Language functions seem to have developed in the right hemisphere as an adaption following his early brain damage.

COGNITIVE AND BIOLOGICAL INTERACTION

I. Ledoux Model of emotion (1999)

II. Lazarus theory of cognitive appraisal (1982;1991)

I. LEDOUX MODEL OF EMOTION (1999)

In Ledoux model, there are two routes: short and long route, the difference is that in the long route, neuronal pathways reach the hypothalamus and in the short route they don’t.

In his experiment with rats he found that even without auditory cortex, rats learned the tone of fear; however, without auditory thalamus, rats did not fear auditory conditioning. Some of the neurons connect directly to the amygdale, this explains why they learned auditory fear without auditory cortex. His experiment brought evidence of the existence of two pathways to have an emotional response.

Gazzinga et al. (2000) also found that autistic children had trouble naming emotions from a set of facial expressions due to damage in pre-frontal lobe and amygdale.

II. LAZARUS THEORY OF COGNITIVE APPRAISAL (1982;1991)

This theory states that emotion is based on the evaluation of a situation: positive evaluations will lead to positive emotions and negative evaluations will lead to negative emotions.

Speisman et al (1964) demonstrated that influence on appraisal influences emotional experiences. He showed participants a stressful film about unpleasant genital surgery accompanied by one of the following soundtracks: trauma (emphasised pain experienced), denial (emphasised boys anticipation of entering manhood), intellectualisation (soundtrack ignored emotional aspects) and silence (control group). He measured galvanic skin response, measured electrical conductivity of skin and indicator of autonomic arousal and heart rate. He found that the most traumatic soundtrack resulted in more negative emotions and that intellectualisation and silence resulted in lowest levels of emotion. The music influenced the appraisal.

MEMORY AND EMOTION – FLASHBULB MEMORY Brown and Kulik (1977) found that JFK’s

assassination in 1963 led to the most flashbulb memories of American participants (90% of participants)

Conway et al (1994) conducted a similar experiment and found that 86% of UK participants and 29% ok non-UK participants had flashbulb memory regarding Margaret Thatcher resignation.

Sheingold and Terry (1982) found that individuals tend to have FBM for highly emotional events (i.e. the birth of a sibling) for a long time.

Cahill and McGaugh (1998) proposed that FBM occurs as a release of hormones during times of high emotions; this arousal helps the animal or human respond to the situation (survival behaviour) and remember how to respond in the future (lucid memory) to have a better chance of survival (adaptive behaviour).

MEMORY AND EMOTION – FLASHBULB MEMORY CRITICISM Wright (1993) aimed to investigate how

accurate people’s flashbulbs memories are. He interviewed people about the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and found that after five months, most memories were vague and subject to systematic biases.

McCloskey et al (1988) did a similar study: he interviewed people shortly after the space shuttle challenger exploded and killed seven crew members; he found that after seven months, participants forgot elements of the event, and there were errors in their recall.