Here are some model answers for each of the 4 cognitive theories, plus some additional "choose the best answer" questions:
Short answer questions-
which is better? Why?
From your understanding of
the psychology of obedience, identify two features of this situation that could
lead to Emma being obedient. (2)
The police officer was in
close proximity to Emma and so she obeyed the instructions. Also, the police
officer is a legitimate authority figure so Emma would do as she was asked.
OR
Obedience increases when a
person believes that a legitimate authority figure is giving the orders.
Milgram also highlighted that the proximity of the person giving orders
increased the likelihood of orders being followed, and the police officer is
near to the car.
Emma refused to get out of
her car and did not obey the police officer’s demands.
Explain one factor, using psychology of obedience, that
might account for Emma’s behaviour. (2)
Emma may not perceive a
police officer as having legitimate authority over her actions, she is on the
way to work and may believe her boss has more authority over her and doesn’t
want to be late to work, and therefore she does not obey the police officer’s
instructions.
OR
Emma may not perceive the
police officer to have legitimate authority. For example, if he was not wearing
a uniform then she would have been more likely to resist instructions.
Define the terms ‘encoding’ and ‘capacity’ as they are used in
cognitive psychology. (2)
Encoding is modality specific in the sensory register.
Capacity is the amount of information can be stored in each of the
memory systems.
OR
Encoding is how information from the senses is changed into a
format used by memory systems, such as acoustic encoding in STM.
Capacity is how much information can be stored in each of the
memory systems, for example 7 plus or minus 2 items in short term memory.
Explain, using the working memory model, why Rashine found it
difficult to revise while listening to music. (3)
The working memory model suggests that the phonological loop is
used in STM to deal with verbal or acoustic memory processes and music and
revision are both acoustic based tasks requiring the use of the phonological
loop, therefore it is overworked. Rashine would also be overloading the
phonological loop as it has a limited capacity, which would mean the ability
for it to pay attention to both tasks at the same time would be impaired and
information is lost. The music would also prevent the sub vocalisation of the
revision, therefore rehearsal is limited so the revision is less likely to go
into the LTM.
OR
The working memory model suggests that STM can deal with a limited
amount of information at any one time, and only for a short duration, music and
revision provide too much acoustic information at once so information is lost
before arriving at the slave-systems. The phonological loop is the slave system
being used by Rashine which has a limited capacity, so revising and hearing
music at the same time is overloading it.
8 mark questions- Complete the tasks listed below
Discuss the multi-store model of memory in terms of Mr Williams’s
ability to cope with everyday life. (8)
The multi-store model includes a sensory register, the short-term
store and the long-term store. The sensory register is a buffer for all
information coming in from the senses, if information is attended to it goes
into STM. The STM has a 30 second duration and a capacity of 7 plus or minus 2
items. Mr Williams can remember information in the STM as he can remember the
day of the week briefly, however transferring this to the LTM is a problem for
Mr Williams. This will result in him being unable to make new memories which
could lead to problems with activities like cooking, playing board games or
holding a conversation. However, it is possible that Mr Williams could learn
new skills as the case of HM would suggest that there is a separate memory
store for these as HM learnt skills, even though he didn’t recall learning
them. Mr Williams’ LTM appears to be intact as he can recall experiences and
events from the past, but he cannot store new memories in his LTM. This is
similar to the case of HM and so it is likely Mr Williams will be affected in a
similar way, therefore being unable to recall changes such as his new grandson
being born. This could be as a result of damage to the brain that controls the
rehearsal loop in STM, therefore things like taking his medication can no
longer go into LTM and so Mr Williams could make himself poorly from this.
However, because he has knowledge from previous experiences and is able to do
things if he is reminded, then lists, notes and instructions can be provided
for him, for example a set of pre-recorded instructions that he can play and
listen to which will can be on repeat every 25 seconds while he does a task,
such as taking medication, this will ensure the information is repeated and so
he can use his STM to complete the activity. He would be able to function more
independently with these reminders as it is not his ability to do things like
take medication that is impaired, just his ability to remember to take
medication.
TASK: On your summary
sheet of MSM, summarise what bullet points you would use to describe MSM (you
can use the answers above)- if the question was evaluate the theory (AO3 rather
than AO2) what evaluation points would you make?
Evaluate
the reconstructive model of memory (8)
Bartlett argued that your memory is
not a true recollection of an event (like a video camera), memory is instead a
construction or reconstruction and your memory is much more like a jigsaw than
a video camera.
To make a memory you take different
parts and construct it into the actual memory. These different parts might come
from what actually happened at the event or from past experiences or commonly
from your schemas. A schema is a framework or guideline about what you expect
to find in a situation i.e. in an armed robbery you might expect there to be a
gun, you might fill in a gap in your memory for an event like this by thinking
‘he had a gun’.
The process of filling in gaps in your
memory is called confabulation, this can be either through filling them with stuff
from your schemas or it could be through something like rationalisation where
we change things which happened so that they make sense to us i.e. in The War
of the Ghosts the participants remembered the ‘wounded soul’ as being impaled
with a spear because this made more sense to their western minds.
The War of the Ghosts by Bartlett
supports the idea that your memory is reconstructed, when read an unusual story
and then asked to recall it over time the participants changed parts so it fit
in with their expectations e.g. hunting seals became fishing, made it briefer
etc showing that their memories were changed and not a true representation. The
same thing happened in Allport and Postman where participants saw a line
drawing of a white man threatening a black man on a train, when asked to recall
it the image was often reversed.
A problem with using this research
however is that it was not very ecologically valid/ high in mundane realism.
Since this was simply reading an unusual story which wouldn’t make sense it
might not tell us about memory in ‘real life’ and how memory works for your own
experiences/what things mostly do make sense.
A strength of reconstructive memory is
it has lots of real world applications i.e. it helps avoid miscarriages of
justice by showing that we might not be able to trust eye witness testimony in
court, the witness could have had their memory influenced by various factors
like a leading question or photo (as in the case of Ronald Cotton) which means
innocent people can be spared from jail.
A final weakness is that it doesn’t explain how memory
is reconstructed, this is descriptive rather than explanative which means the
theory itself doesn’t give enough detail on the process involved (and the brain
areas required)
TASK: On your summary
sheet of Reconstructive Memory,
summarise what bullet points you would use to describe the theory (you can use
the answers above)- Try to think/find two more evaluation points that you could
use.
Evaluate
Episodic and Semantic Memory as a theory of how memory works (8)
Tulving
thought that long-term memory was more complicated than being one ‘infinite’
store. He suggested that there are multiple components, the two focused on
being Episodic and Semantic memory.
Episodic
memory is like a mental diary of your life’s events and holds your personal
memories from your life i.e. like a video playing of an event you experienced
and autobiographical memories about yourself i.e. what TV show you like the
most.
Semantic
memory is like a mental encyclopedia which is full of facts, figures and
information that you know i.e. knowing 65% of ppts went to 450v in Milgram.
There
are various differences between these two types of memory for example episodic
is time referenced- the events that happened within a certain time period get
linked together e.g. your 18th birthday party and the next morning
will be linked. Semantic doesn’t work like this and you can learn one fact one
year and a related piece of information the following year and the two will get
linked despite being far apart.
Retrieval can be different too,
in episodic memory there is a link to the context in which it was learned. You
need to have some sort of cue to help recall episodic memories i.e. going back
to your primary school triggers memories. This isn’t as strong in Semantic, you
don’t go back to high school and remember how to do quadratic equations.
Patients
with retrograde amnesia often have a selective deficit in either
episodic or semantic memory e.g. following a serious motorbike accident KC
suffered long term memory impairment to his episodic memory resulting in an
inability to form or recall many personal events but his semantic memory was
fine.
The
fact that episodic and semantic memory can be tied into specific areas of brain
damage is good for the theory, brain scans of areas where those memories are
damaged will provide objective and reliable evidence to show where they do
these processes.
The theory doesn’t clearly
account for overlap between the two systems e.g. everyone has facts that they
remember because of an episodic memory of something happening which reminds
them of it.
The
theory can also be criticized for being descriptive rather than explanatory.
The theory describes how your memory is structured but can’t give any
indication of why it has to be structured in this specific way.
TASK: On your summary
sheet of Episodic and Semantic memory,
summarise what bullet points you would use to describe the theory (you can use
the answers above)- Try to think/find two more evaluation points that you could
use.
Evaluate
Working Model of memory as a theory of how memory works (8)
Baddeley and Hitch argued that your
STM is not just a unitary passive store like MSM thought and rather an active
process.
STM is made up of three components,
Central Executive, Phonological Loop and the Visuo-Spatial store.
The Phonological Loop has a limited capacity of how much information it can store (it only
handles information for a few seconds) and it deals with auditory information. It’s subdivided into
two parts. The Phonological store which holds words you’ve heard
like an inner ear and the Articulatory process which is responsible for
repeating things you’ve heard/try to remember like an inner voice.
The VSSP stores Visual and spatial information, it too
has a limited capacity about how much it can store and has two components a
visual one dealing with objects and features such as shape and colour (Visual Cache)
and a spatial component dealing with locations and movements in space (Inner
Scribe).
The most important part is the Central executive which
does jobs like direct attention, determine how many resources to allocate to
the other slave systems. It doesn’t really store information like the others
and is more about controlling what is going on.
You can use each of these stores independently and
they will work fine even if you’re doing more than one thing but if you try to
use the same store for two tasks it will overload it’s capacity. This can be
seen in the supporting evidence by Robbins where chess players played a game
whilst either tapping, generating numbers, pressing a keypad in a pattern or
repeating words. When two tasks using VSSP or CE were done this lead to
difficulties with chess.
This model is useful for explaining real world issues
like William’s syndrome where sufferers have normal language ability but impaired
visual and spatial awareness, showing that they are separate stores and
explaining Alzheimer’s which can be seen as a declining CE.
There are problems with the model however Parkin (1998) identified that there
is little evidence of the CE existing as a structure in the brain and the
concept should be abandoned ‘The central executive does not exist’. The model
also had to be revised in 2000 to add the Episodic Buffer because there were
certain things such as links to Long term memory which the original model
couldn’t explain.
A final problem with
the theory is that most of the evidence from it comes from lab experiments,
these tasks are artificial and low in mundane realism and so the results might
not apply to real life, however since they’re done in a lab they are reliable
because of the high control and this eliminated EVs and will help with gaining
cause and effect.
TASK: On your summary
sheet of Episodic and Semantic memory,
summarise what bullet points you would use to describe the theory (you can use
the answers above)- Try to think/find two more evaluation points that you could
use.
KOP!
