Tuesday, 26 April 2016

Cognitive model 8 mark answers

Yo,

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!

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