Cognitive Psychology Core Studies

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A mind map of the three cognitive core studies for A- Level Psychology
Amy Darvill
Mind Map by Amy Darvill, updated more than 1 year ago
Amy Darvill
Created by Amy Darvill about 10 years ago
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Resource summary

Cognitive Psychology Core Studies
  1. Loftus and Palmer
    1. Aim: To see whether leading questions affect an eyewitness testimony of an event
      1. Experiment one: 45 particpants were asked to watch seven clips of seven car accidents. They were then given a questionire that asked them to estimate how fast the cars were going. The verb was changed for different groups, for example 'hit' 'smashed', 'bumped' and 'cntacted'
        1. Results: The more forceful the verb the higher the spped estimate. Smashed led to the highest speed estimate at (40.8 mph)
          1. Conclusion: Loftus and palmer concluded that the meaning of the word used in the leading question had become intergrated with the memory of the event and so had changed the memory cresting as false memory. we can also conclude that what happens after we have witnessed an event can alter our memory of the event
            1. Strengths: The order for presenting the film was randomlised, meaning that it stopped boredom and tiredness, the data collected was quantative and so is useful for making comparisons, paticpants were not decieved
              1. Weaknesses: The students are not representative of the general population, it is a lab experiment so lacks eclogical validity , only small details were asked, the quantative data do not provide us with any information about why the particpants gave the answers they did, the experiment was not typical of real life situations
        2. Experiment two: 150 students were used this time, particpants where shown a one-minute film which cointain a four-second multiple car accident. the particpants were asked a set of question including how fast the cars where going. there were three groups, group one was asked how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other, the second group was asked how fast the cars were going when they hit each other. Finally there was a control group that was asked no questions at all. a week later the partipants were asked to return and were asked if they had seen any broken glass
          1. Results: The people who were in the smashed group were more likely to say there was broken glass. this suggests that there memory of what they had seen was changed by the way they had been questioned
      2. Baron Cohen
        1. Aim: To provide support for the cognitive explanation of autism, specifically that autistic adults lack advanced theory of mind
          1. Method: 3 groups were used in the experiment, 16 adults with high functioning autism and aspergers syndrome, 50 normal adults and 10 adults with tourettes. They were given 3 tasks to do, the eyes task, the strange stories task and the control tasks. In the eyes task the particpants were given 25 photos of peoples eyes and they had to guess what emotion the person was showing from the word pairs. in the strange stories task the tourettes and the autism participants were given stories and had to say why the person in the story said what they had said, this was done to validate the eyes task. All participants did the control tasks which was basic emotion recognition and the gender recognition of eyes task
            1. Results: The normal and the tourettes group performed nearly identically on the eyes task, where ask the autism/AS group were significantly impaired.On the strange stories task no participant with tourettes made mistakes but the participants with autism/AS were significantly impaired.On the control tasks the autism/ AS group performed normally.
              1. Conclusions: people with autism lack a theory of mind becasue they cannot tell what a person is feeling and cannot put themselves into sombody ele's shoes
                1. Strengths: The data collected was quantative which means it was easy to compare between the results, Also it was a quasi experiment as the independent variable was whether the person had autism or not, there is no in-between,.
                  1. Weaknesses: In the eyes tasks only pictures were used and not real people and so it lack ecological validity, not only thjat but the picture where black and white and not coloured and that may of affected the results, the sample size is small and so it is hard to generalise, although the sample size may have been small because there are not a lot of people with autism and tourettes
        2. Savage- Rumbaugh
          1. Aim: To conduct a case study on the first non-human to acquire symbols without specific training, to compare this chimpanzee with another species of chimpanzee, the common chimp.
            1. Method: The case study was a longitudinal study and involved a pygmy chimp called Kanzi, his mother was taught how to use symbols and kanzi had observed her but was never taught how to use the symbols.At 2 and half years he was separated from his mother and was observed spontanousely using symbols. As chimps have no vocal chords when indoors kanzi would use a battery powered keyboard with lexigrams that would brighten up when touched, then a speech synthesiser would 'speak' the word.When outdoors he would use a laminated copy of the lexigrams. Kanzi's outdoor environment was 55 acres of forest where 17 different food types were stored at 17 different locations so he mmust travel to get the food he prefers. a record of Kanz'is symbol use was recorderd for 17 months. 2 record where kept, an automatic computerised one from his keyboard use and notes from observers when he was outside. His symbol use was recorded as correct, incorrect, spontaneous,imitation, structured or unstructed
              1. Results: By the end of the 17 months he was able to locate where all the food types were located. he could use a photo on the ground to select a food and then guide another person to his chosen location. he also learned symbols on the keyboard to indicate where he wanted to go.
                1. Mulika: she was Kanzi's little sister who was eperated by her mother due to an eye infection.Her data was used to back up kanzi's and she had observed kanzi use the lexigrams not her mother. she used symbols at 12 months old, earlier then kanzi who started to use them at 30 months. She used single words for many thing. milk was used ad a request to be pickede up. she would also request for attention and then gesture what she wanted. After 2 months she used lexigrams correctly. After inital use she progressed at a slower pace then kanzi. her spontaneous utterance were lower than kanzi's and she did not like going into the forest without kanzi and so wasn't tested on location.
                  1. Strengths: The research method was longitudinal, which means it allowed detailed data to be collected and allows kanzi's development to be studied over time. The study had high ecological validity as the study took place in the 55 acres of forest kanzi lived in, this means that they could roam freely. The data collected was both quantative and qualitative, the qualitative data gave detailed explantations of kanzi's behaviour and the quantative data allowed the researchers to analyze the data collected and compare kanzi's data to his sister's, the data collected was gathered uner controls ( in the form of tests) and so are less likely to be open to bias. There was inter-rate reliability as a group of researchers observed kanzi
                    1. Weaknesses: The longitudinal procedure made the study very time consuming. Even though the experiment took place where Kanzi lived it could lack ecological validity as the chimps were not brought up in there natural environment. This study could be classed as unethical as they were brought up in a human environment and then subjected to tests to test their language skills, also they were enclosed only to the forest..The sample was very small ans so it is hard to generalise from the study.
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