Cognitive Level of Analysis

General Learning Outcomes

What is cognitive psychology/cognition?

·         Cognitive processes include perception, thinking, problem solving, memory, language and attention. 
·         Cognition is based on one’s mental representations of the world, such as images, words and concepts. 
·         Cognitive psychology concerns itself with the structure and functions of the mind.

Syllabus Question: Outline principles that define the cognitive level of analysis

·         Mental representations guide behaviour 
·         Mental Processes can be scientifically investigated  
·         Cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural factors

Syllabus Question: Explain how principles that define the cognitive level of analysis may be demonstrated in research

Mental representations guide behaviour

·         The mind is seen as a complex machine, an intelligent information-processing machine using hardware (the brain) and software (mental images or representations)

·         According to this, information input into the mind comes via bottom-up processing – from the sensory system.

·         This information is then processed in the mind by top-down processing via pre-stored information in the memory.

·         This finally triggers an output – behaviour.

·         A person’s mindset is important in predicting how they manage to deal with challenges. How people think, people behave.

·         People’s interpretations of something are based on previous experience.

·         People can fabricate memories, known as false memories due to the inability to distinguish between what actually happened and what is heard.

·         People’s minds aren’t reliable because of the reconstructive nature of memory. People tend to only remember an outline of a specific event and fill the rest with their own information when recalled.

·         Example of this is THE WAR OF THE GHOSTS case study by Bartlett 1932.  

·         Bartlett found that the participants’ recall distorted the content and style of the original story. The story was shortened, and the phrases, and often words, were changed to be similar to the English language and concepts (eg. ‘boat’ instead of ‘canoe’).

·         There were also other kinds of errors, including flattening and sharpening details. 

·         Bartlett’s Research is important because it provided some of the first evidence that what we remember depends in an important way on our prior knowledge, in the form of schemas.

Cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural factors

·         Frederic Bartlett (1932), the man who came up with the name, schema (a mental representation of knowledge), was one of the first to say that cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural influences.

·         Bartlett looked at how cultural schemas influenced remembering.

·         He found that people had difficulty remembering stories from another culture, and that they would reconstruct the story to fit with their own cultural schemas.

·         In his research he demonstrated that people remember things based in terms of meaning and what makes sense to them.

·         Bartlett proposed that memory is subject to distortions and that this could be proven scientifically.

Bartlett (1932) based his info on his experiment the war of the ghosts

The Mind can be studied scientifically

·         Studied by conducting controlled laboratory experiments.

·         Studied by conducting case studies on people with amazing memory or problems with memory due to brain damage.

·         Cognitive processes are localized in the brain and can thus be observed and studied in more depth by using brain imaging technologies such as MRI and CAT scans.

A SCHEMA THEORY is a cognitive theory about information processing. A COGNITIVE SCHEMA can be defined as networks of knowledge, beliefs and expectations about particular aspects of the world.

Syllabus Question: Discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the cognitive level of analysis

Experiments

·         Conducted in laboratories

·         Variables are easily controlled

·         Artificial environment so output of subject may not be accurate

Case Studies

·         Study of a naturally occurring abnormality, such as a person with extraordinary memory or a person with brain damage that affects their ability to recall information.

·         Advantage: Can be studied for a long period of time.

·         Adv: The participant is not put under any/much harm

·         Disadvantage: It cannot be generalized and assumed that the same thing will happen to everyone

·         Example: Case Study of HM who suffered from Amnesia and was studied by various researchers (one being Milner and Scoville in 1957)

Observations

·         The behaviour observed is linked back to the thought processes of that person

·         Disadvantage: Researcher may have a biased view or interpret the observed behaviour differently than others, thus it is not reliable.

Syllabus Point: Discuss ethical considerations related to research studies at the cognitive level of analysis

·         Experiments may cause physical harm or permanent irreversible cognitive problems

·         E.g. The Monster Study by Wendell Johnson in 1939 involving 22 orphan children, many of whom began stuttering as a result of the experiment.

·         Case Studies: Must have written consent, confidentiality issues, debriefing, deception, participant rights, right to withdraw, and voluntary participation.

Cognitive Processes

Syllabus Question: Evaluate schema theory with reference to research studies

·         Schema theory suggests that we already know what will influence the outcome of information processing.

·         People interpret and integrate information based on past experiences to make sense out of it.

·         If information is missing, the brain fills in the blank spaces based on existing schemas (distortions).

·         Schema theory has been used to explain memory processes.

MEMORY: ENCODING (INPUT) --> STORAGE --> RETRIEVAL

·         Schema processes can affect memory processes, shown by following experiment:

Brewer and Treyen 1981

·         30 participants were asked to wait in a typical office room individually.

·         When asked to recall the objects in the room, it was found that participants office schema did affect their recall.

·         Expected objects, such as pens and books, were well recalled or invented.

·         Unexpected objects were often not remembered at all.

PROS of Schema Theory:

·         Helps to understand how people interpret information

·         Helps to understand memory distortions

·         Helps to understand social cognition which can be used to explain prejudice and stereotyping.

CONS:

·         It is not clear how schemas are acquired/developed

·         It is not clear how they influence the schema theory

·         It is too vague to be useful at this stage.

Syllabus Question: Evaluate two models or theories of one cognitive process

Cognitive Process: Memory

Memory

1^st Model: The multi-store model

·         Proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) à multi-store model

·         Model regards humans as information processors.

·         Model suggests that: memory consists of a number of separate stores; and that memory processes are sequential.

·         Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) suggested 3 types of memory store:

o   Sensory Stores: a temporary buffer store holding information from the environment very briefly. Some of this info is attended to and transferred to…

o   A short term store (STS): has a very limited capacity and duration. This mode of storage is influenced by reference to additional info already held, responsible for decision making and problem solving. If the info that enters STS is rehearsed, the info is passed to…

o   A long term store (LTS): has unlimited capacity and duration. It stores information in all modalities.

SO we have:

Environmental input à Sensory Store à attention à Short Term Store à rehearsal à Long Term Store

·         Miller (1956) showed that the span of information held in the Short term store is 7+/- 2 words at a time.

·         Information lasts in the STS for 15-30 seconds, according to Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968/1971). Info can enter LTS if you keep repeating it – known as rehearsal.

·         HM case study, where HM could recall long term information but not short term and could not store short term into long term, support Atkinson and Shiffrin’s multi-store model.

·         CON: too simplistic and assumes that STS and LTS act as unitary stores.

Note: Short term store and short term memory is the same thing…

2^nd Model: The Working Model

·         Proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) à Working Model

·         Conducted a study where participants were given digit strings to rehearse, whilst at the same time, carrying out verbal reasoning tasks.

·         Participants were alarmed at the prospect of having to do both things at once. As not to overload participants, they were first given only two digits to remember whilst completing the verbal reasoning tasks.

·         Results showed that participants were able to recall the digits accurately, and was the same case when the number of digits to remember was increased to 6.

·         This finding was not accurate with Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) multi-store model.

·         It showed that the short term memory consisted of several components that could work independently of one another, not sequential like Atkinson and Shiffrin had proposed.

·         Based on this and other studies, Baddeley and Hitch concluded that the short term memory is a flexible and complex system which consists of a central control mechanism.

·         The working model has been altered slightly over time but remains loyal to this main principle.

The Working Model:

 

1) •Central executive

2) •Phonological Loop

     •Episodic Buffer

      •Visuospacial sketchpad

                  3) Long-term Storage  

 Syllabus Point: Explain how biological factors may affect one cognitive process

Cognitive Process: Memory

·         Deterioration of the brain

·         Results in the loss of memories held in the areas of the brain which have deteriorated.

HM Case study by Milner in 1957

·         HM had their tissue from the temporal lobe and hippocampus removed to cure epileptic seizures.

·         As a result of this operation, HM could recall early life memories but could not form new ones.  This is known as Anterograde Amnesia. 

Syllabus Question: Discuss how social or cultural factors affect one cognitive process (for example, education, carpentered-world hypothesis, effect of video games on attention).

·         Bartlett’s (1932) WAR OF THE GHOSTS story

·         Participants relied on schematic knowledge acquired within their culture to understand and later recall a story from a very different culture.

·         Shows that a person’s past is a construction which relies heavily on the ideas and knowledge a person develops in their cultural settings.

Cross cultural research – the role of schooling on memory

·         When researchers from the West conducted memory tests with participants from non-western cultures, the participants performed badly due to the presence of Western bias.

·         Cross-cultural psychologists are now aware that to test memory in a group of people, it is necessary to know about the language and culture of that group.

Case Study:

·         Cole and Scribner (1974) investigated memory strategies in different cultures.

·         Compared recall of words in the US and among Kpelle people from Liberia.

·         Researchers couldn’t use the same list of words in the two countries, so they observed everyday cognitive activities in Liberia.

·         Helped them to develop memory experiment with relevant tasks, with the help of local college-educated people who spoke the language and acted as experimenters.

·         All words used in the experiment were checked to be familiar to the participants.

·         Cole and Scribner (1974) found striking differences in the way the Kpelle people went about remembering and solving problems in the experiment.

·         Researchers asked Liberian children from different age groups to recall as many items from four presented categories.

·         Researchers found that age didn’t make a difference and that children who had attended school for several years were better at remembering.

·         Despite the task being repeated 15 times, children who had not attended school were only able to recall an additional 2 words (in addition to the 10 they originally remembered).

·         Children who had attended school performed as well as the children in the US, and used the same strategies of categorizing similar objects (chunking).

·         They found that illiterate children did not use these strategies and also that the Kpelle did not apply rehearsal.

·         When researchers put the objects in a story (meaningful way), the illiterate children were able to recall much better and used chunking.

·         Shows that strategies of remembering are not universal.

·         Conclusion: people learn to remember in ways that are relevant to their everyday lives

 Syllabus Question: With reference to relevant research studies, to what extent is one cognitive process reliable (for example, reconstructive memory, perception/visual illusions, decision-making/heuristics)?

·         Bartlett (1932) War of the Ghosts experiment: reconstructive memory in order to fit into existing schemas.

·         According to Bartlett, memory is an imaginative reconstruction of experience.

Loftus and Palmer (1974) experiment:

·         Investigated the role of leading questions in recall.

·         Loftus claimed that the nature of questions can influence witnesses’ memory.

·         One word in the question was altered to see if participants would interpret the speed of the car differently.

·         Critical question was: “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”

·         “Hit” was replaced with, collided, smashed, bumped and contacted in separate trials.

·         Researchers found that ‘smashed’ and ‘collided’ increased the estimated speed.

·         Interpretation: use of different verbs activates different schemas in memory, effecting recall.

·         Later another experiment was conducted with 150 participants split into 3 groups, all watched the same video.

·         They were also asked a week later if they saw broken glass (there was none).

·         32% of the group who were asked the question with “smashed” said they saw broken glass, 14% of the “hit” group said they saw broken glass and 6% of the control group also said yes.

·         Experiment criticized about ecological validity = was a controlled laboratory experiment. All participants were also US students = culture bias.

 Syllabus Question: Discuss the use of technology in investigating cognitive processes

Refer to Biological Level of Analysis for explanations of MRI and PET scans

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)

·         Provides a 3D image of the brain, works by detecting changes in the use of oxygen in the blood.

·         When an area in the brain is more active, it uses more oxygen, thus we can see what areas are active when people perform cognitive tasks such as reading and problem solving.

·         Can also be used in marketing research, to see which areas are active when you look at a picture of your favourite brand.

PET (Positron emission tomography)

·         Measures important functions in the brain including glucose consumption and blood flow.

·         Used to detect brain tumors or memory disorders due to Alzheimer’s disease, because it can identify cellular-level metabolic changes in an organ or tissue.

·         This new technology has helped scientists to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, so early that the patient may not even realize their symptoms.

·         Hippocampus = important brain structure in terms of memory.

Cognition and Emotion

Syllabus Question: To what extent do cognitive and biological factors interact in emotion?

Emotions consist of 3 components:

·         Physiological changes (nervous and endocrine system)

·         A person’s own subjective feeling of an emotion

·         Associated Behaviour

Lazarus proposed that it’s not the emotions that’s important but rather how people appraise the situation and cope with it.

·         Cognitive appraisal is interpretation

·         Physiological response = flight or fight, preparing the individual to act accordingly

·         Back to cognitive appraisal, you make a decision about what to do

LeDoux (1999) The Emotional Brain

·         Amygdala = small structure in the temporal lobe critical in the brain’s emotional circuit; critical in emotional memories.

·         LeDoux (1999) proposed that there are two biological pathways of emotions in the brain.

o   Short Route: from thalamus to amygdala

o   Long Route: passes through the neocortex and hippocampus before it results in an emotional response

·         The connections between the different brain structures allow the amygdala to transform sensory information into emotional signals and to initiate and control emotional responses.

·         Story of woman who reads newspaper article about another woman being raped. Later, at the next corner, sees a man waiting. Gets scared because of what she read, heart begins to race, etc. This is the physiological arousal – the flight-or-flight response – preparing the body to react.

·         The man nicely asks for directions, woman calms down, directs the man and continues walking home. Cognitive appraisal, made a decision on what to do; didn’t run away screaming ^_^

·         Explanation: The emotional stimulus (the man that looks agro) is first processed in the thalamus, which sends a signal to the amygdala.

·         Brain then sends a message to the rest of the body to be prepared to act if need be. At the same time, the thalamus informs the cortex and hippocampus about the situation to take a closer look.

·         This results in a more detailed evaluation of the stimulus – a cognitive appraisal – and the outcome is sent to the amygdala.

·         In the given example, the woman realizes there is no threat and calms down.

·         According to LeDoux, the advantage of having direct and indirect pathways to the amygdala is flexibility in responses.

·         In times of danger, the short route is useful as it saves time and can save your life.

·         On the other hand, the long pathway allows for a more thorough investigation of a situation, which can help people avoid inappropriate responses to situations.

Syllabus Question: Evaluate one theory of how emotion may affect one cognitive process (for example, state-dependent memory, flashbulb memory, effective filters).

·         A theory which explores the effect which emotion has on memory was proposed by Brown and Kulik (1977).

·         They were the first to study the concept of flashbulb memory which focuses on the reception context of the memory rather than the memory of the event itself.

·         Brown and Kulik conjectured that the more emotional an event is, the more it will be rehearsed, shared and repeated between individuals.

·         They also conducted a study regarding flashbulb memory, the results of which supported their theory.

·         The study involved 80 Americans – 40 black and 40 white.

·         Participants were asked to recall when they first heard news of 10 events (9 determined by the experimenter and 1 chosen by the participant) and how they rehearsed the information regarding each event. T

·         he study found that the assassination of J. F. Kennedy in 1963 resulted in the highest number of flashbulb memories with 90% of the participants recalling its reception context with clarity.

·         This is credited to the emotional sentiment that the tragic event caused throughout America as J. F. Kennedy was a well known figure, thus the participants memory was heightened by the involvement of their emotions.

·         It was also found that African Americans reported more flashbulb memories for leaders of civil rights movements than Caucasian Americans.

·         This likewise supports the theory that the greater the emotional attachment is for a certain event or person, the more clearly it will be remembered by the individual as African Americans were more passionate about civil rights movements, the leaders of which would incite greater emotional output from African Americans than Caucasians.

·          For the tenth event which participants were allowed to select, most of the participants recalled a personal flashbulb memory which tended to relate to the death of a parent which is understandable as it would be a time of great emotional output.

·         Thus the way in which emotion affects the cognitive process of memory is demonstrated through the results produced during the study of flashbulb memory by Brown and Kulik (1977).