Cognitive

1. Cognitive processing
Memory model  MSM, WMM, LOP
Schema  Bartlett, Bransford & Johnson, Brewers & Treyens, Anderson & Pichart
Thinking and decision making  Tversky & Kahneman, Strack & Mussweiler

2. Reliability of cognitive processing

Reconstructive memory  Loftus & Palmer, Yuille & Cutshall
Cognitive bias 
o Anchoring bias: Tversky & Kahneman (1974)
o Framing Effect: Tversky & Kahneman (1986)

3. Emotion and cognition

Flashbulb memory
 Brown & Kulik
 Neisser Harsch

1. Cognitive Processing

Multistore Memory Model (MSM)

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1966) -> firstly proposed MSM

 Sensory (few seconds of duration & capacity) (iconic/echoic) attention ->
Short-term (duration 30 seconds below, capacity Miller’s magical number 7 +-
2) rehearsal > Long-term memory (unlimited)
 Sensory -> every sensory info from the world enters in
 Relevant study: Glanzer & Cunitz (1966)

Aim: to investigate whether STM and LTM are two separate stores of memory and to
investigate the serial position effect.

Serial Position Effect

o Primacy effect – first are remembered more clearly than last
-> transferred to long-term memory
o Recency effect – last are remembered more clearly than first
-> they are still in short-term memory

o Sample: 240 enlisted army men

 15 words
1) Free recall condition
- Immediate recall
 Primacy effect O
 Recency effect O
2) 30 seconds delay condition
- Counting backwards in 3 -> filler task / distraction task ->
for preventing rehearsal
  Primacy effect O
 Recency effect X
Evaluation:

Strengths
1. controlled extraneous variables
o Internal validity
o Manipulate the filler test to make sure the participants did the research
correctly
2. Easy to replicate
o Standardized procedure

Limitations
1. Lack ecological validity
2. Low Population validity

Working Memory Model (WMM)

Baddely and Hitch -> firstly proposed WMM

 STM > One unitary system X
 Consists of central executive that coordinates two subsystems: visuospatial
sketchpad and the phonological loop
 Episodic buffer -> integrates information from other components and also
links this information to long-term memory structures.
 Relevant study: Landry and Bartling (2011)

Aim: to investigate if articulatory suppression influences the recall of a written list of

phonologically dissimilar letters in serial recall.

o Sample: 34 undergraduate psychology students

o Independent samples design
o a series of 7 dissimilar sounding letters randomly mixed from the F, K,
L,M,R,X,and Q.

1) Experimental group
 Involved in an articulatory suppression task -> seeing a list of letters
need to recall while saying the numbers 1 and 2 at a rate of two
numbers per second

2) Control group
 did not carry the articulatory suppression task.

Results showed how articulatory suppression prevented rehearsal in the

phonological loop because of overload.
Evaluation:

Limitations
One direction & Process & Unitary system
o Oversimplification -> Reductionist (simple)

MSM and WMM

Similarities
Both argue that rehearsal is necessary
 Neither explains memory distortion
 Neither explains the role of emotion in memory
 Both agree that STM is limited in capacity & duration

Differences
 WMM argues that that short term memory is not just one store but a number of
different stores
WMM focuses only on STM
 WMM explains how we can multitask in some cases
 WMM argues that different modalities are processed differently (visual/spatial vs.
auditory information)

Level of Processing (LOP)

Relevant study: Craik and Lockhart (1972)

 Shallow processing
 Structural
 Auditory/phonetic
 Deep processing
 Semantic

Schema
o mental representations people used to organize their knowledge, beliefs, and
expectations
o based on past experience
o Use schemas to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future
understanding
o Firstly, proposed by: Jean Piaget

How do schema work?

 As active processors of information, humans integrate new information with existing,
stored information
o predicts that what we already know will influence the outcome of information
processing
 o in other words, new information is processed in the light of existing schema,
schema can affect our cognitive processes

Two schema sources

o Top-down processing: guided by prior knowledge, experiences, and
expectations influencing the interpretation of sensory information
o Bottom-up processing: perception is influenced by external stimulus without
reliance on pre-existing knowledge.

Relevant study: Bartlett (1932)

o Aim: to investigate how the memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge
o Methods (participant, design, procedure, materials)
o British people -> Native American legend/folktale called “War of ghost”

Two conditions:

1. Serial reproduction – in which they had to recall the story and repeat it to
another person

2. Repeated reproduction – where participants heard the story and were told to
reproduce it after a short time and then to do so again repeatedly over a period of
days, weeks, months, or years

o Result: Distortion occurred

- Assimilation -> the story became more consistent with the participants’
own cultural expectations -> the story was unconsciously changed to fit the
norms of British culture
- Leveling -> the story also became shorter with each retelling as participants
omitted information that was seen as not important
- Sharpening -> Participant also tended to change the order of the story in
order to make sense of it using terms more familiar to the culture of the
participants

+ easy to replicate, repeated/serial reproduction -> constant result -> high reliability
+ relatively high ecological validity/ mundane realism: It reflects real life situations as
retelling a story/ event is something people do frequently, and it shows a reflection of
the memory process in real life
- low population validity -> because participants were Cambridge university college
students, all of English background. The findings of the study cannot be generalized to a
wider population

Brewer & Treyens (1981)

o Aim: to investigate the role of schema in the encoding and retrieval of episodic
memory
o Sample: 86 university psychology students
o Asked what they remembered from the office
 Three conditions:

The recall condition  asked to write down a description of as many objects as

they could remember from the office

The drawing condition  given an outline of the room and asked to draw the
objects they could remember.

The verbal recognition condition read a list of objects and simply asked
whether they were in the room or not.

Results: when the participants were asked to recall either by writing a paragraph or by
drawing, they were more likely to remember items in the office that were congruent with
their schema of an office - that is, the "expected items" were more often recalled.

Bransford and Johnson (1972)

o Aim: to determine if schema activation would result in a better understanding
and recall of an ambiguous text.
o Sample: 52 participants
o Participants heard a tape-recorded passage, later asked to recall the passage as
accurately as possible

Three conditions:

No Topic  participants heard a passage with no additional information

Topic After  participants were told the topic of the passage after hearing it

Topic Before  participants were told the topic of the passage before hearing it

Results:
o The researchers concluded that “prior knowledge of a situation does not
guarantee its usefulness for comprehension. For prior knowledge to aid
comprehension, it must become an activated semantic context.”
o Also, they tended to change the nature of the objects to match their schema.
o It appears that schema played a role in both the encoding and recall of the objects
in the office.

Evaluating schema theory

o There is much experimental evidence that schema is an important tool in
encoding and retrieving memories
 o Schema theory has been applied in many different ways – for example, in
cognitive therapy for depression and anxiety; to explain memory distortion; to
explain consumer behavior and why we chose our life partners
o Cohen (1993) argued that the concept of schema is too vague and hypothetical to
be useful. Schema cannot be observed
o High predictive validity
o Not clear how schemas are acquired in the first place and how they influence
cognitive processes. It is not possible to actually observe schema processing
taking place within the brain
o However, schema theory seems to reflect biological research that argues that
memories are not localized, but distributed throughout the brain
o Schema theory is testable. By priming one’s schema, we are able to determine
whether the schema helps or interferes with learning

Thinking & Decision Making

o Thinking is the process of using knowledge and information to make plans,
interpret the world, and make predictions about the world in general
o Decision making – the process of identifying and choosing alternatives based
on the values and preferences of the decision-maker
o Heuristics: Rules of thumb, mental shortcuts that allow us to make quick
decisions
 Availability heuristic – we make judgments based on what is readily
available
 Representative heuristic – representativeness is when you make a decision
based on traits of an individual or object which “represent” something to you.

o Cognitive bias: errors in thinking and decision making that distort thinking,
influence decisions, and impact judgements and beliefs
 Anchoring bias: a cognitive bias (heuristic) that causes us to rely too heavily
on the first piece of information we are given about a topic. It serves as an
“anchor” for subsequent decisions.
 Framing effect:

The Dual Process Model of thinking and decision-making

System 1 – automatic and with little effort

Automatic, intuitive, and effortless way of thinking
 take short-cuts, employs heuristics – that is, a ‘rule’ used to make
decisions or form judgments
 focusses on what it sees – and ignores absent evidence
 bases decisions on past experience and knowledge – established
schema
 quick, but prone to errors
 generates impressions
 operates “automatically”
  Cognitive misers – wanting to user as little energy as we can to
think
 Sometimes we will experience ego depletion
 cognitive load is too high.
System 2 – more analytical and conscious thinking
slower, conscious, rational mode of thinking
requires concentration & effort
works with abstract concepts
 works through logic
uses conscious reasoning
 more reliable – but slow
Limitations:
overly reductionist as it does not clearly explain how these modes of thinking interact
or how our thinking and decision making could be influenced by emotion.

Relevant study: Tversky and Kahneman (1974)

o Aim: to investigate the effect of anchoring on estimating the value of a
mathematics problem
o Sample: high school students

Two conditions:

1. Ascending condition asked to quickly estimate the value 8! in five seconds

2. Descending condition  asked to quickly estimate the value of the same

mathematical question but started with 8

Results: the median of descending conditions was much higher than the ascending
condition.

2. Reliability of cognitive processing

Reconstructive memory
o when our activating schema is relevant to an event in order to create it
o This theory contains two types of information, one is information obtained
during the event and one is the post-event information.
o Relevant study: Loftus & Palmer

Aim: to investigate whether the use of leading questions would affect the
estimation of speed

Sample: 45 students
IV: the intensity of the verb used in the question,
DV: the estimation of speed.
 Results:

as the intensity of the verb increased, the participants had a higher estimate of
speed of cars. The participants in the “smashed” group provided the highest
estimation of car speeds, while the participants in the “contacted group” had the
lowest estimation.

Evaluation:
+ standardized procedure -> reliability
+ High internal validity -> 7 videos -> confounding variables
- Ecological validity -> cannot be fully generalize to real life situation ->
emotional involvement
- Independent measures -> participant variability -> different levels of
understanding/knowledge about the how the speed of a car works
-Population validity: students -> meaning that it has low population validity since
they cannot represent all age groups

Cognitive bias
Framing effect – a cognitive bias that impacts our decision making when said in
different ways

Anchoring bias - a cognitive bias that causes us to rely too heavily on the first piece
of information

3. Emotion and cognition

Flashbulb memory (FBM)

o Emotion -> memory?
o Definition: a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid “snapshot” of the moment when
an emotionally arousing event happens.
o Importance-driven model – emphasizes that personal consequences
determine the intensity of emotional reaction
o A type of episodic memory
o Firstly proposed by: Brown & Kulik (1977)
 J.F. Kennedy assassination
 Martin Luther King assassination
 Sample: 40 white/Caucasian & 40 black

Limitations:
 o No way to determine whether the memories stated by the participants are
accurate
o Due to national importance of these events, the probability that demand
characteristics affected the results is very high

Retrospective study
Prospective study

Reductionist – simple

Retrospective vs. Prospective

Cross sectional vs. Longitudinal

Key Terms:
Episodic memory – the ability to recall and mentally reexperience specific episodes
from one's personal past (autobiographical memories)
Semantic memory – conscious long-term memory for meaning, understanding, and
conceptual facts about the world
Procedure memory - a type of long-term memory involved in the performance of
different actions and skills.
Declarative memory – the ability to store and retrieve both personal information
(i.e., episodic memory) and general knowledge (i.e., semantic memory)
Sensory buffer – a temporary store holding information from the environment very
briefly in the form in which it is received (that is visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory).
Information needs to receive attention if it is going to begin the process of being
transferred to long-term memory
Chunking – grouping information into ‘chunks’ so we are able to remember more
information
Short-term memory (STM)
o A store with limited capacity and duration. Information enters STM from the
sensory buffer if attention is paid to the stimuli. If the information in STM is
rehearsed, then it moves to long-term memory. If new information is not
rehearsed-or if more information disrupts rehearsal – then the information in the
store may be displaced and lost. In addition, when we recall something, it is
retrieved from LTM and enters our STM so that decisions can be made and
problems can be solved.
Long-term memory (LTM)
 o Where memory is stored after it has been rehearsed while in STM. LTM is of
unlimited capacity and duration.
Central executive – the control center of working memory. It coordinates and
regulates the flow of information, allocates attention, and manages cognitive resources.
It is responsible for directing attention, switching between tasks, and integrating
information from different sources.
Phonological loop – a component of working memory that deals with verbal and
auditory information
Episodic buffer –a temporary storage system that integrates information from the
phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory. It helps bind info
from different modalities into coherent episodes or chunks.
Visuospatial sketchpad – allows for the temporary storage and manipulation of
mental images, spatial relationships, and visual details.
Long-term memory storage – the part of memory where experiences, knowledge,
and skills are stored over an extended period, ranging from minutes to years.
Cognition - the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through
thought, experience, and the senses
Short-term memory (working memory) - if sensory information is recognized or
considered important it is coded and sent to short-term memory (working memory),
which has limited capacity and is supposed to last only around 12 seconds

Long-term memory- if the information is rehearsed or attended to in some way it is

recorded and transferred into long-term memory, which has unlimited capacity and
may last forever.
Explicit memory – expressed through recollection
Implicit memory – expressed through performance

HL
Sparrow (2011)
o If the internet has become enormous transactive memory store

Nondeclarative
Declarative