psychology paper 1

Episodic Memory: AO1- Our ability to recall events (or episodes) that have happened in our lives, almost like a diary. You must make conscious effort to recall these memories. 

AO2- Examples include visiting the dentis, a lesson from last week or your first day at high school. 

Semantic Memory: AO1- Our knowledge of the world such as facts, almost like a dictionary. The meaning of the words is specifically important, your semantic memory contains your knowledge of an impressive numbers of concepts.

AO2- Example include knowledge of what zombies like to eat or meaning of words. 

Procedural Memory:  AO1- Our memory for actions or skills,basically how we do things. we can recall these without conscious awareness or a great deak of effort.

AO2- Examples includes driving a car, riding a bike or brushing your teeth. 

Strength: People who suffer from loss of memory due to brain damage lose only certain kinds of memory. An example of this is Clive Wearing. He developed an infection in his brain that meant he lost other types of memory whilst his procedural memory remained intact . This is a strength because it shows the types of long-term memories are separate. If they weren’t, all of Clive’s memory would have been destroyed but that isn’t the case. This is an example of supporting research.

Weakness: There isn’t a clear difference between episodic and semantic memories. Most of our memories could actually be classed as a combination of episodic and semantic ones. For example, your knowledge (semantic memory) of your favourite band is closely linked to your experiences of seeing them perform (episodic memory). This is a weakness because it suggests that the type of long-term memories have been over simplified. It doesn’t provide a clear distinction between the different types, especially semantic and episodic memories.

Aim: To see if the position of the word in a list affected the probability of recalling it.

Method: Murdock used 103 students/people in his study. They were tested in a lot of sessions. In each session, the participants listened to 20 word lists, each containing 10-40 words. All of the words were different. Participants were then asked to recall the words to the experimenter. 

Results: The likelihood of recall was related to the position of the word in the list. The words at the start were remembered due to the primacy effect (remembering the start) and the words at the end were remembered due to the recency effect (remembering the end).

Conclusion: People are more likely to remember a word if it is at the start of the end of a list. 

Serial position effect: The idea that the first and last few words in a list are more likely to be recalled (in comparison to the middle) due to their position.

Weakness 1: We cannot say for sure that other people would have acted in the same way during this study. Murdock used students and therefore we cannot generalise the findings to the rest of the population – especially people who aren't students. this is a disadvantage because we are not able to apply the real world. 

weakness 2: The experiment took place in a lab setting which was unnatural for participants. Being in a different environment might have made them feel nervous or under pressure and could have lead to inaccurate results. We can say this study lacks ecological validity and it is therefore a disadvantage as the results might be inaccurate.

Aim: To investigate how memories are reconstructed when people are asked to recall a story they have been told.

Method:In order to investigate this, Bartlett used 20 people from a university in the UK. He told them a story (The War of the Ghosts) and then asked them to recall it 15 minutes later to another participant. This then repeated itself, almost like a game of Chinese whispers. Participants were then asked to recall the story after a few days, weeks, months and years.

Results:Participants remembered fragments of the story and then retold it with small changes, based on what they expect from a social situation. The story became shorter and some phrases were changed based on the participants’ cultures. Students were found to have altered the story so it fit into their own experiences and culture. For example instead of canoes, students recalled the mode of transport being cars and weapons as guns instead of bow and arrows.

Conclusion: People remember fragments of memories and reconstruct the memory based on what they expect to happen, based on their social expectations

Weakness 1: Participants took part in several tests during the experiment rather than just one. This is a disadvantage because taking part in several conditions can mean the participant becomes bored or tired, leading to inaccurate results. The participant also might guess what the study is aiming to do and show demand characteristics – acting in a way to please the researcher. 

Weakness 2: The experiment took place in a lab setting which was unnatural for participants. Being in a different environment might have made them feel nervous or under pressure and could have lead to inaccurate results. We can say this study lacks ecological validity and it is therefore a disadvantage as the results might be inaccurate.

Aim: To see if the context of learning andecall has an impact on how many words we remember

Method: The participants were divers. There were18 participants in total. All of the divers were given the same list of 36 unrelated words to learn. After listening to the word lists, they were tested to see how many words they could recall. They listened to the words on the beach (dry) or in the water (wet) and then recalled on the beach (dry) or in the water (wet).

Results:The divers remembered the most words when the learning and recall environment matched (for example beach – beach and ocean – ocean). 

Conclusion: Learning and recalling information in the same context improves the accuracy of memory.

Strength: Research into the impact of context on the accuracy of memory has helped the police when they are interviewing witnesses. The police can take the witness back to the scene of the crime to refresh their memory of what happened.

Weakness: The study was a repeated measures design as participants took part in all conditions (all 6 word lists). This could have led to participants becoming bored and tired of the research meaning that the results have a possibility of being inaccurate.

Aim: To see if false memories could be created in participants through suggestion in order to test the existence of repressed and false memories.

Method:The study included 24 participants (3 males and 21 females) ranging in age from 18 to 53. For each participant, a relative was also contacted. The participants were given 4 short stories about their childhood events that had been obtained from relatives. 3 of the stories were true and one of them was false. The false story was about getting lost in a shopping mall and being rescued by an elderly woman. The participants were asked to read each story and write down what they remembered about each one. A week later, participants were debriefed.

Result: 6 of the participants (25%) recalled the false story fully or partially.

Conclusion: This research suggests that the simple act of imagining an event has the potential of creating and implanting a false memory in a person. Even though only a small number (25%) believe the false memorywas true, it is still surprising to see how false memories can be planted.

Strength: Research into false memories has shown us how people may remember things that may not have actually happened. This has influenced the court system in the UK as eyewitness testimonies are not primarily used anymore. This shows how useful the research has been and is therefore a strength.

Weakness:This study involved planting false memories into people’s minds and the false memory used in this study was quite traumatic. This could have caused significant harm and distress to the participants and therefore is a weakness of the study

Monocular depth cues  - Cues that tell us approximately how far away something is,using one eye.

Height in the plane: If you are looking at an open, flat area you normally perceive something to be nearer to you if it is lower in the plane (it is nearer to the bottom of the picture). Objects that are higher in the plane (nearer to the top of the picture), you perceive to be further away.

Occlusion:If the image of one object blocks the image of another, the first object is seen as closer. We assume the tree is in front of the house because it obscures our view of it. It is superimposed on the front of the house, it overlaps it.

Reletive size: The more distant an object is, the smaller the image of that object will be on your retina (the back of the eye where we really begin to "see"). This reducing in size at the eye is part of the reason that people look like ants as you fly in an aeroplane! An object's smaller size on your retina when it is further away from you is called relative size.

Linear perspective:Parallel lines that go back into the distance appear to get closer together or join.

Binocular depth cues - Cues that tell us precisely how far away something is, using two eyes.

Retinal disparity: the difference between the two when something is closer to you is called retinal disparity. If items are further away there are less different. 

Convergence: The muscles in your eyes ahve to work hard whenlooking at something closer to us 

Gibson stated that sensation and perception are actually the same thing. He said that everything in our visual field gives us all the information we need to judge depth, distance and movement without the need for past experiences. There are three main parts of his theory: optic flow patterns, motion parallax and the influence of nature. 

Optic flow pattern:When we are moving towards a fixed point, it stays stationary while the rest of our view seems to rush by. If our brain does not see this optic flow, it struggles to recognise we are moving.

Motion parallax:When we are moving, objects that are closer to us in our visual field appear to be moving faster than those that are further away from us. For example, if you were in a car driving past the dog, shed and tree you would notice that the dog moves quicker than the shed and the shed moves quicker than the trees.

Influence of nature: We do not need to learn how to perceive the world around us, our abilities are innate. The eye can detect very fine changes in light, texture, movement and depth without the need for past experience. This is why the baby wouldn’t crawl off the edge of the ‘cliff’ – we are born with our perception.

Strength: One strength is that research provides good support for Gibson's theory The visual cliff experiment shows that we do not need to learn how to perceive the world around us as they did not crawl off the edge. This is a strength because it shows that we do not always need to use past experience to perceive the world around us. The evidence supports Gibson’s idea that perception is innate.

Weakness: One weakness is that perceptual errors are not easily explained by Gibson’s theory. Visual illusions are good examples of when our brain makes ‘perceptual errors’ and draws wrong conclusions about what we are looking at. This is a weakness because Gibson said there is no need for processing the information we receive about size, shape and distance, yet evidence from illusions shows sensation and perception to be separate processes and therefore Gibson’s theory is limited as it cannot explain this.

Emotions: A strong feeling or mood that encourages us to behave in a particular way. For example, if we feel scared, we are much more prepared to deal with an attack. If we are hungry, we try to find food.

Aim: To see if our emotions impact our perception by seeing if it takes us longer to say words that make us feel embarrassed.

Method:16 students took part (8 male, 8 female). They were shown several different words, one flashed on the screen at a time and the participants were asked to read them out. There were ‘neutral’ words such as apple or dance and there were ‘taboo’ words such as penis or *****. Their emotional arousal was measured using galvanic skin response (GSR).

Results: Participants took longer to recognise and say the taboo words and their emotional arousal was higher when reading the taboo words.

Conclusion:Emotional does affect our perceptual set. The higher the anxiety, the longer it takes us to perceive because our brain blocks out the information.

Strength: A strength of this research is that it used an objective way of measuring arousal. For example, instead of asking the participants about their arousal, they measured it using galvanic skin response (GSR). This is a strength because it means arousal can be measured accurately instead of relying on the participant’s answers as they could lie.

Weakness: A weakness of this research is that it might not have measured arousal but embarrassment instead. For example, the participants might have taken longer to say the taboo words because they were embarrassed, not because of their perception. This is a weakness because the results might be inaccurate.

Motivation: Forces that ‘drive’ our behaviour. It encourages us to act, for example if we are hungry we will seek food.

Aim: To see if food deprivation would make food appear brighter

Method: The study used two groups of people. The first group had 26 students who volunteered to go without food for 24 hours and the second group had participants who ate as normal. They were shown four slides of a meal (shown below) for 15 seconds each. After each slide was shown, the participants were asked to adjust the lighting on a new photo so it looked the same as the original.

Results: The food-deprived participants adjusted the lighting so it was brighter than before. The other participants adjusted it similar to the first photo.

Conclusion: Hunger is a motivating factor that affects perception. Being deprived of basic needs makes us sensitive to food- related pictures, making them appear brighter.

Strength: A strength of this research is that similar studies have found similar results. For example, Sanford found that food-deprived participants were more likely to see vague pictures as food (i.e. a brown blob was perceived to be a hamburger). This is a strength because similar results increase the validity of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study.

Weakness: A weakness of this research is that the study involved depriving people of food. It may have caused participants some discomfort to take part and they might have felt like a ‘let down’ if they ate something. This is a weakness because depriving people of food for psychology could be considered to be an ethical issue.

Expectation: Our belief about what is likely to happen, based on past experience. Expectation impacts our perception because you are more likely to notice some things because you are expecting them to happen.

Aim: To see whether expectation is an important factor in perception.

Method: Bruner and Minturn showed participants an ambiguous figure (looks like a B or 13). The first group of participants were shown the figure in between A and C. The second group of participants were shown the figure in-between 12 and 14.

Results: The group that saw the figure in between A and C read it as a B. The group that saw the figure in between 12 and 14 read it as 13.

Conclusion: Expectation is an important influence on perception.

Strength: A strength of this research is that is has real life application. For example, in Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts study, it explains why the participants changed the story, based on their expectations. This is a strength because if we can see it happening in real life it increases the credibility of the theory.

Weakenss: A weakness of this research is that it was conducted a long time ago. For example, the research was conducted in 1952 which is over 60 years ago. This is a weakness because we cannot say the similar findings would happen if we repeated this research.

Cortex: the outer covering of the brain where mental processing takes place. 

Functions: Thinking/cognition in frontal cortex,sensory processing and motor processing  

Cerebellum:The 'Little' brain at the base of the brain above the spinal cord 

Functions: Plays a very important role in co-ordination of movement e.g. balance, and co-ordinates sensory info with motor activity.

Brain Stem: Part of thr brain that connects to the spinal cord. The brain stem is highly developed at birth.

Functions: Carries motor and sensory nerves between the brain and the rest of thr body via the spinal cord. Controls basic life functions (autonomic) e.g. heart beat. 

Thalamus: Located deep inside the brain, the thalamus acts as a hub of information.

Functions: receives sensory signals from the retina in the eye and sends signal onto the visual area. co-ordinates motor signals, sending info from the motor area. 

Schema: As children develop, they costruct more detailed mental representations of the world. These are schema. A schema is a mental struture containing the information we have about something. 

Cognitive Development: Refers to the way a persons knowledge, thinking and intekkigence changes as they get older. In psychology, the term cognitive is used to refer to mental processes, especially thinking.

Assimilation: A form of learning that takes place when we add new information to an existing schema. The new information does not radically change our understanding of the topic. Example- A child schema of a car changes slightly to include different colour cars and a acr fit lrdd proplr in. 

Accommadation: A form of learning that takes place when we acquire new information that changes our understanding of a topic to our extent that a new schema is formed to cope with the new situation. Example- A child gets to ride in a tractor which has some similarties to the car ( moves the same, same colour)but is also different to the car (much bigger tyres and make a different noise). A big change to the car schema is required or a new tractor schema is formed. 

Conservation: Children struggle to realise that the glasses contain the same amount of water, even through one is taller. 

Egocentrism: When asked to describe what someone else's view of the mountain would look like, children struggle. 

Object Permanence: If a child is shown an object and then it is taken away from thrie view, they think it has stopped existing and don't know where to find it. 

Sensorimotor stage (0-2 yrs) - Children learn about the world through their senses and by doing things co-ordinated by the cerebellum. Child develops object permanence at aound 8 months old. 

Pre-operational stage (2-11 yrs) - Children are now more mobile but do not think in a consistentrism logical way. The main feature of this stage id that children are egocentric. Children under 7 years tend to view the world only from there oen perspective. 

Concrete operational stage (7-11 yrs) -