Very detailed mind maps of Edexcel A level Cognitive Psychology notes - these helped me get an A* at AS and predicted an A* for my A level
It includes the AO1 details of the studies and theories you need to know and also the AO3 evaluation
This is the whole package of cognitive psychology notes! ...
Bartlett’s Idea SCOUT
• He believed that perception of a shape or object determined how It was remembered Evaluation
• Perception isn't a passive process but an active construction of what e think we see based on prior Supporting Evidence:
knowledge
• Bartlett: War of the Ghosts
Bartlett’s proposals
• He proposed that perception is affected by an individual’s interpretation of what they see or • Allport + Postman: White and black man in an argument on a subway train. Memory distorted where ppl though it
hear e.g. object or image description= based on our own interest/experience/mood was the black man carrying the knife threatening the white man but it was the other way around= Stereotypes
(from schemas) can lead to inaccurate recall
• He called this ‘effort after meaning’- connecting a stimulus to knowledge or experience we
have makes it easier to store= memory isn't passive record but active process of • Carli (1999): graduates had to read a story + reproduce it. 1 story had an abrupt end and the other story ended with
reconstruction a rape scene. In the story w/ the rape scene participants tended to distort the story more than the other w/
the rapist being described in more threatening terms prior to the rape. This suggests our recollection is
• He proposed that knowledge was used to interpret information to be stored and to actively
affected by stereotyping and new info affects what we have already stored
reconstruct memories to be recalled
• Recalling= an event we actively draw on past experiences to reinterpret, fill in gaps + transform Critiquing the Evidence:
our memory into a coherent story= imaginative reconstruction of events
• Wynn +Logie: uni students asked to recall their first day of uni. Shows familiar events won’t
Schemas and stereotypes change over time compared to unfamiliar events
• Schemas= parcels od stored knowledge (mental representations) about a specific event, activity or object Reconstructive
• Bartlett: folk tales= artificial methodology= low ecological validity and it wasn't
• Schemas act as a mental shortcut to help us deal w/ the world more effectively Memory standardised so it is less reliable
• Having a learned schema enables us to do things much more quickly without wasting time + effort thinking (Bartlett, 1932) • Allport + Postman: The story has been widely misreported
about them
• The stereotypes we hold shape our encoding + storage of memories
• If we have expectations concerning an event. Or a person, then we may distort our memory to fit in w/
Bartlett’s study Other Theories:
these expectations How Bartlett did his testing:
• Incomplete explanation + over-generalised
• He tested recall of stories (war of the ghost)
• Other theories explain the process (semantic memory) and links to parts of the brain
Wider issues and debates w/ reproduction tasks that were
(objective)
either serial (Chinese whispers) or
How does reconstructive memory highlight the importance of individual differences in repeated (X tells story on subsequent
Psychology?
occasions)
Useful Applications:
• As it is built on schemas and they are built from our experiences of the world, everyone’s experiences What Bartlett found:
• Shows potential for unreliable eye witness testimony= application for police/courts
will differ and therefore their schemas will differ
• He found that after several repetitions the stories
How does schema theory support a nurture explanation of behaviour? were half the length, had lost cultural
• Help dementia sufferers. Can play old music to activate schemas to alleviate fear and confusion
references and were like stories we were
• It influences memory encoding and retrieval based on the role of experience used to, as we make sense of what we
How might the knowledge that memory is reconstructed (rather than an accurate record of
hear.
Testability:
events) be useful for those working in the legal/justice system?
• Schemas are theoretical + can’t be observed/ measured directly
• This is useful knowledge for eyewitness testimonies showing that there will be a level of uncertainty in
an eye witness testimony due to their existing schemas therefore giving evidence for not • Doesn’t explain how (the process) memory is reconstructed or in what part of the brain
sentencing based only on eye witnesses
, Origin SCOUT
• This was the first real attempt to describe both the structure and process of memory in
a formal model
Evaluation
Supporting Evidence:
• Beardsley: Participants given different memory tasks in a PET scan. Different areas of brain showed
Sensory Register activation= separate STM and LTM
• Information enters the sensory register through the environment
• Baddeley: Similar sound words likely to make errors recalling from STM, similar meaning words= more
• Duration= Brief, <1/2 a second likely to make errors= STM (acoustic) + LTM (semantic) encoded differently
• Capacity= Relatively large
Critiquing the Evidence:
• Encoding= All 5 senses have separate stores, modality specific (iconic/visual) + (echoic/sound)
• Shallice + Warrington: Patient KF suffered impairment to verbal (e.g. recalling a
• You need to pay attention to the information for it to go into the short-term memory so if you
don’t pay attention the information can be lost
word list) but not visual (e.g. recalling a picture) STM= STM + LTM are
unitary in nature
Short-term memory • Craik + Lockhart (1974): Participants recalled words after answering a question
• Duration= 18-30 seconds about the word (in respect to look, sound or meaning) but w/ no active
• Capacity= 7 +/- 2 items
Multi-store rehearsal on a surprise memory test= The rehearsal is the primary route to
LTM
• Encoding= Primarily acoustic
Model (Atkinson
• You need to rehearse the information for it to go into the long-term memory
& Shiffrin) 1968 Other Theories:
• You can lose information if it is displaced (it has a limited capacity so when new info comes in • Overly simplistic e.g. STM + WMM (Baddley + Hitch); LTM to Episodic/ semantic (Tulving)
1 of the 5-9 items is displaced)
• Accounted for research at the time, but replaced with WMM– knowledge changes over
Long-term memory time
• Duration= unlimited? • Sheffrin added elaborate rehearsal to the WMM in 2002 (maintenance hold in STM,
elaborative move to LTM
• Capacity= unlimited?
• Craik + Lockhart: changed nature of memory research, as they found that LTM was not
• Encoding= Mainly sematic just a passive memory store
• You can get information from the LTM to the STM through retrieval
• Information can get lost due to a lack of rehearsal (decay and retrieval failure) Useful Applications:
MAINTENANCE REHEARSAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
• Improving memory through chunking, rehearsal and elaboration
STIMULI
SENSORY ATTENTION SHORT-TERM REHEARSAL LONG-TERM
MEMORY MEMORY Testability:
REGISTER
• Clear testable predictions about structures + processes within the model– more scientific than
RETRIEVAL
previous theories
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