Assess the usefulness of using experiments within cognitive psychology. (8)
Lab experiments often used in cognitive psychology lack ecological validity as the lab is an
artificial environment. This means that participants are less likely to behave naturally, therefore
their behaviour may be artificially contrived due to the unnatural setting. For example, in
Baddeley 1966b study, the results may not display real life use of memory as the role of
rehearsal was heavily emphasised because it was used in a contrived way when
participants had to memorise the word sequence and do a surprise retest on it, meaning
they might have used rehearsal more heavily in this study compared to when they use it
in their everyday life. This is a weakness because the Resul can't be applied to real life
use of memory. On the other hand, lab experiments have a high level of control as they
manipulate the IV to see the effect on DV, meaning that a cause-and-effect relationship
can be established.
Lab experiments have high reliability as they involve standardised procedures which can
be precisely replicated in the following replications of the study. For example, in
Baddeley 1966b study, the standardised procedures used were that the same words
were shown on the screen for the same amount of time and each participant was given
the same length of time to recall the word sequence. This means that extraneous
variable can be minimised and provides a set of exact procedures to follow in
subsequent replications. This is a strength because it is more likely that similar results
will be obtained, improving the reliability of the experiment. However, demand
characteristics may influence the findings as participants may alter their behaviour in
order to please the experimenter, which may affect their ability to recall information
accurately, which confounds the results.
In conclusion, lab experiments are where the IV is manipulated to see the effect on DV
which leads to a cause-and-effect relationship being established by controlling
extraneous variables, even though there is low ecological validity due to the artificial
environment, which may lead to results unrepresentative of real-life memory use.
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