Cognitive approach to understanding behaviour flashcards

Topic 2: Cognitive approach to understanding behaviour

What does the cognitive approach study?

How mental processes such as memory, perception, thinking and decision-making shape behaviour, often using information-processing models (input, processing, storage, output) of activity that cannot be directly observed.

What is the multi-store model of memory?

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model: information passes from sensory memory to short-term memory with attention, and to long-term memory with rehearsal. The stores differ in capacity and duration.

What did Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) show about the serial position effect?

When recall of a word list was delayed, the recency effect disappeared but the primacy effect remained, supporting separate short-term and long-term stores.

How does the working memory model differ from the multi-store model?

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) split short-term memory into a central executive that controls attention, a phonological loop for sound and a visuospatial sketchpad for images, which can work at the same time.

What is reconstructive memory?

The idea that memory is an active reconstruction shaped by existing schemas and later information, not an accurate recording of the original event.

What did Loftus and Palmer (1974) find?

Participants who saw films of car accidents gave higher speed estimates when the question used a more intense verb such as "smashed" rather than "hit", and the "smashed" group more often recalled broken glass that was not there.

What is the main criticism of Loftus and Palmer (1974)?

Low ecological validity: a filmed clip lacks the emotional intensity of witnessing a real accident, so the findings may not apply fully to real eyewitnesses.

What did Bartlett’s "War of the Ghosts" study (1932) show?

British participants’ repeated recall of an unfamiliar Native American folk story grew shorter and was distorted towards their own cultural expectations, supporting schema theory and reconstructive memory.

What is flashbulb memory?

A vivid, detailed memory of the circumstances in which a person learned of a shocking, emotional event, a term from Brown and Kulik (1977). Later research found such memories feel certain but are not always accurate.