IB DP Psychology Core: The Cognitive Approach to Understanding Behaviour -- Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, in the style and at the standard of the examination. They are not reproduced past-paper questions – the IB holds copyright in its own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or the IB store.

Related: Cognitive approach study guide and revision notes.

---

Section A

1. State the three compulsory core approaches examined on Paper 1. [3]

2. Define “reconstructive memory.” [2]

3. Name two things, beyond a study’s finding, that should be prepared for every cognitive study. [2]

---

Section B

4. A candidate answers a question on memory by describing both hippocampal activity and information-processing models in the same paragraph, without stating which approach each point belongs to.

(a) Explain why this answer would likely lose marks even if both points are factually accurate. [3] (b) Rewrite the opening of this answer to fix the problem, in outline. [3]

5. Explain, using the concept of schema, why two eyewitnesses to the same event might give genuinely different but equally confident accounts of what happened. [4]

6. Explain how a student researching cognitive biases in decision-making might design an internal assessment (IA) that draws directly on this approach’s vocabulary. [4]

---

Section C

7. “The cognitive approach’s use of computer-like models is a strength because it makes an unobservable process easier to study, but this is also its main limitation.” Discuss this statement, using named cognitive concepts. [8]

8. Prepare a worked comparison of how the cognitive and biological approaches would each explain a decline in memory accuracy after a stressful event, and explain what a strong answer does with this comparison that a weaker answer does not. [6]

---

Worked answers

1. Biological, cognitive, and sociocultural. [3]

2. The idea that memory is not a video-like recording of an event, but an active reconstruction shaped by existing schema, expectations, and information encountered after the event. [2]

3. The study’s methodology, and at least one genuine evaluative point (a strength or limitation of how it was conducted or how applicable its model is to real-world behaviour). [2]

4. (a) Even where both points are individually accurate, the syllabus deliberately treats memory as a topic studied from more than one approach, and Paper 1 credits candidates for recognising which approach a question or point is drawing on. An answer that blends biological and cognitive explanations without distinguishing them reads as unfocused, and makes it harder for an examiner to credit either explanation as a clearly developed point, since the answer never states which approach’s reasoning is doing the explanatory work at any given moment. [3] (b) A stronger opening states the approach explicitly before the content, for example: “From a cognitive perspective, information-processing models suggest memory is encoded, stored and retrieved through distinct stages, and reconstructive memory theory suggests retrieval can be distorted by schema. A biological perspective on the same topic would instead focus on structures such as the hippocampus…” – explicitly naming each approach before its content, rather than blending both into one undifferentiated paragraph. [3]

5. Reconstructive memory theory holds that recall is an active reconstruction shaped by each individual’s existing schema – their prior knowledge, expectations and beliefs – rather than an accurate playback of the original event. Two eyewitnesses can have different schema going into the same event (different prior experiences, expectations, or areas of attention), so each reconstructs the event slightly differently during recall, integrating gaps with schema-consistent assumptions without being aware they have done so. Because this integration happens below conscious awareness, both witnesses can report their differing accounts with equal, genuine confidence – confidence is a feature of how convincingly the memory has been reconstructed, not a reliable indicator of its objective accuracy. [4]

6. A student might design an experiment testing how a manipulated variable – for example, the way a decision-making scenario is framed (as a potential gain versus a potential loss) – affects participants’ choices, directly testing a cognitive bias such as framing effects or loss aversion. In the write-up, the student would use the cognitive approach’s own vocabulary (information-processing, cognitive bias, heuristic) to justify the experimental design, explain the hypothesis in terms of a specific cognitive mechanism rather than a vague prediction, and discuss the findings by connecting them back to the named bias or model, rather than describing results in purely statistical terms disconnected from the underlying cognitive theory. [4]

7. A strong answer identifies specific cognitive models built on computer-like input/processing/storage/output structures – multi-store models of memory, for example – and explains that this framing gives cognitive psychology a testable, structured way to describe processes (encoding, storage, retrieval) that cannot be directly observed, which is a genuine methodological strength: it allows specific, falsifiable predictions to be generated and tested experimentally. The same framing is also a limitation, because reducing genuinely complex, embodied, emotional human cognition to a computer-like model risks oversimplifying processes that do not necessarily work in discrete, sequential stages the way a computer does – real memory, for instance, is influenced by emotion, motivation and social context in ways a purely computational model does not easily represent, which limits the ecological validity of conclusions drawn from lab-based tests of these models. The strongest answers explicitly connect both the strength and the limitation back to named cognitive models and studies, rather than discussing “computer models” only in the abstract, and reach a substantiated conclusion about the overall value of this modelling approach rather than simply listing the strength and limitation side by side. [8]

8. A cognitive explanation might focus on how stress narrows attentional focus during encoding (sometimes called weapon focus in eyewitness research), meaning fewer peripheral details are encoded accurately in the first place, and that subsequent recall is then further shaped by reconstructive processes and schema as time passes. A biological explanation of the same decline might instead focus on the physiological effects of stress hormones such as cortisol on the hippocampus, a brain structure central to memory consolidation, arguing that elevated stress hormones can impair the neural processes responsible for consolidating a memory in the first place. A strong answer does not simply present these two explanations side by side; it explicitly signals which approach is being used at each point (using approach-specific vocabulary throughout), and where relevant, notes that the two explanations are not necessarily competing but can operate on different levels of analysis – the biological explanation addressing the underlying physiological mechanism, and the cognitive explanation addressing the resulting pattern of information-processing – which is a more sophisticated evaluative point than presenting the two approaches as if only one can be correct. [6]

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief – Psychology, first assessment 2019 – the same source cited by the study guide and revision notes. Verified 2026-09-06.