St. Louis Public Schools



IB Psychology

Mr. Detjen

CLoA Research Studies: Student Summaries

Taylor Alexander

IB Psychology

1-22-2013

Yuille and Cutshall: The Effectiveness of Testimonies Using Real Eye-witnesses

Aim:

The aim of the Yuille and Cutshall study of 1986 is to investigate the precision of eye-witness testimonies from a real crime.

Procedure:

Yuille and Cutshall’s initial purpose for this research study was to criticize and challenge Loftus and Palmer’s study of 1974. Twenty-one eye witnesses were interviewed by the police. The same methodology was used as in the 1974 Loftus and Palmer study, an interview during the study. These participants were between the ages of 15 and 32 and were interviewed four to five months after the incident.

Results/Findings:

Researchers found 1000 plus details total in comparison to the average of 650 by police. This was due to the questions asked by researchers that were not as relevant to the crime to be asked by police officials. They found that misleading questions and verb phrases did not alter memories when asked to recall them.

Conclusion/Evaluations:

Yuille and Cutshall concluded that the wording of a question does not have an effect on the distortion of memory but the level of distress experienced during the incident mirrored the level of accuracy. However, the study suggested that the memories of the incident were more comprehensive and detailed from those who were closer to the incident.

Reference:



Emily Forsythe

IB Psychology

January 18, 2013

Miller, G.A. “The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information”

Psychological Review, 63 (1956), 81-97

Aim: The aim was to determine how the brain’s short term memory could best hold information, such as chunks of 7 plus or minus 2.

Procedure: The participants get familiar with 10 different tones that vary only in their pitch. For each of these stimuli, they have a particular response they are to give acknowledging that they heard and recognize the stimulus.

Results/Findings: Each participant was basically perfect in giving the correct response for each tone until the 5th or 6th tone in the set of 10. Each tone given after the 5th or 6th declines in the number of correct responses given.

Conclusion/Evaluation: The short term memory can only handle five to nine chunks of information, hence the magic number 7 plus or minus 2. Any more than that and the likelihood of remembering information through short term memory is slim to none. The strengths of this experiment are that it used a solid number of stimuli to help support the claim Miller was making. There were some limitations with this study though, such as confusion with responses for each of the tones. Participants were not only remembering the tones but also which responses had to go with each tone so in all actuality there were 20 items for the participants to attempt to remember not just the 10 tones.

Reference: Christopher D. Green, Classics in the History of Psychology (York University, Toronto, Ontario)

Imani Taylor

IB Psychology

22 January 2013

Anderson and Pichert (1978)

AIM: The aim of this study was to see how a person's schema and perspective effects how the individual may encode and later retrieve what they view to be important information.

PROCEDURE: Several participants were giving a story, randomly picked participants were told to read the story from a burglar’s perspective and the other from the perspective of a home buyer. Each group was given the same amount of details in their story. After the story the participants were given something to distract them for twelve minutes and then asked to list off what they could recall, based on their given perspective, and list some of the details and items from the story in order of importance. A second test was given where the perspective switched and the people were to recall the units again from their perspective. Then seven days later the groups of participants were asked to recall the items in order of importance, from their given perspective, again.

RESULTS/FINDINGS: After the second test when the participants recalled items the ones who switched perspectives were able to recall more items than before even though their perspective had switched, but after seven days the number of items they were able to recall had diminished.

CONCLUSION/EVALUATION: Our perspective and overall schemas influence how we view the world because they help us on what we see as significant or not significant. This in turn effects our encoding and retrieval because if something does not fit to a certain schema then there would be no use in encoding and in turn if something is not encode there is nothing to be retrieved.







Craik and Lockhart (1972)

AIM: The aim of this study was to show that long-term memory and short-term memory weren't too much different and that things were retained based off of how deep and meaningful something is rehearsed not how many times something is rehearsed.

PROCEDURE: In the study participants were given a list of 60 words and then asked one of three questions for each word, each question based upon depth. The levels of depth were based on semantics, structure or phonemics; each question correlating with how far in the memory the would be stored. After the 60 words and 60 questions the participants were given a list of 180 words and asked to identify the 60 words that they remember.

RESULTS/FINDINGS: Participants remembered and "found" more words that had semantic questions corresponding with them in the 60 words mixed in the 180 words.

CONCLUSION/EVALUATION: Craik and Lockhart concluded that because so many words that had semantic questions asked about them were remembered then semantic rehearsal involves deeper processing and therefore deeper storage in the memory.





Karl Wimmer

Detjen

IB Psychology

22 January 2013

Deffenbacher et al. “A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory”

Law and Human Behavior 28 (2004) pp.687-706

Aim: The aim of the study was to examine the performance of eyewitness testimonies while under conditions of heightened stress.

Procedure: Meta-analyses were conducted on 27 independent tests of the effects of heightened stress on eyewitness identification of the perpetrator and separately on 36 tests of eyewitness recall of details associated.

Results: The findings showed considerable support for the hypothesis that high levels of stress negatively impact both of the eyewitness memory types. The overall effect sizes were .31 for both the correct identifications and the accuracy of eyewitness recall

Reference:

Deffenbacher, Kenneth A.; Bornstein, Brian H.; Penrod, Steven D.; and McGorty, E. Kiernan, "A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory" (2004). Faculty Publications, Department of Psychology. Paper 182.

Princess Hollins

Mr. Detjen

IB Psychology

22, January 2013

                                                Milner and Scoville (1957)

The Milner and Scoville study of 1957 was a case study about a man named

H. M., conducted by William Beecher Scoville and Brenda Milner. The patient  suffered damage to his temporal lobe. The aim was to study the effects of brain damage on behavior.

The patient had epilepsy, which could not be treated with drugs. Therefore, surgeons removed his hippocampus bilaterally. The results showed that both H. M.'s personality and intellect remained the same; however it presented anterograde and retrograde amnesia. He was left with a 90 second memory span. Though procedural and semantic memory was intact, the patient's memory was not capable of incorporating new information. The conclusion was that the hippocampus may be a specific location for the formation of long term memory. Milner and Scoville also concluded that the hippocampus played a crucial role in the formation of memory of recent events.

One ethical concern was that the patient was not able to give informed consent. Also, you can't have a part of a person's brain removed to conduct a study on their behavior. A limitation of this study is that because it was a case study, the findings may not have been ably to apply to most people. A strength is that this study provided new information about human behavior and memory. This study is relevant to the cognitive level of analysis, because memory is a cognitive process.

Sources:





Jarren Gorka

IB Psychology

23 January 2013

Atkinson and Shiffrin

The Primacy and Recency Effects

Aim: To outline a model for memory.... Explain the primacy and and recency effects.

Procedure: Colored cards (one side colored, the other blank) were presented to participants. Participants were allowed to view the card for no more than two seconds, before being asked to name the color of the card. After having gone through the entire stack, the participant was asked to start from the beginning of the stack and rename recall the colored cards. If uncertain, participants were told to guess the color. If a response was incorrect, the experimenter informed the participant of the correct answer.

Results / Findings: This study introduced the primacy and recency effects. The primacy effect is a result of a greater amount of attention and rehearsal being allocated to the first few items of a list. This allocation allows for a higher probability that those first few items to be transferred into long term memory. The recency effect is attributed to short term memory in that the most recently rehearsed items for a list are remembered. With all that said, if given a list to remember, you are more likely to remember the first few items, thanks to long term memory, and the last few items, thanks to short term memory; however, you are less likely to remember anything in between.

Conclusion / Evaluation: One source, Dr. Eugen Tarnow, argues that ideas, such as long term memory storage, are not well defined and therefore cannot form a theory. He also argues that theories are fitted to certain results; therefore, what Atkinson and Shiffrin were trying to pass off as a theory can only be applied to their data. It should be noted that, with that idea of Tarnow’s in mind, all theories can be thrown out of the window. With Tarnow’s critiques in mind, it should also be noted that Atkinson and Shiffrin eventually expanded on this memory model and idea of primacy/recency effects by introducing Atkinson and Shiffrin’s Multi-Store Model of Memory.

References

- Atkinson, R.C., and R.M. Shiffrin. Some Two-Process Models for Memory. Rep. no. 107. N.p.: Stanford University, 1966. Psychology Ser. University of California San Diego. Web. .

- Smith, Michelle L. "The Forgotten Middle Child of Memory: The Serial Position Effect." THE SERIAL POSITION EFFECT. Tennessee State University, n.d. Web.

.

- Tarnow, Eugen. "Why The Atkinson-shiffrin Model Was Wrong From The Beginning." . Webmed, 19 Oct. 2010. Web.

.

Multi-Store Model of Memory

Aim: To outline a model for memory.

Procedure:

Results / Findings:

Sensory Memory

duration: 1/4 - 1/2 second

capacity: all sensory experience

encoding: specific to each sense

Short Term Memory

duration: 0 - 18 seconds

capacity: around 7 items

encoding: mainly auditory

Long Term Memory

duration: unlimited

capacity: unlimited

encoding: mainly semantic

[pic]

Conclusion / Evaluation: A major critique of the memory model is that it is too oversimplified, especially in the sense that it suggests short term and long term memory work as single entities. Newer research now shows that short term and long term memory is much more complex. On the other hand, Atkinson and Shiffrin’s work has helped to generate expansive research into memory.

References

- Lynch, Patrick. "Atkinson-Shiffrin Model." Explorable. N.p., 2011. Web.

.

- McLeod, Saul. "Multi Store Model of Memory - Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968." Simply Psychology. N.p., 2007. Web.

.

Alyssa January

IB Psychology

January 23, 2013

How the Brain Reveals Why We Buy: Kilts (2003)

Aim: The aim of this study was to find out which areas of the brain are involved in forming preferences (individual’s attitude toward a set of objects).

Procedure: The participants were given an assortment of different consumer goods. Then the participants were asked to rate the products on a numerical scale based on appeal. After that participants were placed in an MRI scanner that measured their brain activity while they viewed same goods.

Results: When a participant viewed a product they liked, blood rushed to an area toward the front of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex.

Conclusions: The medial prefrontal cortex is an area involved in self-awareness and the structure of our personality.

Reference



Kaliice Walker

IB Psychology

January 19, 2013

Corkin et al. “H.M.’s Medical Temporal Lobe Lesion: Finding from Magnetic Resonance Imaging” The Journal of Neuroscience (1997), 17(10):3964-3979

Aim: The aim of this was to use new MRI techniques to assess areas throughout H.M.’s brain.

Procedure: Participant H.M. stayed at the MIT Clinical Research center where he participated in research that farther studied the damage done to his temporal lobe. Researchers took scans of brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Results/Findings: Researchers found that the temporal lobe lesions were less than Scoville estimated at the time of the original surgery. They found that the ablation damaged the anterior of the medial temporal polar cortex bilaterally and most of the amygdaloid complex.

Conclusion/Evaluation: Since this evaluation of H.M.’s brain many other scans have taken place. The research resulting from the H.M. bilateral MTL tissue has opened the doors to the field of cognitive neuroscience of memory. Research done him as had a huge impact on this field, because researchers to this day are still interested on understanding the full spectrum of damage in H.M.

Source: Original Article (” The Journal of Neuroscience (1997), 17(10):3964-397)

Hannah Florence

IB Psychology

15 January 2013

Contextual Prerequisites for Understanding: Some Investigations of Comprehension and Recall

John D. Bransford and Marcia K. Johnson (1972)

Aim: To isolate the stage(s) where schemas are introduced and are likely to manipulate processing.

Method: Participants are place into one of three experimental conditions and are read a speech. The three experimental conditions include:

1. Participants hear the speech but are not told the title at any point in time.

2. Participants are told the title of the speech before the speech is actually read to them.

a. i.e. “This speech will be about washing clothes.”

3. Participants are told the title of the speech after the speech is read to them.

a. i.e. “The speech you just heard was about washing clothes.”

Results: The participants who were in the condition in which no title was given and the participants in the condition that were given a title after the speech reportedly had more difficulty comprehending the speech than did the participants who were in the group that was given a title before the speech was read.

Conclusion: Those participants in the condition in which the title was given before the speech were able to use a schema they already had about washing clothes to make sense of the following speech about washing clothes. The participants in the group that received the title after the speech received this vital information too late to fully understand what was read to them and by the time the title was revealed, some information from the speech has already been forgotten.

Strengths: This research included three conditions, one being a control group which the research’s objective views. Due to the three experimental conditions, it became easier to see the relation between schemas and comprehension.

Weaknesses: The participants used are not representative of the entire population so the findings may be hard to generalize. Ecological validity is not fully achieved since this is a laboratory experiment and due to the fact that individuals, in most cases, will be told the title of any speech or at least have a general concept of what is going to be talked about, before the speech is actually given. If participants knew that they were going to be listening to a speech, demand characteristics may have been exhibited.





Hannah Florence

IB Psychology

14 January 2013

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)

Aim: To test the serial position effect in relation to short-term memory capacity.

Method: A participant group, consisting of 240 army enlisted men, is split into two experimental groups. The first group read a list of words and was immediately asked to recall as many words as possible that they could remember from the presentation. The second group was read the same list of words and then there was a thirty second delay in which the participants had to count backwards in threes from a three digit number. After the delay, the participants were then asked to recall as many words as they could remember from the presentation.

Results: The group that was in the immediate recall condition exhibited the serial position effect in which the first few terms on the list were able to be moved to their long-term memory due to the fact that they could be slightly rehearsed without distraction/delay. The short-term memory store was able the rehearse the words when there was no distraction, as opposed to the group that was distracted and the short-term memory had no time to convert the information into the long-term memory.

Strength: This research was able to look closely at the capacity of short-term memory recall while limiting the effect of long-term memory conversion.

Weakness: Simply reading words and then having to recall as many as possible cannot be related to many, if any, real world situations.









................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download