The IB Psychology course looks at behavior through three different approaches: biological,

cognitive and sociocultural. In modern psychology it is understood that these three approaches
interact rather than compete to explain behavior.

This chapter looks at cognitive explanations of behavior. There are two cognitive processes
that are studied in this unit: memory and thinking. The HL extension looks into the question of
how modern use of technology may be changing the way we think and remember.

Cognitive processing
ATL: Essential understandings
1. Mental representations guide our behavior.

2. Models can be used to help us understand complex processes such as memory and
decision making.

3. Humans are information processors.

4. The mind, although it cannot be directly observed, can be studied scientifically.

When people are thinking about how best to solve a

mathematical problem, trying to remember the title of a
book, planning their next holiday, retelling a joke they have
heard or deciding which car to buy, they are involved in
cognitive processing. Cognitive psychology concerns itself
with the structure and functions of the mind. Cognitive
psychologists are involved in finding out how the human
mind comes to know things about the world and how it uses
this knowledge.

The cognitive approach to understanding behavior developed around the 1950’s as a result of
an increasing dissatisfaction with behaviorism, which was the dominant school of scientific
psychology. Behaviorists argued that only behavior that could be observed should be studied.
B. F. Skinner argued that the mind was a "black box" - that is, input enters and output exits the
mind, but the processes that take place within the mind with regard to that input cannot be
examined.

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Cognitive psychologists argued that scientific psychology should include research on mental
processes and how humans process information and create meaning. According to cognitive
psychologists, the mind can be conceptualized as a set of mental processes that are carried out
by the brain. These mental processes include perception, thinking, decision making, problem
solving, memory, language and attention. The concept of cognition refers to such processes.
Cognition is also related to one's personal experience. As we interact with the world around us,
we create mental representations - that is, conceptual understandings of how the world works.
Since people have different experiences, they have different mental representations - for
example, of what is right or wrong, or about what boys and girls can and cannot do. This will
influence the way they think about the world and behave. Cognitive psychologists believe that
mental processes can, to some extent, be studied scientifically.

Assumptions of the cognitive approach

One assumption of the cognitive approach is that we are

information processors. It was John von Neumann's book The
Computer and the Brain that gave psychologists a metaphor
and a set of terminology for explaining cognitive processes.
Psychologists argue that we are not passive responders to the
environment, but we actively organize and manipulate
information that we receive. Cognitive psychologists see the
mind as an information-processing machine using hardware
(the brain) and software (mental representations). The "input"
is sensory information that comes to us through our interaction with the environment. This is
referred to as bottom-up processing. This information is then processed in the mind by top-
down processing via pre-stored information in memory. Finally, there is some output in the
form of behavior.

A second assumption of the cognitive approach is that cognitive processes can be studied
scientifically by scientific research methods. This is demonstrated in theories and models of
cognitive processes that are continuously tested both in laboratories and in naturalistic settings.
As our understanding of cognition has increased, models have been changed. Early models of
cognition were overly simplistic, but they helped researchers to propose hypotheses and test
different aspects of cognitive processes.

Cognitive psychologists have to a large extent used the experimental method because it was
assumed to be the most scientific method. However, the experimental tasks did not always
resemble what people did in their daily lives. The cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser was one
of the first to argue that cognitive psychology had become too artificial and that researchers
should not forget that cognition cannot be isolated from our everyday experience. This is why
cognitive psychologists now study cognition in the laboratory as well as in a daily context.

A final assumption is that mental representations guide behavior. The way that we process and
organize our information determines how we behave. We process new information through the
filter of past experience and understanding. This then determines how we attend to, perceive
and remember new information. This assumption plays a key role in understanding all types of

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behavior. For example, a student might keep procrastinating when he should be writing his
extended essay. This could be explained by his past experience. Maybe his past experience
has been a lot of feedback that he is a poor writer. Because of this, he wants to avoid the task
in order to avoid further failure. Maybe his past experience has been that when he has done
things last minute, he seems to get better grades. Then his procrastination is seen as a
"success strategy".

Cognitive psychologists also recognize that we are bombarded with information in our
environment every day. If we paid attention to all of the stimulation in our surroundings, we
would be overwhelmed. As a result, Fiske and Taylor (1991) argue that we are cognitive
misers - that is, we often make the choice not to actively process information because we want
to save time and effort. In other words, we use mental short-cuts to make decisions because of
three factors: knowledge, motivation and economy. To make this clearer you could use the
following mantra:
I don't know.

I don't care.

I don't have time.

For example, we all know that a healthy diet is important. However, when it comes to grocery
shopping, too many shoppers do not read the labels of the food that they buy. Why not? First,
there is the problem of knowledge. Even if you read the labels on many foods, would you be
able to really understand the ingredients? Second, many people don't have the motivation to do
so. If they are young and healthy, then the fact that they like the taste of something is enough
to justify buying it. They don't care about the levels of fat or salt in the product. However, once
the motivation changes, let's say because of a new health problem, then they take the time to
read the labels. Finally, there is the question of economy. Shoppers may make the decision to
buy what they have also bought because they don't have time to spend hours on the Internet
doing research or even reading labels in the grocery store. It could also be that they don't have
the financial resources to afford better quality food, so they rationalize the decision to keep
buying the unhealthy options.

ATL: Conceptual understanding

The above example of shopping is just one application of the concept of cognitive misers. Try
to apply the same explanation to the following examples of human behavior:

1. Failing to invest money in a retirement plan.

2. The way that people vote in presidential elections.
3. Why it is difficult to get people to exercise.

ATL: Thinking critically

Will it ever be possible to develop robots that can think like humans?

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In what ways are the human mind and computers the same? Start off by making a list of what
the human mind can do and what the computer can do. What do you think are the most
significant differences between the human mind and computers?

Now please watch the following video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
app=desktop&v=I43hq13MnYM&list=PLcuqCOJCLvdvTAYwbzlVG0x_m9HE6SFGy&index=6&t
=0s

Based on what you have seen in the video, do you think it will ever be possible to construct a
robot that could process information like we do? Do you think that this would be a good thing -
or a bad thing? Be able to justify your response.

Schema Theory

When expert football players like Harry Kane kick the ball directly
into the goal during a penalty, it may look like any other goal to

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some of us. However, besides a good deal of self-confidence, this particular kick is the result of
many hours of practice and a combination of cognitive processes. Harry needs to take into
consideration the position of the goalkeeper and predict possible reactions, as well as determine
how he should kick the ball. All this is done based on his previous experience, which is stored in his
memory as knowledge and skills - but there is even more to it. Players need to modify their behavior
to fit the particular challenge at hand. His kick must be executed based on visual information and a
prediction of possible consequences. A lot of this is based on the recognition of patterns. This “how-
to-score knowledge” will help him decide what aspects of the situation he needs to pay attention to in
order to place the football accurately in the goal.

Schema and scripts - definitions of terms

The human mind is quite sophisticated. It manipulates mental representations of objects in the real
world when we think, make plans, imagine or problem solve. Schemas are mental representations
that are derived from prior experience and knowledge. The bottom-up information derived from the
senses is interpreted by the top-down influence of relevant schemas in order to determine which
behavior is most appropriate. Schemas help us to predict what to expect based on what has
happened before. They are used to organize our knowledge, to assist recall, to guide our behavior
and to help us to make sense of current experiences.
Schema help our minds to simplify the world around us. For example, we all have a schema for a
telephone. If someone hands me their mobile phone and asks me to quickly call a doctor, I don't look
at the phone and go, "I don't know. I have never used THIS phone before!" Instead, I have a
schema for how a phone works that allows me to use the phone, regardless of the brand. Perhaps
this particular phone has features I have never seen before. If that is true, then I will learn about
those features by having to use the phone and then those features will be assimilated into my
schema of mobile phones.
Looking at the example of Kane, he has to use a number of schema when making his kick. First, he
has a schema for the field on which he is playing. He knows how far he has to kick the ball, the
positions that players will take and he knows what goalies do. In addition, he will have a schema for
the opposing team or maybe specifically, the particularly goalie. He knows whether they are the top
team in the league, very strong on offense, but terrible at defense, or that the goalie is left-handed.
He uses all of this information to make predictions that help him to decide the best way to deliver the
penalty kick.
When we discuss how things work, such as "how to score knowledge", this is referred to as a script.
Scripts are patterns of behavior that are learned through our interaction with the environment. We
have scripts for what to expect when one goes to the movies, the appropriate way to eat a plate of
spaghetti and what behavior is expected on a first date. Scripts are developed within a cultural
context - they are not universal. When we travel, we often find that our scripts don't lead to the
predicted outcomes we expect. For example, if your script for stores involves going into a shop,
picking up what you need, standing in line and then paying the price on the label, you will find that
many cultures around the world do not follow this script. In many places, lines are not part of the
culture of shopping and bargaining is the only way to decide how much you have to pay. If this is not
your script for shopping, you may be confused or frustrated in this situation. But with experience,
you will eventually incorporate this knowledge into your script for how you shop.

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Getting back to Kane, there are a few scripts that he will follow. First, there is the script for how to
actually kick the ball into the goal. This will be the result of a lot of practice. But he will also have a
script for how to behave if he is successful - maybe tearing off his shirt - or if he is not - putting his
head into his hands and pausing before returning to his teammates.
Schema theory is a theory of how humans process incoming information, relate it to existing
knowledge and use it. The theory is based on the assumption that humans are active processors of
information. People do not passively respond to information. They interpret and integrate it to make
sense of their experiences, but they are not always aware of it. If information is missing, the brain
fills in the blanks based on existing schemas. Obviously this can result in mistakes. In the later part
of this unit we will look at two particular mistakes - memory distortion and errors in decision making.

Schema theory and memory

The British psychologist Frederic Bartlett was a pioneer in developing schema theory. Bartlett was
one of the first to suggest that cognitive schemas can be seen as specific knowledge organized and
stored in memory that can be accessed and used when it is needed. It is of course not possible to
see a schema inside someone’s head, but using concepts like schemas helps psychologists to
understand and discuss how the mind works.

TOK: Ways of knowing

In cognitive psychology, schema are one of the building blocks of many

theories. However, it is not possible to see schema, even with modern
brain imaging technology. Does this matter?
The early Freudians argued that we could study what was in the
unconscious mind. Behaviorists reacted against this and argued that we
should only study that which can be observed. Cognitive theorists found
a middle ground; they argued that we should study what we cannot
directly observe, but we must use scientific approaches.
Consider the following questions:
1. What are some things that we believe to be true, even though we cannot directly see them?

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2. How important is it to be able to see something to know that it is true?
3. What type of evidence would you want for something that is not seeable?

In the cognitive approach, it is assumed that cognitive processes are influenced by social and
cultural factors. Bartlett was one of the first to show how cultural schema influence remembering. He
found that people had problems remembering a story from another culture and that they
reconstructed the story to fit in with their own cultural schemas. Bartlett demonstrated that memory
is not like a photograph or an audio recording, but rather that people remember in terms of what
makes sense to them. This is why memory is subject to distortions.
Bartlett used an experiment in order to study the role of schema in recalling a story from an
unfamiliar culture. One of the techniques he used was serial reproduction, where participant A
reads a story and then reproduces it to participant B who then reproduces it to participant C, and so
on until six or seven reproductions have been created.
A second technique used by Bartlett was repeated reproduction. In repeated reproduction, a
participant learns the material and then recalls it repeatedly over various testing occasions. It is the
same person who recalls the same story each time.

ATL: Inquiry

Ask two people to write down a story. For each story, place 8 - 10 people in a line and ask each of
them to whisper the story to the person standing behind them. The last person in the line has to say
the story out loud. Record the final version of the story so that you can easily compare it to the
original, written text.
Questions to consider
1. What is the best way for you to compare the final version to the original?
2. Discuss the changes between the original story and the final story. What kind of changes were
made? Is there a consistent pattern?

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Research in psychology: Bartlett (1932)

The aim of Bartlett's classic study was to investigate how the

memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge. He
wanted to see if cultural background and unfamiliarity with a
text would lead to distortion of memory when the story was
recalled. Bartlett’s hypothesis was that memory is
reconstructive and that people store and retrieve information
according to expectations formed by cultural schemas.
Bartlett told participants a Native American legend called The
War of the Ghosts. The participants were British; for them, the
story was filled with unfamiliar names and concepts, and the
style was foreign to them.
Bartlett allocated the participants to one of two conditions. One group was asked to use repeated
reproduction, where participants heard the story and were told to reproduce it after a short time and
then to do so again repeatedly over a period of days, weeks, months or years. The second group
was told to use serial reproduction, in which they had to recall the story and repeat it to another
person.
Bartlett found that there was no significant difference between the way that the groups recalled the
story. Over time the story became shorter; Bartlett found that after six or seven reproductions, it was
reduced to 180 words. The story also became more conventional - that is, it retained only those
details that could be assimilated to the social and cultural background of the participants. For
example, instead of "hunting seals," participants remembered that the men in the story were fishing;
the word "canoe" was changed to the word "boat."
Bartlett found that there were three patterns of distortion that took place. The story became more
consistent with the participants’ own cultural expectations - that is, details were unconsciously
changed to fit the norms of British culture. The story also became shorter with each retelling as
participants omitted information which was seen as not important. Finally, participants also tended to
change the order of the story in order to make sense of it using terms more familiar to the culture of
the participants. They also added detail and/or emotions. The participants overall remembered the
main themes in the story but changed the unfamiliar elements to match their own cultural
expectations so that the story remained a coherent whole although changed.

Bartlett wanted to study memory in a naturalistic setting, meaning that he would give participants
some tasks that could be encountered in real life - for example, remembering a story. Bartlett
documented his research procedures but he has been criticized for not being specific enough which
has made it difficult to replicate his findings. For example, he did not standardize the intervals at
which participants reproduced the material they had learned. In addition, no significant independent
variable was manipulated with other factors held constant to observe its systematic effect on some
dependent variable. Psychologists are critical of Bartlett's methods on the grounds that they were
not scientific in a modern sense.
Many researchers have attempted to replicate the findings of Bartlett's original study, but they have
not been successful. This would indicate that the findings have low reliability. This would make
sense since Bartlett did not use a standardized procedure. Bergman & Roedeger (1999) carried out
a replication with a slight twist. The independent variable was the amount of delay before the
retelling of the story. They found that when there was a 15-minute delay in the first retelling of the

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story, there was a higher rate of distortion than if the story were replicated immediately. The
immediate retelling of the story was often highly accurate and resulted in less distortion over time.
Bartlett's suggestion that schemas are complex unconscious knowledge structures is one of
Bartlett's major contributions to psychology, in spite of the sloppy nature of his original study. His
research was one of the first to investigate mental processes in a time where psychological science
insisted on studying only behaviors that could be directly observed.
Schema theory has been used to explain how memory works. Cognitive psychologists divide
memory processes into three main stages:
● Encoding: transforming sensory information into memory.
● Storage: creating a biological trace of the encoded information in memory, which is
either consolidated or lost
● Retrieval: using the stored information in thinking, problem-solving and decision making.

It is now believed that schema processing can affect memory at all stages. This is shown in the
following research study.

Research in psychology: Brewer and Treyens

(1981)

Brewer and Treyens wanted to study the role of schema in

the encoding and retrieval of memory. To do so, they
carried out an experiment to see how well people could
recall what was in an office.
The sample was made up of 86 university psychology
students. Participants were seated in a room that was
made to look like an office. The room consisted of objects
that were typical of offices: a typewriter, paper, and a
coffee pot. There was also a table with tools and electronics. There were shelves along one wall
and the other walls were decorated with posters and a calendar. There were some items in the
room that one would not typically find in an office - for example, a skull or a toy top. Finally, there
were items that were omitted - such as books.
Each participant was asked to wait in the professor's office while the researcher "checked to make
sure that the previous participant had completed the experiment." The participant did not realize that
the study had already begun. The participants were asked to have a seat. All of the chairs except

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for one had objects on them. In this way, it was guaranteed that all participants would have the
same vantage point in the office. The researcher left the room and said that he would return shortly.
After 35 seconds the participants were called into another room and then asked what they
remembered from the office. When they finished the experiment, they were given a questionnaire.
The important question was "Did you think that you would be asked to remember the objects in the
room?" 93% said "no."
The participants were randomly allocated to one of three conditions.
The recall condition: Participants were asked to write down a description of as many objects as
they could remember from the office. They were also asked to state the location, shape, size, and
colour of the objects. They were asked to "Write your description as if you were describing the room
for someone who had never seen it." After this, they were given a verbal recognition test in which
they were given a booklet containing a list of objects. They were asked to rate each item for how
sure they were that the object was in the room. "1" meant that they were sure it was not in the room;
"6" meant that they were absolutely sure it was in the room. The questionnaire consisted of 131
objects: 61 were in the room; 70 were not.
The drawing condition: In this condition, participants were given an outline of the room and asked
to draw in the objects they could remember.
The verbal recognition condition: In this condition, the participants were read a list of objects and
simply asked whether they were in the room or not.
The researchers found that when the participants were asked to recall either by writing a paragraph
or by drawing, they were more likely to remember items in the office that were congruent with their
schema of an office - that is, the "expected items" were more often recalled. The items that were
incongruent with their schema of an office - e.g. the skull, a piece of bark or the screwdriver - were
not often recalled. When asked to select items on the list, they were more likely to identify the
incongruent items; for example, they didn't remember the skull when doing the free recall but gave it
a 6 on the verbal recognition task. However, they also had a higher rate of identifying objects which
were schema congruent but which were actually not in the room.
In both the drawing and the recall condition, they also tended to change the nature of the objects to
match their schema. For example, the pad of yellow paper that was on a chair was remembered as
being on the desk. The trapezoidal work table was recalled as square.

Thinking critically about research

Read carefully the study by Brewer & Treyens in the brown-colored font above.
1. The results of the study are a bit complex. Here are the descriptive statistics.
In the written recall condition, the average number of correct objects recalled was 13.5. The
average number of "mistakenly recalled" objects was 1.13. The objects that were
remembered that were not in the room were books (by 9/30), a filing cabinet (3/30), pens
(1/30), a coffee cup (2/30), a telephone (1/30), a lamp (1/30) and curtains (1/30).
What can you say about the nature of this data? Although it is statistically significant, how well do
you think that it supports the conclusions drawn by the researchers?

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2. What type of data was produced by the researchers? Quantitative or qualitative? Why is this
important?

3. The researchers carried out a pilot study before carrying out this study. Why do you think that
they did that?

4. What are some ethical concerns with his study?

Evaluation of schema theory

A significant amount of research has supported the idea that schemas affect cognitive processes
such as memory. The theory seems quite useful for understanding how people categorize
information, interpret information and make inferences. Schema theory has contributed to our
understanding of memory distortions and false memories.
Some of the limitations of schema theory are that it is not yet entirely clear how schemas are
acquired in the first place or the exact way they influence cognitive processes. It has also been
argued that schema theory cannot account for why schema-inconsistent information is sometimes
recalled. However, in spite of some imperfections of the theory, it seems to be a robust theory that
has generated a lot of research and still does.

TEACUP: Schema Theory

Testable: Schema theory is testable. This is seen in the studies by Bartlett and by Brewer &
Treyens. You will see several more examples throughout the course.
Empirical evidence: There is also biological research to support the way in which the brain
categorizes input. For example, Mahon et al (2009) found that from the visual cortex, information
about living and non-living objects is shuttled to different parts of the brain - even in blind
participants. These findings suggest that our brains automatically sort information and classify it, in
the same manner which schema theory predicts.

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Applications: Schema theory has been applied to help us understand how memory works. It also
helps us to understand memory distortion. Schema theory has also been applied to abnormal
psychology (therapy for depression and anxiety), relationships (theories of mate selection) and in
health psychology (health campaigns to change unhealthy behaviours). It is a robust theory that has
many applications across many fields of psychology.
Construct validity: Cohen (1993) argued that the concept of schema is too vague and hypothetical
to be useful. Schema cannot be observed.
Unbiased: Schema theory is applied across cultures. There is no apparent bias in the research,
although most of the early research was done in the West.
Predictive validity: The theory helps to predict behaviour. We can predict, for example, what types
of information will be best recalled when given a list of words. Trends, such as omitting information
that is not of high relevance to the individual, are commonly seen in individuals recalling a news
story. However, we cannot predict exactly what an individual will recall.

Multi-store Memory Model

The concept of memory refers to the process by
which information is encoded, stored, and
retrieved. Cognitive psychologists have
suggested ways to conceptualize the architecture
and processes of the memory system by making
models of memory. In psychology, a model of
memory is a hypothesized representation of
memory. It is more like an outline of the different
stores and processes indicating how memory
might work according to available evidence.
Obviously, models change over time as new evidence becomes available. In order to understand
more about the possible structure and function of memory, researchers within the cognitive
approach have suggested models of memory that can be tested to determine their validity.

Types of memory
Researchers distinguish between different types of memory. This is important because it appears
that different types of memory may be stored in different parts of the brain.

Declarative memory (“knowing what”) is the memory of facts and events and refers to those
memories that can be consciously recalled. There are two subsets of declarative memory:

Episodic memory contains the memory of specific events that have occurred at a given time and in
a given place.

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Semantic memory contains general knowledge of facts and people, for example, concepts and
schemas and it is not linked to time and place.

Procedural memory (“knowing how”) is the unconscious memory of skills and how to do things.

The multi-store model of memory

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) were among the first to suggest a basic structure of memory with their
Multi-store Model [MSM] of memory. Although this model seems rather simplistic today, it sparked
much research based on the idea that humans are information processors.
The Multi-store Model was suggested in the 1960’s and is clearly inspired by computer science. The
model is based on a number of assumptions. First, the model argues that memory consists of a
number of separate locations in which information is stored. Second, those memory processes are
sequential. Third, that each memory store operates in a single, uniform way. In this model, short-
term memory (STM) serves as a gateway by which information can gain access to long-term
memory. The various memory stores are seen as components that operate in conjunction with the

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permanent memory store (LTM) through processes such as attention, coding and rehearsal. You
need to pay attention to something in order to remember information. According to this model,
rehearsal is vital to keeping material active in STM by repeating it until it can be stored in LTM.
The model suggests that sensory information from the world enters sensory memory, which is
modality specific - that is, related to different senses, such as hearing and vision. The most
important stores in the model are the visual store (iconic memory) and the auditory store (echoic
memory). Information in the sensory store stays here for a few seconds and only a very small
amount of the information will continue into the short-term memory (STM) store.
The capacity of STM has traditionally been assumed to be limited to around seven items (7+/-2) and
its duration is normally about 6–12 seconds. Information in STM is quickly lost if not rehearsed.
Information may also be displaced from STM by new information. For example, when you are
rehearsing that phone number for ordering the pizza and then someone calls out your name. When
your attention is taken away from the information in your STM, it is then displaced and no longer
available. Rehearsal of material in STM plays a key role in determining what is stored in long-term
memory in the multi-store model of memory.

Research in psychology: Miller's Magic

Number 7 (1956)

The Multi-Store Model argues that STM is limited in both capacity and
duration - that is, there is a limited amount of information that can be held
in STM for a limited amount of time.
After running tests to see how many numbers an individual can recall in a
sequence of numbers, Miller (1956) proposed the "Magic Number 7" - plus
or minus two. According to Miller, the average memory span is between 5 and 9 items. Think about
numbers that we are asked to remember - zip codes, passport numbers, social security numbers,
telephone numbers - and you will see that they fall between 5 and 9 numbers. There is a
psychological reason for this.
Numbers are one thing, but is all information the same? Does it all fit in these 9 "slots?"
Cowan (2010) argues that Miller's magic number 7 may be overly
optimistic. In the original task, Miller's participants were asked to
memorize a string of numbers, each time increasing by one digit.
So, they were asked to memorize something like this:
● 437
● 6984
● 25851
● 319025

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And so on. But Cowan argues that this type of task sets the participant up to employ "processing
strategies" that do not reflect how we actually use our short-term memory on a day to day basis.
Instead, Cowan had participants recall a "running span procedure" - that is, they listened to a list of
numbers but they did not know in advance how long the list would be. He found that participants
recalled a range of 3 - 5 digits, not 5 to 9.
Cowan's findings are supported by biological research. fMRIs have
shown that the parietal cortex of the brain plays a key role in short-
term (working) memory. Brain scans indicate that activity in the
parietal cortex correlates with STM capacity - where activity increases
with every additional number that needs to be recalled, until four digits.
Then activity in this part of the brain levels out. (Vogel and Machizawa,
2004).
This is a good example of the problem of using artificial procedures in
laboratory experiments. The original research by Miller had low
ecological validity - and today research challenges the belief that STM memory can hold up to 9
digits. How many of you cannot remember your telephone number?

The long-term memory (LTM) store is conceptualized as a vast storehouse of information. This
storehouse is believed to be of indefinite duration and of potentially unlimited capacity, although
psychologists do not know exactly how much information can be stored there. The material is not an
exact replica of events or facts but is stored in some outline form. Memories may be distorted when
they are retrieved because we fill in the gaps to create a meaningful memory. This is exactly what is
predicted by schema theory.

Evidence in support of the model

In the biological chapter, we looked at the case study of HM (Milner,1966). This is just one example
of biological evidence that STM and LTM are located in different stores in the brain. In Milner's study,
HM had anterograde amnesia - that is, he could not transfer new information to long-term memory;
however, he still had access to many of his memories prior to his surgery. However, the fact that he
could create new procedural memories shows that memory may be more complex than the MSM
predicts.
Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) used free recall of a list of 15 items combined with an interference task
to show that there are two processes involved in retrieving information. The researchers showed 15
lists of 15 words one at a time and had subjects recall the words under one of three conditions: recall
with no delay, with a 10-second delay and with a 30-second delay. With no delay, the first 5 and last
three words were recalled best but with a 10 or 30-second delay during which the subject counted
backwards there was little effect on the words at the beginning of the list but poor recall of later
items. This suggests that the later words were held in short-term storage and were lost due to
interference whereas the earlier words had been passed to long-term storage. The ability to recall
words at the beginning of the list because they had already been transferred to long-term memory is

15
called primacy effect. The ability to recall words that have just been spoken because they are still in
short-term memory is called recency effect.

Evaluation of the multi-store model of

memory

Today the multi-store model is considered to be too simplistic. It reflects the knowledge available in
the 1960s but it is an important model all the same because it has influenced our understanding of
memory. First of all, it presents a good account of the basic mechanisms in memory processes
(encoding, storage and retrieval). Secondly, several experiments support the assumption of multiple
memory stores. There is also supporting evidence from case studies of patients with brain damage,
such as HM suffering from amnesia, who have impaired long-term memory but intact short-term
memory. This clearly points towards multiple memory stores.
The assumption that STM is simply a gateway to LTM has been challenged by Logie (1999). He
argues that information in STM is not simply passed into LTM through rehearsal. Instead, there must
be an interaction between STM and LTM in which the information is interpreted with regard to
previously stored knowledge and past experience. Short-term memory is therefore not part of a
sequential system but rather a 'work station' that handles and computes information coming from the
sensory store together with knowledge already stored in LTM. This also is what schema theory
would predict.

Strengths and limitations of the Multi-Store

Model

Strengths of the MSM

● There is significant research to support the theory of separate memory stores - both in
cognitive research and in biological case studies of patients with brain damage.
● The model is of historical importance. It gave psychologists a way to talk about memory
and much of the research which followed was based on this model.

Limitations of the MSM

● The model is over-simplified. It assumes that each of the stores works as an
independent unit.
● The model does not explain memory distortion.

16
 ● The model does not explain why some things may be learned with a minimal amount of
rehearsal. For example, once bitten by a dog, that memory is quite vivid in spite of the
lack of rehearsal.
● There are several times that we rehearse a lot to remember material and it is not
transferred to LTM.

Working memory model

The working memory model can be seen as a development of the

multi-store model of memory. What is called short-term memory in
the original model is changed to a more sophisticated version in the
working memory model. This is an example of how theories and
models develop over time as science produces new findings.
Baddeley and Hitch (1974) were among the first to challenge the
view that STM is a single store. Their working memory model
suggests that STM is not a single store but rather consists of a
number of different stores. Baddeley and Hitch observed in lab
experiments that if participants perform two tasks simultaneously
that both involve listening, they perform them less well than if they
did them separately. They had also noticed that if participants performed two tasks simultaneously
that involved listening and vision, there was no problem. The procedure where participants carry out
two tasks at once is known as a dual-task technique.
This suggests that there are different stores for visual and auditory processing. Baddeley and Hitch
suggested that working memory should be seen as a kind of mental workspace, which provides a
temporary platform that holds relevant information for use in any cognitive task. Once the task is
completed, the information can quickly disappear and make space for a new round of information

17
processing. Baddeley and Hitch have continued to work on the model since it was devised in 1974
and they have added new features to the model in response to criticism and new findings.

ATL: Inquiry: Can we multi-task?

18
We wouldn't be able to function as human beings if we couldn't "multi-task." Can you imagine if we
couldn't talk to someone while driving a car? If we couldn't read a sign while walking down the
street? Or if we couldn't play a video game without listening to our favourite tunes?
The Working Memory Model argues that as long as we are using different short-term memory stores,
then there should not be a problem with multi-tasking. However, when we try to do two things at
once which require the same STM store, then we run into problems.
In order to test this, carry out one of Baddeley & Hitch's early dual-task techniques. Get together a
group of friends and randomly allocate them into two groups. Have one group read a story of your
choice. It should be 300 - 500 words in length. Give them three minutes to read the story. At the
end of the three minutes, ask them six to ten questions to test their understanding of the story.
Now do the same with the other half of the group. But this time, ask them to recite a phone number
while reading the text. After three minutes, give them the same six to ten questions to test their
understanding of the story.
Compare the results. Is there a significant difference in the data? What does this tell us about our
ability to multi-task?

The Working Memory Model is a

hypothetical model of STM that
includes several components in
contrast to the Multi-Store Model's
version of STM as one big store. Now
we will look at each of the
hypothesized components of working
memory.

The central executive

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The central executive is an attention control system that monitors and coordinates the operations of
the other subordinate components, which are called slave systems. The central executive is the
most important part of the model because it is seen as a kind of CEO of the memory system, that is,
it decides how and when the slave systems are used. The central executive has the capacity to
focus attention, to divide attention between two or more sources and to switch attention from one
task to another. The central executive has limited capacity, which basically means that you cannot
attend to a lot of things at the same time. It is also modality free, which means that it can process
any sensory information, whether it be auditory or visual.
Baddeley suggests that the most important job of the central executive is attention control. This
happens in two ways.
● The automatic level is based on habits that rely on schemas in long-term memory and
controlled more or less automatically by stimuli from the environment. This includes
routine actions such as cycling to school and places only limited demand on attention.
● The supervisory attention level deals with planning and decision making. It creates
new strategies when the old ones are no longer sufficient. It is also active in emergency
situations - for example, when a car is suddenly coming at you when you are cycling.
The system is also involved in situations that require self-regulation such as trying to
avoid eating that lovely chocolate dessert when you are trying to eat a more healthy diet.
The supervisory attention system is capable of considering alternative plans of action
and choosing the most favourable.

People rely a great deal on automatic processing in their daily lives. Think about a situation in which
you suddenly find yourself outside your front door, but you cannot really remember how you got
there because you were talking to somebody on your mobile phone. You probably also know that if
something had happened on the way - such as another person talking on a mobile bumping into you
- you would become attentive to make a quick evaluation of the situation.

The phonological loop (verbal STM)

The phonological loop is the auditory component of STM and it is divided into two components.
The first component is the articulatory control system, or inner voice, which can hold information
in a verbal form. This happens when you try to remember a telephone number and repeat it to
yourself. The articulatory loop is also believed to hold words ready for cognitive tasks, for example
as you prepare to speak. The second component is the phonological store, or inner ear. It holds
auditory memory traces. Research shows that a memory trace can only last from 1.5 to 2 seconds if
it is not rehearsed by the articulatory control system. The phonological store can receive information
directly from sensory memory in the form of auditory material, from LTM in the form of verbal
information, and from the articulatory control system. The phonological loop has significant
implications for a wide range of everyday activities. Actually, any activity that requires retention of a
verbal sequence such as remembering a new telephone number long enough to dial it, repeating a
foreign word or counting objects would rely on the phonological loop.
Research using articulatory suppression lends support to the working memory model. Articulatory
suppression means that participants are asked to repeat a word such as 'the' or a number such as
'one' while they memorize a list of words. Such studies show that concurrent tasks decrease

20
accuracy of recall of the information because the phonological rehearsal system is overloaded. The
same would happen if you were asked to read prose and at the same time repeat a word or a
number as described above because both tasks depend on the phonological loop.

Research in psychology: Landry and Bartling

(2011)

Landry and Bartling (2011) conducted an experiment using

articulatory suppression to test the Working Memory Model.
The aim was to investigate if articulatory suppression would
influence recall of a written list of phonologically dissimilar
letters in serial recall. The experiment used independent
designs with two groups: a control group that performed no
concurrent task while memorizing a list and an experimental group, which performed the concurrent
task of articulatory suppression while memorizing a list. The participants were randomly assigned to
one of the two conditions. The hypothesis was that the accuracy of serial recall would be higher in
the control group compared to the experimental group. The participants consisted of thirty-four
undergraduate psychology students.

Procedure

The participants were tested individually. In the experimental group, participants first saw a list of
letters that they had to recall while saying the numbers '1' and '2' at a rate of two numbers per
second (the articulatory suppression task). The control group saw the list of letters but did not
engage in an articulatory suppression task.
There were ten lists each consisting of a series of 7 letters randomly constructed from the letters F,
K, L, M, R, X, and Q. These letters were chosen because they don't sound similar. The experimenter
presented one letter series at a time. The participants received an answer sheet with seven blanks in
each row. Before the experiment started, each participant viewed one practice list in order to
become acquainted with the procedure.
In the control group, the experimenter showed participants a printed list for five seconds, instructed
them to wait for another five seconds, and then instructed them to write the correct order of the
letters on the answer sheet as accurately as possible. This was repeated ten times. In the
experimental group, participants received instructions to repeatedly say the numbers '1' and '2' at a
rate of two numbers per second from the time of presentation of the list until the time they filled the
answer sheet. This was also repeated ten times. Each trial was scored for accuracy of recall. The
trial was scored as correct if the letters were in the correct position. The experimenter then
calculated the average percent correct recall for both groups.

Results

The results showed that the scores from the experimental group were much lower than the scores
from the control group. The mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was 76% compared
to a mean of 45% in the experimental group. Although the difference in the means was large, the

21
standard deviations were nearly identical with SD = 0.13 for the control group and SD = 0.14 for the
experimental group. A T-test was calculated and found a significant difference of p < 0.01.
The results supported the experimental hypothesis as the mean percent of accurate recall in the
control group was higher than the mean percent of accurate recall in the experimental group and the
t-test showed that the results are significant at p < 0.01. The data seems to support the prediction of
the Working Memory Model that disruption of the phonological loop through the use of articulatory
suppression results in less accurate working memory. In line with the model's prediction, articulatory
suppression is preventing rehearsal in the phonological loop because of overload. This resulted in
difficulty in memorizing the letter strings for participants in the experimental conditions whereas the
participants in the control condition did not experience such overload. This experiment is asking
participants to remember strings of random letters in order to test a specific part of the working
memory and it can be argued that although this does not resemble a task that you would do in your
everyday life. However, it could resemble what is happening during multi-tasking - for example,
when you are trying to study for a psychology test while at the same time talking to a friend on the
phone,

The visuospatial sketchpad

The visuospatial sketchpad is the visual component of STM and could be called the inner eye. It is a
temporary store for visual and spatial information from either sensory memory or LTM. Visual
processing includes storage and manipulation of visual patterns and spatial movements in two or
three dimensions. The visuospatial sketchpad helps us remember not only what visual information is
important, but also where it is. This is important when we have to find our way around the house and
in visual imagery, for example, when trying to remember where we left our mobile phone.

The episodic buffer

If all this information is being processed in separate short-term memory stores, how are we actually
able to understand what is happening in the world around us? For this, Baddeley proposed the
episodic buffer. This buffer temporarily holds several sources of information active at the same time,
while you consider what is needed in the present situation. This means - auditory and visual
information together, as well as information from LTM. Imagine yourself consciously trying to recall
the details of a landscape or the sound of your favourite band while you are telling somebody else
about it. According to Baddeley, they will appear via the episodic buffer. The role of the buffer is to
act as a temporary and passive display store until the information is needed - much like a television
screen - but it has limited capacity. Baddeley argues that the episodic buffer is responsible for our
conscious awareness.

Research in psychology: Case studies of brain damage

and WMM

22
The cognitive approach carries out many lab experiments to support their models. For example, the
study by Landry and Bartling (2011) that is described above. But often they turn to neuroscience to
get biological support for their theories.
Warrington and Shallice (1970) carried out a series of tests on patient KF, who had suffered brain
damage as a result of a motorcycle accident. KF's LTM was intact, but he showed impairment of his
short-term memory.

This sounds like the case of HM, but it is very different. Even though he appeared to have problems
recalling lists of words and numbers - something that is referred to as his "memory span" - he was
able to learn. He was clearly moving information from STM to LTM, but how was this possible?
Over the course of the case study, Warrington and Shallice (1972) found that although he quickly
forgot numbers and words when they were presented to him orally, he was able to remember these
words or numbers when presented to him visually. KF's impairment was mainly for verbal
information - his memory for visual information was largely unaffected. This supports Baddeley's
theory that there are separate STM components for visual information and verbal information (the
phonological loop).
Since the study was longitudinal, over time Warrington and Shallice (1974) were able to be even
more precise in their findings. Later testing showed that although KF could not recall words or letters
when presented orally, he had no difficulty recalling cats meowing or telephones ringing. The
researchers concluded that his accident had resulted in damage to a short-term memory store that
was auditory and not visual, and also verbal rather than non-verbal. This research supports the
theory that STM is much more complex than suggested by the original Multi-store model.

ATL: Inquiry

Dig a bit deeper into the biological evidence for the Working Memory Model. See what you can find
out about the following case studies. How do they support the Working Memory Model? What do
they teach us about the STM system?
1. Patient PV (Vallar & Baddeley, 1984). This patient had a left hemisphere stroke which resulted in
brain damage in the left hemisphere, which resulted in extremely poor recall of verbal material but
showed no visual memory impairment.
2. Patient SC (Trojano et al., 1992). Like patient PV he had a left hemisphere stroke, and a poor
verbal STM, although his visual STM was normal.
3. Patient ELD (Hanley et al, 1991) had difficulty recognizing and recalling visuospatial material
following a right-hemisphere aneurysm.
4. Patient LH (Farah et al., 1988) was poor at remembering colour and shapes but had a good
memory for spatial information.

23
Evaluation of the Working Memory Model

Most researchers today accept the idea of working memory. Experiments using dual-task techniques
seem to provide support for the model. In dual-task experiments, a participant might be asked to tell
a story to another person while at the same time performing a second cognitive task, such as trying
to learn a list of numbers. Such concurrent tasks impair overall performance. If the two tasks
interfere with each other so that one or both are impaired, it is believed that both tasks use the same
component in STM.
Working memory has proved quite fruitful as it has generated a lot of research and discussion
concerning the different parts of the model is ongoing. Neuroimaging studies have also been used
to test the possible neurobiological correlates of working memory. Generally, the Working Memory
Model provides a much more satisfactory explanation of storage and processing than the Multi-Store
Model. The Working Memory Model can explain why people are able to perform different cognitive
tasks at the same time. At least if the task is not drawing on the same component of STM.
However, there are some limitations to the model. First of all, the model is oversimplified as it does
not address how other sensory information is processed, and spatial memory within the model is not
fully developed. Second, it has been difficult to identify the nature of the processes associated with
the central executive. Finally, the interaction among the four components is not well explained in the
model, so much more research is needed in this area. For example, it is not really clear how the
episodic buffer actually integrates information from the other components with long-term memory. At
this point, the model just presents a possible role for the episodic buffer but it is not fully developed.

Summary of strengths and limitations of the

Working Memory Model
Strengths of the WMM
● The model is supported by considerable experimental evidence.

24
 ● Brain scans have shown that a different area of the brain is active when carrying out
verbal tasks than when carrying out visual tasks. This supports the idea that there are
different parts of memory for visual and verbal tasks.
● Case studies of patients with brain damage support the theory that there is more than
one STM store.
● This model helps us to understand why we are able to multi-task in some situations and
not in others.

Limitations of the WMM

● The role of the central executive is unclear, although Baddeley and Hitch said it was the
most important part of the model. For example, they suggested that it has its own limited
capacity, but it is impossible to measure this separately from the capacity of the
phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad.
● How the various components of the model interact is not yet clear.
● This model really only explains short-term memory and so tells us very little about the
processes involved in long-term memory.
● This model does not explain memory distortion or the role of emotion in memory
formation.

Thinking and Decision Making

We are constantly bombarded by information. As we have already learned, to cope with so much
information, we often choose not to process it by not paying attention to it. However, when we pay
attention to the stimuli around us, we engage in a process known as thinking. Thinking is the
process of using knowledge and information to make plans, interpret the world, and make
predictions about the world in general.

25
There are several components of thinking - these include problem solving, creativity, reasoning and
decision making. For this chapter, we will focus on decision making which is defined as the process
of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision-maker.
Decision making is needed during problem-solving to reach the conclusion. Problem-solving is
thinking that is directed toward solving specific problems by means of a set of mental strategies. The
concepts of problem-solving, decision making and thinking are very much interconnected. For the IB
when discussing either decision making or problem-solving, you are also addressing the goals of
understanding "thinking and decision making."

The Dual Process Model of Thinking and Decision

Making

The face here on your left demonstrates a clear emotion. Which one is it?
When you look at the photo, you do not have to do a lot of thinking about how
this person feels - she is clearly disgusted.
However, what if I were to ask you the following question:
A mountain goat attempts to scale a cliff sixty feet high. Every minute, the goat
bounds upward three feet but slips back two. How long does it take for the
goat to reach the top?
This question is not as easy as the first. If you have done problems just like this before, you may
have a quick answer, but for most people, it will take a little bit of time to work out the answer - which
is fifty-eight minutes. Although his net progress each minute is one foot, he reaches the top on the
fifty-eighth minute just before he would normally slip back two feet.
The two questions above show that different kinds of problems require different ways of thinking.
The Dual Process Model of thinking and decision making postulates that there are two basic
modes of thinking - what Stanovich and West (2000) refer to as "System 1" and "System 2."

System 1 is an automatic, intuitive and effortless way of thinking. System 1 thinking often employs
heuristics - that is, a ‘rule’ used to make decisions or form judgements. Heuristics are mental short-
cuts that involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others (Lewis, 2008).
This ‘fast’ mode of thinking allows for efficient processing of the often complex world around us but
may be prone to errors when our assumptions do not match the reality of a specific situation. These
errors may have greater consequence in our day to day lives because system 1 thinking is expected
to create a greater feeling of certitude – certainty that our initial response is correct.
Gilbert and Gill (2000) have argued that we become more likely to use System 1 thinking when our
cognitive load is high - that is, when we have lots of different things to think about at the same time,
or we have to process information and make a decision quickly.

26
System 2 is a slower, conscious and rational mode of thinking. This mode of thinking is assumed to
require more effort. System 2 starts by thinking carefully about all of the possible ways we could
interpret a situation and gradually eliminates possibilities based on sensory evidence until we arrive
at a solution. Rational thinking allows us to analyse the world around us and think carefully about
what is happening, why it is happening, what is most likely to happen next and how we might
influence the situation. This mode of thinking is less likely to create feelings of certitude and
confidence.

Characteristics of System 1 and System 2 thinking

System 1 System 2

Context-dependent - Abstract
focuses on existing evidence and ignores absent evidence

Concerns everyday decision making Conscious reasoning

Generates impressions and inclinations Logical and reliable

Not logic-based and prone to error Slow and requiring effort

Operates automatically and quickly with little or no effort Transfers information from one situation
to a new situation

It is important to remember that we often use both of these systems when addressing a problem.
System 1 will reach a quick conclusion and then System 2 will go into further analysis to hopefully
reach a "more correct" conclusion. Because System 1 is activated before System 2 can do its work,
often System 1 interferes with the effectiveness of System 2.

Research in psychology: Wason 1968

One example of research that supports the dual process

model is based on the Wason selection task.
The image to the left is an example of the task. Participants
would be shown this set of cards and asked the following
question: Which card(s) must be turned over to test the idea
that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its
opposite face is red?

27
If you are like most people you will choose the cards with the number "8" and the "red" card. But this
is incorrect. We make this decision based on what Wason called matching bias - that is, in an
abstract problem, we tend to be overly influenced by the wording (or context) of the question. In this
case, the words "even number" and "red."
First, if you guessed "8" and "red", here is an explanation of why that answer is not correct.
● If the 3 card is red, that doesn't violate the rule. The rule makes no claims about odd
numbers.
● If the 8 card is not red, it violates the rule. So, this card is a correct choice.
● If the red card is odd, that doesn't violate the rule. The rule is not "if the card is red on
one face, then its opposite side is an even number."
● If the brown card is even, it violates the rule.

Evans and Wason (1976) found that when asked why they chose the cards that they did, they were
not able to clearly explain their choices.
The Wason selection task provides important evidence for the dual process model. Most people
make the decision of which cards to choose without any reasoning - but as an automatic response to
the context of the question. Wason (1968) found that even when he trained people how to answer
this question, when he changed the context, the same mistakes were made. For example, can you
solve this one?
Which cards would you have to turn over in order to prove if the following statement is true? If there
is a male's name on one side of the card, then there is an IB subject the other side of the card.

Many people would choose John and Chemistry. But you would need to turn over John and
Football.
If you got this wrong, this shows how powerful System 1 can be. It can interfere with System 2, even
when you have learned the "right way to do things."
Griggs and Cox (1982) found that when the task is not abstract, we do not tend to show the
matching bias. Try to solve this final logic puzzle.
Which cards would you have to turn over in order to prove if the following statement is true? If a
person is drinking beer, then that person must be over 18 years old.

28
If you chose "drinking beer" and "16 years of age," then you are correct. Researchers have found
that when the task is not abstract, 75% of people are able to correctly answer the question. When
the task is not abstract, System 1 works just fine in solving the problem.

Biological evidence supports what we see in the Wason Selection Task by showing that different
types of processing may be located in different parts of the brain. Goel et al (2000) had participants
carry out a logic task similar to the ones above. In some cases, the task was abstract in nature (for
example, an odd number and a matching colour). In contrast, some of the tasks were "concrete" in
nature (for example, drinking beer and under 18). The researchers had the participants decide on
the correct choices while in an fMRI. Although there were many common areas of the brain that
were active in solving the problems, there was a clear difference. When the task was abstract, the
parietal lobe was active; when the task was concrete, the left hemisphere temporal lobe was active.
The parietal lobe is often associated with spatial processing. This seems to indicate that the brain
processes these two types of information differently - and thus may be seen as support for the
model.

ATL: Inquiry

One of the ways that researchers study how people make

decisions is to have them think aloud. This is a special type of
interview often called a verbal protocol. Theoretically, this is
an important way for researchers to "see" what people are
thinking.
But how easy do you think that it is for people to explain what
they are thinking?
To find out, carry out the following verbal protocol on a friend or
family member.
Give the participant a piece of paper with the following
problem written on it in the following format.

In addition, give them the following instructions. Please find the

numerical value of each letter in this problem. Each letter is

29
assigned a value from zero to nine. None of the numbers 0 - 9 may be used for more than one
letter. To get you started, D = 5.
Please solve the problem "out loud." Explain your strategy to me so that I can understand how you
are solving this puzzle.
After having completed the puzzle, consider the following questions.
1. How easy was it for your participant to think aloud while solving the problem? Why do you think
that this is true?
2. Do you think that training people to "think aloud" would be helpful to researchers? Why or why
not?

Evaluation of the Dual Process Model

Strengths
There is biological evidence that different types of thinking may be processed in different parts of the
brain.
The Wason selection task and other tests for cognitive biases (see the next part of this chapter) are
reliable in their results.
Limitations
The model can seem to be overly reductionist as it does not clearly explain how (or even if) these
modes of thinking interact or how our thinking and decision making could be influenced by emotion.
The definitions of System 1 and System 2 are not always clear. For example, fast processing
indicates the use of System 1 rather than System 2 processes. However, just because processing is
fast does not mean it is done by System 1. Experience can influence System 2 processing to go
faster.

30
Reliability of Cognitive processes
Essential understandings

1. Memory is a reconstructive process and therefore is open to distortion.

2. Emotion may affect cognitive processes - either increasing or decreasing their reliability.
3. Humans are cognitive misers, often seeking shortcuts in thinking and decision making.
4. Biases affect our ability to make rational decisions.

When we discuss the reliability of a cognitive process, we want to

know how consistent is the information over time. So, in the case
of memory, are our memories consistent, and thus accurate, the
longer that we have them? We know from the research by
Bartlett and Brewer & Treyens that memory can be influenced at
the encoding stage. What about memories that are more
personal? Our first date? Our first day of school? Our wedding
day?
How reliable is memory? The legal system uses eyewitness
testimony which relies on the accuracy of human memory to
decide whether a person is guilty or not. Normally, juries in courts
of law take eyewitness testimony very seriously, but recently the use of DNA technology has
demonstrated what some psychologists have claimed for years: eyewitnesses can be wrong.
Researchers have demonstrated that memory may not be as reliable as we think.

31
ATL: Inquiry

Before we look at the research on the reliability of cognitive processes, let's do a little of our own research on
just how reliable our memories are. To do this activity, you should have at least three other students doing the
same task.
Take a few minutes to write down a description of one of the following things:

● The first day of this school year.

● A description of a favourite teacher's classroom from elementary school
● A description of a field trip that you went on in the last 12 months.

After you have all written your descriptions, swap papers. Do you agree with what your classmates wrote? Are
there errors? What did you realize that you had forgotten when you wrote your own description? Why do you
think that these differences exist between your descriptions of the same event or place?

From Freud to the 21st century

Sigmund Freud (1875–1935) was convinced that forgetting was

caused by repression. According to Freud, people who experience
intense emotional and anxiety-provoking events may use defence
mechanisms, such as repression, to protect their conscious self from
knowing things that they cannot cope with. They send the dangerous
memories to the unconscious, which means that they will deny it ever
happened. However, the memory will continue to haunt them in
symbolic forms in their dreams and lead to feelings of anxiety - or, in
German, Angst - until a therapist is able to retrieve the memory using
specific techniques.
Some researchers claim that these techniques can create false
memories, which people believe to be true. Victims of child abuse
may not want to remember their traumatic experiences, but is it
possible to totally forget these things? This is exactly what the
controversy of false memories is about. The media have described
cases where people say they have recovered memories of child
sexual abuse during therapy. The psychotherapist would not be surprised because the aim of
therapy is to gain access to the unconscious.
The US cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus does not deny that child abuse happens, but she has
argued that some of the recovered memories may simply be created by post-event information
during therapy. Her laboratory research has supported the case that it is possible to manipulate
people’s memories - and that memories, even as intense as those related to abuse, may not always
be reliable.
To test this under controlled conditions, Loftus & Pickerell carried out a study to see if they could get
university students to experience a false memory.

32
Research in psychology: Loftus & Pickerell (1995)
Loftus & Pickerell carried out a study on false memories which
has come to be known as the "Lost in the Mall" study. The aim
of the study was to determine if false memories of
autobiographical events can be created through the power of
suggestion.
Three males and 21 females were the participants. Before the
study, a parent or sibling of the participant was contacted and
asked two questions. First, "Could you tell me three childhood
memories of the participant?" Second, "Do you remember a
time when the participant was lost in a mall?" Data was only
used if the answer to the second question was "no."
The participants then received a questionnaire in the mail. There were four memories that they were
asked to write about and then mail back the questionnaire to the psychologists. Three events were
real and one was “getting lost in the mall.” They were instructed that if they didn’t remember the
event, they should simply write “I do not remember this.”

The participants were interviewed twice over a period of four weeks. They were asked to recall as
much information as they could about the four events. Then they were asked to rate their level of
confidence about the memories on a scale of 1 - 10. After the second interview, they were debriefed
and asked if they could guess which of the memories was the false memory.
About 25% of the participants “recalled” the false memory. However, they also ranked this memory
as less confident than the other memories and they wrote less about the memory on their
questionnaire.
Although this is often seen as strong evidence of the power of suggestion in creating false
memories, only 25% of the participants had them. The study does not tell us why some participants
were more susceptible to these memories than others, but it does show that the creation of false
memories is possible.

ATL: Thinking critically about research

1. How would you describe the ecological validity of the study?

33
 2. What is one ethical concern of this study?
3. What role might demand characteristics have played in the findings?

Reliability and decision making

When discussing thinking and decision making, it is difficult to really talk about "reliability." Instead,
we could talk about how effectively we can actually make decisions. Remember from the beginning
of this chapter that Fiske and Taylor argue that we are "cognitive misers." We take short-cuts
because thinking takes a lot of energy. Often we choose to take the less difficult road because we
don't have the energy or resources to make a more complex, informed decision. In addition, like
with memory, we are influenced by social and cultural factors. We also have biases that influence
our decision making. This chapter will examine how these cognitive biases influence the way we
make decisions

34
Reconstructive Memory

In 2002, Loftus wrote an article on the case of a

Washington DC sniper who killed a number of people.
The police asked people to come forward with
information on the murderer and many reported having
seen a white van in the vicinity of the shootings. In fact,
the sniper’s vehicle was a blue Chevrolet Caprice
automobile. Loftus tried to find out where the myth of
the white van came from. She discovered that a
bystander had mentioned a white van in an interview.
After this, other people reported that they had seen a
white van.
Loftus supports Bartlett’s idea of memory as reconstructive. Loftus claims that the nature of
questions asked by police or in a courtroom can influence witnesses’ memory. Leading questions -
that is, questions that are suggestive in some way - and post-event information facilitate schema
processing which may influence the accuracy of recall. This is called the misinformation effect
Witnesses are often quite confident of what they remember even though their recollections don’t fit
the actual facts. When witnesses try to retrieve a past event, they may unknowingly fill in the gaps
with information based on other past experience, stereotypes or post-event information. Post-event
information is any information that you are exposed to after you have witnessed something. This
information can come in the form of television or social media reports - or from listening to other
people tell their stories.
When eyewitnesses' memories are distorted, it can have very damaging effects. One of the most
famous cases of the effect of memory distortion on the life of an individual is the story of Ronald
Cotton.

35
ATL: Reflection
Ronald Cotton was convicted of rape and imprisoned from 1984 to 1995 as a result of the
eyewitness testimony given in court by Jennifer Thompson, the woman who claimed to be his victim.
He was released after 11 years in prison due to a DNA test that showed he could not have been the
rapist. How is it possible that Jennifer Thompson got it wrong?
The following video is the story of Ronald Cotton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-SBTRLoPuo
Questions to consider
1. What factors do you think had the greatest influence on the distortion of Jennifer Thompon's
memory?
2. Do you think that the police could have done something differently that would have prevented
Ronald Cotton from going to prison?
3. Based on this story, how do you feel about the use of eyewitness testimony in courtrooms?

Such stories of false identification by eyewitnesses inspired Elisabeth Loftus to carry out a series of
studies that highlighted the problem of leading questions in eyewitness testimony. Leading
questions are questions which either by form or content suggest to a witness which answer is
desired.
Previous research has demonstrated that people’s memory for details after a car accident is
inaccurate. Since previous research had shown that estimation of speed was liable to distortion
Loftus and Palmer hypothesized that people’s memory for details of an accident could be distorted if
they were asked to estimate how fast the car was going. Therefore, they set up two experiments
where participants were shown videos of traffic accidents and after that, they had to answer
questions about the accident. The study demonstrates the role that schema can play in how we
recall an event.

Research in psychology: Loftus &

Palmer (1974)

36
The aim of the research was to investigate whether the use of leading questions would affect an
eyewitness's estimation of speed.
45 students participated in the experiment. They were divided into five groups of nine students.
Seven short films of traffic accidents were shown. These films were taken from driver’s education
films.
When the participants had watched a film they were asked to give an account of the accident they
had seen and then they answered a questionnaire with different questions about the accident. There
was one critical question which was the one asking the participant to estimate the speed of the cars
involved in the accident.
The participants were asked the same question but the critical question included different verbs.
Nine participants were asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" The
critical word "hit’" was replaced by ‘collided’, ‘bumped’ or ‘smashed’ or’ contacted’ in the other
conditions which each had nine participants answering the question.
The researchers predicted that using the word ‘smashed’ would result in higher estimations of speed
than using the word ‘hit’. The independent variable was the different intensities of the verbs used in
the critical question and the dependent variable was an estimation of speed.
The mean estimates of speed were highest in the ‘smashed’ condition (40.8 mph) and
lowest in the ‘contacted’ group (31.8 mph). The results were significant at p ≤ 0.005.

Table 1. Speed estimates for the Verbs used in Experiment 1

Verb smashed collided bumped hit contacted

Mean speed estimate (mph) 40.8 39.3 38.1 34.0 31.8

The findings were that the more intense the verb that was used, the higher the average estimate.
A second experiment used 150 students as participants. They were divided into three groups and
they all saw a film of a car accident. Then they were asked questions about the accident, including
the question of the estimation of speed, but this time only including “hit” or “smashed” in two of the
groups. The last group - the control group - did not have a question about speed estimates.
In a second variation of the study, 150 students were randomly allocated to one of three conditions.
participants were asked only one of two questions: Either how fast the cars were going when they
smashed or when they hit each other. A third group, the control group, was not asked anything. The
participants were asked to come back a week later and without re-watching the video, they were
asked one of the following questions: Did you see any broken glass? Yes or no?
The results showed that those that had originally had the question with the more intense verb
(smashed) were more likely to recall seeing broken glass than those that had the less intense verb
(hit).
Table 2. Number of participants recalling broken glass in Experiment 2

Did you see broken glass? Smashed Hit Control

37
 Yes 16 7 6

No 34 43 44

Loftus argues that when the different verbs are used, they activate schemas that have a different
sense of meaning. When the question is asked using smashed, the connotation of the verb
influences how the memory is formed.
These two studies were controlled laboratory experiments, so we should question whether there are
problems with ecological validity. The situation is quite artificial which lowers its external validity.
When watching a video of a car crash, one does not experience the emotions that one would
experience when actually seeing a real car accident. Thus, emotion or stress, which are conditions
normal for most eye-witnesses, are absent in her research.
There may also be a problem in using closed questions, where people have to answer yes or no. In
addition, all of the participants were students, which means that the sample is biased. The research
also begs the question of how well people are able to estimate speed. This too may have had an
influence on the results.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Counterargument - memory is reliable

In response to Loftus's research, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) carried
out an experiment where they examined whether leading questions
would affect the memory of eyewitnesses at a real crime scene. The
crime scene was in Vancouver. A thief entered a gun shop and tied up
the owner before stealing money and guns from the shop. The owner
freed himself, and thinking that the thief had escaped, went outside
the shop. But the thief was still there and shot him twice. Police had
been called and there was gunfire - and the thief was eventually killed.
As the incident took place in front of the shop, there were
eyewitnesses - 21 were interviewed by the police.
The researchers contacted the eyewitnesses four months after the event. 13 of the eyewitnesses
agreed to be interviewed as part of a study. They gave their account of the incident, and then they
were asked questions. Two leading questions were used. Half the group was asked if they saw a
broken headlight on the getaway car. The other half was asked if they saw a yellow panel on the car
(the panel was actually blue). They were also asked to rate their stress on a seven-point scale.
It was found that eyewitnesses were actually very reliable. They recalled a large amount of accurate
detail that could be confirmed by the original police reports. They also did not make errors as a result
of the leading questions and those who were most distressed by the situation had the most accurate
memories.

38
What are the key differences between Yuille and Cutshall's (1986) and Loftus & Palmer's (1974)
experiments?
First, Yuille & Cutshall's study had stronger ecological validity in comparison to Loftus & Palmer's
laboratory study. Because they had actually witnessed a crime, they would have had an emotional
response that is very different from what the students felt watching videos of drivers' education car
crashes. In addition, there was archival evidence (police records of the original testimonies) to
confirm the accuracy of the testimonies.
However, Loftus and Palmer's study has a higher level of reliability. Yuille and Cutshall's study is not
replicable and also not generalizable since it was a one-off incident. There was also no control of
variables, so it is difficult to know the level of rehearsal that was used by the different eyewitnesses.
It could be that those that agreed to be in the study had spent the most time thinking and reading
about the case.
It may very well be that different types of memory are more reliable than others. As we saw in the
case study of HM, although he had lost his declarative memories, he was still able to learn
procedural memories. This clearly indicates that different memories may be located in different parts
of the brain - and that they also may have different levels of reliability.

Research in psychology: Bahrick et al (1975)

The aim of the study was to investigate the reliability of
autobiographical memory over time - specifically the names
and faces of the people that had gone to school together.
Nearly 392 participants aged 17 – 74 were tested. Some of
the participants had been out of high school for only two
weeks. At the other end of the continuum, some of the
participants had graduated 57 years earlier. In order for the
participants to be selected there had to be a published
yearbook available for the graduating class.
The participants were asked to do five tests:

39
 A free recall Name as many people as you can from your graduating class.
test

A photo 10 cards, each with five photos. They were asked which of the five photos
recognition were taken from their own yearbook
test

A name 10 lists of names, each with only one name from the graduating class.
recognition Participants were asked to identify the person from their class.
test

Matching 10 cards each with five pictures. A name was written across the top of the
tests page. The participants were asked to identify the correct photo to match the
name.

Picture The participants were presented with 10 portraits one by one and asked to
cueing test write down the name of the person in the photo.

The free recall test was always given first and then participants were randomly assigned to the order
of the remaining tests. For each question participants were asked to indicate their degree of
confidence on a three-point scale: 3 being certain, 2 being probable and 1 being a guess.
The results of the study showed that participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation were
about 90% accurate in identifying names and faces. After 48 years they were accurate 80% for
identifying names and 70% in identifying faces. Free recall was worse. After 15 years it was 60%
and after 48 years it was 30% accurate.
This study is a cross-sectional study - that is, not a longitudinal study. Therefore, we cannot
account for participant variability. However, because of the large sample size, we are able to
establish a trend in the data that demonstrates that facial recognition has high reliability.

40
Emotion and Memory

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing
when a famous person died? Or when a natural disaster
happened somewhere on the globe? Do you remember
your first day of school? Or your first date? Some events are
not easily forgotten. Why do we so clearly remember some
events and forget others? The key appears to be that we
remember better those experiences that involve emotions.
Emotions are rich and diverse, and they are often what
make the experience something special.
Research seems to show that emotions play a key role in
how memory is formed. But as you will also see, it may not
be that emotional memories are special, it is just that we
think that they are. And that feeling that our memories are
"special" may lead us to believe that they are more accurate than they actually are.

Flashbulb memory theory

41
The theory of Flashbulb memory was first proposed by Brown & Kulik (1977). They defined flashbulb
memory as a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid "snapshot" of the moment when a surprising and
emotionally arousing event happened. They postulated the special-mechanism hypothesis, which
argues for the existence of a special biological memory mechanism that, when triggered by an event
exceeding critical levels of surprise, creates a permanent record of the details and circumstances
surrounding the experience. This implies that flashbulb memories have different characteristics than
"ordinary memories." They also argued that the memories are resistant to forgetting.
Brown and Kulik suggested that there may be a special neural mechanism which triggers an
emotional arousal because the event is unexpected or extremely important. At the time, it was only a
hypothesis, but it is supported by modern neuroscience: emotional events are better remembered
than less emotional events—perhaps because of the critical role of the amygdala. Today the most
commonly accepted model of flashbulb memory is called the importance-driven model. This model
emphasizes that personal consequences determine intensity of emotional reactions.

Research in psychology: Brown and Kulik (1977)

Brown & Kulik's (1977) original study was based on questionnaires given to 80
participants. The participants were given a series of nine events - for example, the
assassination of President Kennedy - and asked if they "recalled the
circumstances in which you first heard about the event." For those events which
they said "yes," they were then asked to write an account of their memory and rate
it on a scale of personal importance.
Brown and Kulik found that people said that they had very clear memories of where they were, what
they did, and what they felt when they first learned about an important public occurrence such as the
assassination of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. 99% of the participants recalled the
circumstances in which they heard about the assassination of the president - thirteen years after the
event.
People in the study were also asked if they had flashbulb memories of personal events. Of 80
participants, 73 said that they had flashbulb memories associated with a personal shock such as the
sudden death of a close relative.
Brown & Kulik observed a much lower rate of flashbulb memories among white participants than
black participants to the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. This shows that the
link between personal importance and the event is important in the creation of a flashbulb memory.
There are several rather important limitations of this original study.
First, there is no way to determine whether the memories stated by the participants are accurate.
There was also no way to test the individual's level of surprise upon hearing the event. Although it
can be assumed that the participants would have been surprised to hear about the assassination of
a public official, this emotional response cannot be measured.
Finally, because of the national importance of these events, the probability that demand
characteristics affected the results is very high. Do you remember the assassination of our
president? Of course, you do.

42
Biological support for flashbulb memory

The original theory by Brown & Kulik was rather vague about the "biological mechanism" that plays a
role. More recent research has found that the amygdala, a small structure in the temporal lobe,
appears to be critical in the brain’s emotional circuit - and it is believed to play a critical role in
emotional memories.
It makes sense that our brains would make sure to store information about fearful experiences in
good detail.
When we are stressed, afraid or surprised, we get a rush of adrenaline. In evolutionary terms, the
brain's ability to remember a fear has most likely played a key role in our survival. Research by
Cahill and McGaugh (1995) (see the biological approach - hormones) found that not only did
participants remember the details when they had an emotional response to a story, but they
remembered less when they had an emotional response but adrenaline levels were artificially
suppressed.

Sharot et al (2007) carried out a study after 9-11 attacks on the

United States to determine the potential role of biological factors
on flashbulb memories. The study was conducted three years
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan. There were 24
participants who were in New York City on that day. Participants’
brain activity was observed using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI).
While in the scanner, they were presented with word cues on a
screen. In addition, the word "Summer" or "September" was
projected along with this word in order to have the participant
link the word to either summer holidays or to the events of 9-11. Participants’ brain activity was
observed while they recalled the event.
After the brain scanning session, participants were asked to rate their memories for vividness, detail,
confidence in accuracy and arousal. Participants were also asked to write down their personal
memories. Only half of the participants actually reported having what would be called "flashbulb
memories" of the event - that is, a greater sense of detail and a strong confidence in the accuracy of
the memory. Those that did report having flashbulb memories also reported that they were closer to
the World Trade Centre on the day of the terrorist attack. Participants closer to the World Trade
Centre also included more specific details in their written memories.
Sharot and her team found that the activation of the amygdala for the participants who were
downtown was higher when they recalled memories of the terrorist attack than when they recalled
events from the preceding summer, whereas those participants who were further away from the
event had equal levels of response in the amygdala when recalling both events. The strength of
amygdala activation at retrieval was shown to correlate with flashbulb memories. These results
suggest that close personal experience may be critical in engaging the neural mechanisms that
produce the vivid memories characteristic of flashbulb memory.
Although this study demonstrates the role of the amygdala as a result of proximity to the event, it
does not explain why someone who simply saw it on television may claim to have a flashbulb

43
memory. The study is correlational in nature and does not establish a cause and effect relationship
which explains how the memory is actually attributed to activity in the amygdala.

Research in psychology: could FBM be genetic

Further research has shown the role of α2b-adrenoceptor,
which is found in the amygdala. The role of the α2b-
adrenoceptor is to promote memory formation - but only if it is
stimulated by adrenaline. Since emotionally charged events are
often accompanied by adrenaline secretion, the α2b-
adrenoceptor acts as a gatekeeper that decides what will be
remembered and what discarded. This could be the "biological
mechanism" that Brown & Kulik were hoping for.
Research by Quervain et al (2007) argues that there may be
genetic roots to one's likelihood of having a flashbulb memory.
The gene for the α2b-adrenoceptor comes in two variations. The researcher hypothesized that one
variation would result in better emotional memories than the other.
To carry out their research, they went to the Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda, where they were
able to work with refugees from the Rwandan civil war and genocide of 1994. With the help of
specially trained interviewers, they recorded how often people in the camp suffered flashbacks and
nightmares about their wartime experiences. They then compared those results with the α2b-
adrenoceptor genes in their volunteers.
As predicted, those with the less common version had significantly more flashbacks than those with
only the common one.

Criticism of flashbulb memory

Neisser (1982) has questioned the idea of flashbulb memories. People do not always know that
an event is important until later, so it is unclear how flashbulb memories could be created at the
moment of the event. He suggests that the memories are so vivid because the event itself is
rehearsed and reconsidered after the event. According to Neisser, what is called a flashbulb
memory may simply be a well-rehearsed story. The flashbulb memories are governed by a
storytelling schema following a specific structure, such as place (where were we?), activity
(what were we doing?), informant (who told us?), and affect (how do we feel about it?).
On 28 January 1986, the seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger were killed in a
tragic accident. It was a shocking experience for those who watched the shuttle launch in
person or on television. Neisser and Harsch (1992) investigated students’ memory accuracy of
the incident 24 hours after the accident, and then again two and a half years later. When filling
out the second questionnaire which asked questions like - where were you when you heard the
about the Challenger disaster? Who were you with? What were you doing? The participants
were also asked how confident they were of these memories.
The participants were very confident that their memories were correct, but the researchers
found that 40 per cent of the participants had distorted memories in the final reports they made.
Possibly, post-event information had influenced their memories. The researchers concluded that
emotional intensity was associated with greater memory confidence, but not with accuracy.

44
Cultural dimensions also seem to play a role in flashbulb memories. Kulkofsky et al (2011)
looked at the role of culture in flashbulb memory in five cultures: China, Germany, Turkey, the
UK and the USA. Participants were given five minutes to recall as many memories as they could
of public events occurring in their lifetime. They were then asked to complete a "memory
questionnaire" for each event where they were asked if they remembered where they first heard
of the event. If so, then they were asked a series of questions to determine the extent of the
FBM. They were then asked to answer questions about the importance of the event to them
personally.
The researchers found that in a collectivistic culture like China, personal importance and
intensity of emotion played less of a role in predicting FBM, compared with more individualistic
cultures that place greater emphasis on an individual's personal involvement and emotional
experiences. Because focusing on the individual's own experiences is often de-emphasized in
the Chinese context, there would be less rehearsal of the triggering event compared with
participants from other cultures - and thus a lower chance of developing an FBM. However, it
was found that national importance were equally linked to FBM formation across culture.

Evaluation of flashbulb memory

Strengths
● There is biological evidence that supports the role of emotion in memory formation - for
example, McGaugh & Cahill (1995) and Sharot (2007).

Limitations
● Neisser argues that it is one's level of confidence, not accuracy, which defines FBM.
● There are cultural differences that indicate that rehearsal may play the most important
role in the development of FBM.
● Often with real-life research on the topic, it is impossible to verify the accuracy of
memories.
● It is not possible to measure one's emotional state at the time of an event - thus making
it impossible to demonstrate a clear causal explanation.

45
Biases in Thinking and Decision-
Making
Although System 1 thinking is an efficient way to process the
information we receive from the world around us (meaning that it is
fast and uses minimal effort) it is also prone to errors because it
depends on assumptions about the world which are sensible but
which do not always match the complexities of the real world which
are difficult to predict! These assumptions are often referred to as
heuristics – a ‘mental shortcut’; it is usually a simple rule which is
applied with little or no thought and quickly generates a ‘probable’
answer.
Demonstrating the existence of heuristics is a good way to provide
empirical support for a distinct intuitive, fast and effortless system 1
mode of thinking. Understanding common errors in the way people
think about the world can be useful as it helps us to anticipate poor decision making and take steps
to improve it.
Heuristics can result in patterns of thinking and decision making which are consistent, but
inaccurate. These patterns of thought are usually described as cognitive biases. However, it is
important to note that some cognitive biases are not dependent on a heuristic – for example, the
bias may be the result of an individual trying to protect self-esteem or trying to fit into a group. For
this text, the term "cognitive bias" will be used as a general term to include heuristics.
There are many different examples of cognitive biases that we could discuss. We will look at three
biases: anchoring bias, peak-end rule and framing effect. You do not need to master all three of
these for your exams; you should be able to discuss one or more of them.

Anchoring Bias
Anchoring Bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on the first
piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making
decisions. During decision-making, anchoring occurs when
individuals use an initial piece of information to make
subsequent judgments.
A good example of this is when you go to buy something in the
market in Marrakesh, Morocco. When you walk into the shop
and see that beautiful lamp that you never knew you had
always wanted, it is time to start bargaining. When you ask the
shop owner for the price, the price he gives you becomes an anchor for your negotiation.
If he starts off the price at 100 USD, you will then judge the price that you pay based on that first
price. If you end up paying 60 USD for the lamp, you will feel that you were successful in your
bargaining. If he starts off with 250 USD, you will be thrilled if you are able to pay only 140 USD!
(Wow, you must be a tough bargainer!) But the reality is that unless you are an avid lamp collector,
you have no personal understanding of the value of the lamp. Your decision to buy the lamp, and

46
your subsequent sense of satisfaction with the price, all comes down to the first piece of information
you received - the original price quoted by the shop owner.
Anchoring bias is not just about shopping. Englich and Mussweiler (2001) found that anchoring bias
could play a significant role in determining sentencing in courtrooms. For their study, they used 19
young trial judges (15 male and 4 female) – with an average age of 29.37 and with an average of
9.34 months of experience. They were given a scenario of a rape case, including the demand from
the prosecutor for either a 34-month sentence or a 2-month sentence. When told that the prosecutor
recommended a sentence of 34 months, participants recommended on average eight months longer
in prison than when told that the sentence should be 2 months – for the same crime.
One of the original studies on anchoring bias was done by Tversky & Kahnemann (1974). In this
study, high school students were used as participants. Participants in the “ascending condition”
were asked to quickly estimate the value of 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6 X 7 X 8. Those in the “descending
condition” were asked to quickly estimate the value of 8 X 7 X 6 X 5 X 4 X 3 X 2 X 1. Since we read
from left to right, the researchers assumed that group 1 would use "1" as an anchor and predict a
lower value than the group that started with "8" as the anchor. The expectation was that the first
number seen would bias the estimate of the value by the participant. The researchers found that the
median for the ascending group was 512; the median for the descending group was 2250. The
actual value is 40320.

Research in Psychology: Strack and Mussweiller (1997)

The aim of Strack and Mussweiler's (1997) study was to test the influence of
anchoring bias on decision making. The researchers used an opportunity sample
of 69 German undergraduates recruited from the university canteen at lunchtime;
they were asked if they would take part in a general knowledge questionnaire.
The participants answered questions on a computer screen. Each question had
two components.

47
In the first component, participants were asked to make a comparative judgment about something.
This question acted as the anchor. In one condition, Strack and Mussweiler used an implausible
anchor to see if it would have an effect. The questions were:
● Did Mahatma Gandhi die before or after the age of 9? [low anchor, implausible]
● Did Mahatma Gandhi die before or after the age of 140? [high anchor, implausible]

In the second component, participants were then asked to provide an absolute estimate for the
target information.
● How old was Mahatma Gandhi when he died? (The actual answer is 78)

Results were calculated as the mean value offered for the second task. The data below shows the
mean values for the estimated ages in response to the Mahatma Gandhi question:

High Anchor Low Anchor

Implausible Anchor value 66.7 50.1

The anchor clearly influenced the final value offered. Faced with an unknown, participants were
‘anchored’ by the most recent, seemingly relevant information. It is interesting to note that the low
anchor (9) appears to have been more influential than the high anchor (140). This could reflect the
belief that the high anchor is in fact impossible, rather than implausible.

Peak-end rule
The peak-end rule is a heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt
at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average
of every moment of the experience. The effect occurs regardless of whether the experience is
pleasant or unpleasant. It is not that other information aside from that of the peak and end of the
experience is forgotten, but rather it is not used in reaching a decision or judgment.
I caught myself using this heuristic during Prague’s annual restaurant festival. A bunch of friends
and I went to dinner. On the way home, we talked about the restaurant and I said, “I wasn’t very
impressed by the meal.” My friends started to laugh. They said, “John! You were smitten by the
soup. You must have said five times how great it was! You were not happy that a man at the next
table lit up a cigar and when you asked him if he could please not smoke, he yelled at you and told

48
you that he was there first. But, then came the main course. You said that you thought the main
course was perfectly presented and amazing both in texture and taste. You only complained that
the dessert wasn’t what you expected.” Aha. I had employed the peak-end rule. First, the
altercation with the other customer (a peak - or, to be honest, a trough!) influenced my perception of
the evening as a negative one. In addition, the fact that I was disappointed at the end of the dinner
meant that my perception of the whole dinner was rather negative. The flip side could have been
true. A mediocre dinner with a great dessert can be a really positive memory.
We often use this with movies as well. Think about the films we watch. We are more likely to
recommend a movie that has a slow start but an amazing ending than a movie that has an amazing
start but a rather lame ending.
In one of the original studies on the peak-end rule, Kahnemann et al (1993) asked participants to
hold their hand up to the wrist in painfully cold water until they are invited to remove it. With their free
hand, participants recorded how strong the pain was with 1 finger being little to no pain and 5 fingers
being strong pain. The researchers used a repeated measures design. The two conditions were:
Condition 1: 60 seconds of immersion in water at 14 degrees Celsius. At the end of the 60
seconds the experimenter instructed them to take their hand out.
Condition 2: 90 seconds of immersion. The first 60 seconds are the same as Condition 1. At
the end of 60 seconds, the researcher opened a valve that allowed slightly warmer water to
flow into the tub. The water temperature rose by about 1 degree Celsius.
The participants were then told that there would be one more trial - either a repeat of Condition 1 or
a repeat of Condition 2. Now, if you look at the two conditions, it makes sense that Condition 1 is
the smarter choice. Both conditions have the same level of pain for 60 seconds - but after that time,
Condition 1 gets a warm towel while Condition 2 gets a slight decrease in pain for an extra 30
seconds.
80% of the participants chose the second condition! This is a clear example of the peak-end rule.
The fact that the second trial was longer was not taken into account by the participants (something
called duration neglect). They were basing their choice on how the condition ended, rather than
making an overall assessment of the pain.
So, how can we use this? This heuristic is particularly problematic in the study of relationships.
Much of the research done is retrospective - for example, research on marriages that fall apart often
is carried out only “after the fact.” This means that the research is open to memory distortion on
behalf of the participants. In a study of why a relationship ended, the researcher may ask the
participant to rate the level of disclosure in the relationship. If the couple was estranged during the
last year of the relationship, it is very possible that due to peak-end rule, the perception will be that
disclosure was “always a problem” in the relationship, when in fact, the relationship may have been
quite healthy for a significant amount of time that the couple was together.

Framing effect

Prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) describes the way people choose between
alternatives that involve risk, where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The theory states that
people evaluate these losses and gains using heuristics. One of those heuristics is the framing
effect, in which people react to choices depending on how they are presented or "framed." People
prefer certain outcomes when information is framed in positive language, but prefer less certain
outcomes when the same information is framed in negative language. In simple terms, when we

49
expect success we prefer a definite win rather than a possible win, but when things look bad we will
gamble on an uncertain defeat rather than a definite loss.
Research in psychology: Tversky and Khaneman (1986)
Tversky & Kahneman (1986) aimed to test the influence of positive
and negative frames on decision making. The researchers used a self-
selected (volunteer) sample of 307 US undergraduate students.
Participants were asked to make a decision between one of two options
in a hypothetical scenario where they were choosing how to respond to
the outbreak of a virulent disease. For some of the participants, the
information was framed positively while for others it was framed
negatively.
The scenario read as follows:
Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is
expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been
proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs is
as follows.
In condition 1, the participants were given the "positive frame." Their choices were the following:
If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.
If Program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3
probability that no people will be saved.
In this condition, 72% of the participants chose Program A, whereas only 28% chose program B.
In condition 2, the participants were given the "negative frame." Their choices were the following:
If Program C is adopted 400 people will die.
If Program D is adopted there is 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that
600 people will die.
In this condition, 22% of the participants chose Program C and 78% chose Program D.
It is important to note that all four options, (A, B, C, and D) are effectively the same; 200 people will
survive and 400 people will not.
The results clearly demonstrate the influence of the frame. Where information was phrased
positively, (the number of people who would be saved) people took the certain outcome, (option A)
and avoided the possibility of a loss in the less certain option (option B). By contrast, when the
information was phrased in terms of people dying (a negative frame) people avoided the certain loss
(option C) and took a chance on the less certain option D.

It is important to consider cultural differences in thinking and decision-making. For example, a recent
meta-analysis (Wang et al, 2016) of research on loss aversion tasks like the one above has shown
that people from more individualistic cultures are more risk-averse than those from a collectivist
culture.

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Critical thinking about cognitive biases

A quick Google search will show you that there are many more cognitive biases than the three that
are discussed in this chapter. These show that we often use System 1 thinking that does not spend
the time to examine carefully what our options are in order to make "informed choices." But it is
difficult to measure the actual use of such biases in real-life situations. Remember the example of
buying a lamp in the market. It is possible that an anchor may play a key role in determining how
much you are willing to pay for the lamp - but in this naturalistic situation, there are also other
factors: how much money I have to spend, the amount of time I am willing to spend bargaining, my
emotional state at the time of the purchase, whether I like the shop owner or my past experience in
buying lamps. And that is not a complete list.
Remember, too, that we are not very good at explaining our thinking processes. Since heuristics are
often used unconsciously, our explanation as to how we decided what was the best price to pay is
most likely a rationalization, rather than a true reflection of our thinking processes.
Much of the research in this chapter is done with Western university student samples under highly
controlled - and rather artificial - conditions. Many of the questions given to the students would be of
little interest to them and were not asked in a way that was natural. The studies lack ecological
validity as well as cross-cultural support - assuming that cognitive biases are universal.

Reliability of System 1 thinking

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System 1 thinking is most often associated with errors – we make intuitive assumptions about the
world which will sometimes be mistaken. However, it has also been argued that System 1 can be
very effective for experts. This process is sometimes called thin slicing and suggests that experts
are sometimes able to know the correct answer to complex questions immediately, often without
knowing why!
Thin slicing is defined as making very quick inferences about the state, characteristics, or details of
an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information. One example is the famous tennis
coach Vic Braden who was able to predict when a tennis player was about to double fault with
almost 100% accuracy. Interestingly, Vic was unable to say how he knew even after viewing
hundreds of hours of video footage!
The following study was carried out to test whether psychologists could accurately predict if a couple
in marriage counseling would end up divorced, after only a few minutes of conversation. The
Specific Affect (SPAFF) coding system has been developed and used by John Gottman and his
team to thin slice the way married couples communicate. This system has allowed Gottman to
predict how likely it is that couples will still be together in six years' time based on only three minutes
of the first marriage counseling conversation. This then makes it possible to design effective
marriage counseling for these couples.

Research in psychology: Carerre & Gottman (1999)

Carerre & Gottman, (1999) wanted to test the usefulness of the SPAFF system to predict long-term
relationship success based on thin-slicing of interaction between couples.
In this prospective study, 124 newlywed couples were recruited using a purposive sampling method.
Sampling included an attempt to stratify the sample; couples reflected a range of economic and
ethnic demographics in the Seattle area. Each couple completed a survey, (each husband and wife
completed the survey separately) and then discussed the results with a researcher in order to
identify one or two problematic issues in their relationship.
These issues were then used as the basis for a 15-minute discussion which was video recorded and
then coded using SPAFF. Couples were then checked once a year for six years to find out if they
were still married.
SPAFF scores from the originally recorded discussion were compared for husbands and wives who
were still married after six years and those who were not. The results below are based entirely on
the first 3 minutes of the 15-minute discussion.

Negative emotions Positive Total

Emotion
s

Married husbands -33.5 85.7 52.2

Divorced husbands -59.7 45.9 -13.8

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 Married wives -39.1 85.0 45.9

Divorced wives -66.9 46 -20.9

The data clearly shows that observers using SPAFF had rated the communication between couples
doomed to divorce as containing far more indications of negative emotions and far fewer signs of
positive emotion. This was true for both husbands and wives although the data suggests the system
is more successful when applied to husbands. This could of course simply reflect a tendency for
men to be less emotionally honest in terms of acknowledging negative aspects of their relationship.
Gottman’s research with SPAFF suggests that we can learn to improve our intuitive thinking. What
could this mean in terms of the interaction between System 1 and System 2?

ATL: Communication

It is clear that cognitive biases can affect our decision-making - sometimes in a negative or
disadvantageous manner.
First, make a list of the key decisions that are made by teenagers in your community.
Second, think about how one of the cognitive biases in this chapter may affect one of those
decisions and write a cautionary tale that warns others of the pitfalls of cognitive biases in decision
making.

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Emotion and Decision-Making
The Dual Processing Model of thinking and decision making suggests
that we have two distinct modes of thinking: an intuitive, fast mode of
thinking (System 1) and a slower, conscious and rational mode of
thinking (System 2). However, this model does not directly address
the role of emotion in thinking and decision making.
Emotion is an important factor in decision making, although most
models do not address exactly how and why emotion might influence
the way we think and the decisions we make. Many researchers
believe that an increase in emotion will increase our dependence on System 1 as cognitive load is
increased, making cognitive processing by System 2 difficult.
Most people would probably say that their decision making is impaired by emotion; that we think
more clearly and make more logical decisions when our thinking is free of strong emotions.
However, recent neurobiological research has indicated that emotion may be essential to good
decision making.
The somatic marker hypothesis suggests that good decision making depends on an ability to
access appropriate emotional information linked to the situation in which the decision is being made.

The Somatic Marker Hypothesis (Damasio,

1994)

Neurologist Antonio Damasio noticed that some of the brain-damaged patients he was working with
consistently made poor decisions, often doing things which were likely to negatively impact their
welfare. This was even true when they had made the ‘bad’ decision before and suffered the
consequences. Demasion's Somatic Marker Hypothesis argues that emotional processes guide
decision-making.

54
 Damasio realised all of these patients had suffered bilateral damage (damage in
both hemispheres of the brain) in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).
These patients found it hard to plan ahead and would repeatedly make the same
‘bad’ decisions which caused them to lose money, friends or status. Most
mysteriously, when their decision making was tested in a lab environment there
did not seem to be any problem; their intellect and memory capacity seemed
unaffected by the damage to their brains.
Damasio began to wonder if damage to the vmPFC somehow caused patients to
lose a connection between emotional information and their decision making. The vmPFC seems to
be involved in somatic markers of emotions associated with thoughts and memories. Somatic
markers are feelings in the body that are associated with emotions, such as the association of rapid
heartbeat with anxiety or of nausea with disgust. Domasio wondered what would happen if this layer
of information was removed when we try to decide what to do in a difficult situation.

ATL: Communication

The somatic marker hypothesis can perhaps be best understood with the diagram below.

Questions
1. This diagram does not explain what the exact somatic markers are that the vmPFC would use to
make this decision. What do you think they might be?

55
2. Create your own version of a diagram to explain the Somatic Marker Hypothesis with regard to
one of the following decisions:
A. You have already had a lot to drink. Someone offers you "one more."
B. You are late coming home from a party; someone you meet at the party tells you "let's cut
through this dark alley!"

Bechara et al (1999) developed a game known as the Iowa Gambling Task to test the Somatic
Marker Hypothesis. The aim of the study was to determine the role of damage to the vmPFC on
decision making. In this game, participants saw four decks of cards on a computer screen. The
decks were labeled A, B, C, and D at the top end of each deck. Using a mouse, the participant could
click on a card on any of the four decks. Every time the participant chose one of the decks, the face
of the card appeared on top of the deck and a message was displayed on the screen indicating the
amount of money the participant had won or lost. Participants were asked to decide which deck to
select on 100 trials, although they were not told in advance how many trials there would be. In
addition, a test of skin conductive response was given as means of measuring "emotional response."
The sample was made up of 13 healthy participants and 5 participants with vmPFC damage.
The decks were not random. Decks A and B would return high rewards initially but would then
deliver larger and larger losses as the game went on. These decks should, therefore, be identified as
‘bad’ and participants should learn to avoid them through the experience of the game. Decks C and
D, by contrast, would deliver small rewards initially but would also have very small losses as the
game continued. These decks should, therefore, be identified as ‘good’ and participants should learn
to favour them through experience of the game.
The results showed that control participants (with no brain damage) quickly learned the best strategy
while those participants with bilateral damage in the vmPFC did not fare so well. It also showed that
the control participants developed anticipatory skin conductive responses to the disadvantageous
decks (A and B); however, the vmPFC had a significantly lower anticipatory SCR and no clear
difference in SCR between the two conditions.

56
Not only is emotion an important part of effective decision making, but increased emotion seems to
be one way we can ‘know’ when we are making the right decision - or at least we think we are!

Research in psychology: De Martino et al (2006)

De Martino et al, (2006) aimed to explore the interaction

of emotion in a financial decision-making task.

A volunteer sample of 20 British undergraduates was

asked to complete a simple financial decision-making task
while brain activity was measured using an fMRI scanner.
Information was presented to participants in terms of
either a loss (negative frame - you had £50, but have lost
£30) or a gain (positive frame –you had £50, and you can
keep £20). The outcome in both frames is, in fact, the
same - you have £20 you didn’t have before.
In the positive frame participants were then offered a
chance to gamble (risky option – outcome is unknown) or keep £20 (sure option – a certain ‘win’). In
this positive frame, ‘loss aversion’ predicts that people will prefer the sure option and keep £20 – the
risky ‘gamble’ option represents a possible loss.
In the negative frame participants were offered a chance to gamble (risky option – outcome is
unknown) or lose £30 (sure option – a certain ‘loss’). In this negative frame, ‘loss aversion’ predicts
that people will prefer the risky ‘gamble’ option as the ‘sure’ option states a certain loss.
As expected, participants were far more likely to choose to gamble in the negative frame condition,
even though the options are in fact exactly the same as in the positive frame.
fMRI results demonstrated an interesting pattern of activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain's
limbic system which is regarded as being central to emotion. Participants recorded a significant
increase in activity whenever they selected the ‘loss averse’ option, regardless of the frame in use.
A key question for this study is the direction of causality. It is difficult to be sure if the emotion
associated with increased activity in the amygdala is guiding decision making or if it is a
consequence of decision making. Either way, it is clear that emotion and decision making are
interacting.

Evaluation of the somatic marker hypothesis

57
Most of the research done to support this theory uses the Iowa Gambling Task. This raises the
question of how robust the theory is in explaining decision-making behaviour.
In one version of this study, (Bechara et al, 1997) the team demonstrated that vmPFC patients
continued to select cards from decks A and B even though they had told researchers that they knew
these decks were disadvantageous. This may indicate that it is not solely a lack of emotional
feedback that leads to the patients' poor decision making.
Wright and Racow (2017) conducted a computerized test using the wonderfully named Balloon
Analogue Risk Task (BART). In this task, the participant was presented with a balloon and offered
the chance to earn money by pumping the balloon up by clicking a button. Each click caused the
balloon to inflate and money to be added to "the pot", up until some point at which the balloon was
over inflated and exploded. Thus, each pump brought greater risk, but also greater potential reward.
Although they did find that ‘bad’ decisions, (where participants burst the balloon) did result in
increased emotional response - indicated by Galvanic Skin Response - they did not find any
evidence that this somatic marker helped participants avoid bad decisions in future tasks.
The Somatic Marker Hypothesis may demonstrate that decision making is improved by access to
emotion which is relevant to the specific decision being made, but what about decisions made during
periods of intense emotion not connected to the decision itself? Such an approach may be a more
useful focus for research into emotion and decision making in the real world.

ATL: Reflection
McCormick and Telzer (2017) have provided some fMRI evidence that risky decision making in
teenagers could be related to a developmental process where the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC)
is less sensitive to negative feedback – so there is a reduced emotional response to negative
outcomes.
Watch the following video where Sarah-Jayne Blackmore talks about the role of the mPFC in
teenage behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zVS8HIPUng

Think about the risky behaviours that you engage in. Do you think that what you do is significantly
different from what you see adults doing?
What are three things that Blakemore says that you think are important to understanding the role of
the frontal cortex in risk-taking behaviour?
Do you think that Blakemore's arguments explain why teenagers engage in ‘riskier’ behaviour? If not,
how else could we explain this behaviour?

The Digital World

ATL: Essential Understandings
1. Research on the effects of technology is relatively new and not yet highly reliable.

58
2. Interacting with the digital environment has both positive and negative effects on our cognitive
processes.

According to the UK's Office of Communications (2015),

young people between the ages of 16 and 24 spend more
than 27 hours a week on the Internet. The average adult
spends more than 20 hours online a week, which includes
time spent on the Internet at work.
More and more, technology is an essential part of
classrooms around the globe - let it be one-to-one laptop
programs, use of mobile devices, Skype conversations
between schools around the world, or digital textbooks (like
the one that you are reading). Programs like the Khan
Academy have made personalized learning possible - that is, students are able to learn at their own
pace by interacting with an online app.
The question psychologists want to answer is - is this good for us?
Although computers and the Internet have been around for some time, it is only now that we are
beginning to see what we believe may be the effects of living so much of our lives in the digital
world. In the past few years, we have seen the following headlines:
● If you are going to take notes, do it by hand!
● New study links Facebook to depression
● In our digital world, are young people losing the ability to read emotions?
● Internet use may harm teen health: Scientists find that heavy Internet use puts
teens at risk for high blood pressure

It does seem like a lot of the news is negative. But there is good news as well.
● Gaming improves multi-tasking skills (Anguera, J. A, 2013)
● Research shows that video-game play improves basic mental abilities
● Social media can actually help teens suffering from depression and anxiety

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the headlines above, there is one fundamental
problem: Most of the research on the effects of technology have not been replicated. The question of
how we can effectively investigate the effect of technology on our cognition is a complicated one.
And as you can probably guess, there is a lot of researcher bias on both sides of the aisle.
ATL: Thinking Critically
Choose one of the headlines above and read the article that it links to. Prepare a short presentation
where you summarize the article for your class. When summarizing it, consider the following
questions:
1. Do you find the conclusions credible? Why or why not?
2. What would you have to consider if you replicated the study in your own community?
3. What are the potential implications of the research?

59
Research in psychology: Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014)

Taking notes on laptops rather than taking notes by hand is

increasingly common. Today it is normal to see lecture halls full of
students tapping away.
A study by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) suggests that using
laptops - or other devices - to take notes may actually hinder
learning. Their argument is that when we take notes by hand, we
cannot write fast enough to "keep up" with the professor; as a
result, we have to process information and put what the professor
says into our own words in order to get it on paper. This
processing helps the learning process better than taking notes on
the computer, regardless of how "complete" those computer notes
may be.
To test their theory, the researchers used a volunteer sample of 109 UCLA undergraduate students,
27 of which were male.
Participants were given either a laptop or pen and paper and were instructed to take notes on a
series of four lectures. The lectures were films of a graduate student reading from a teleprompter.
The lectures had the following themes: bats, bread, vaccines, and respiration.
Participants were told that they would be tested in one week on the content of the lectures - and they
would not be allowed to take their notes home with them. Each participant watched the lecture on a
private monitor with headphones in order to avoid any distractions.
The two conditions - handwriting and laptop note-taking - were then randomly divided into two more
conditions. In the "study" condition, the participants were given 10 minutes to study their notes
before being tested. In the "no-study" condition, the participants were immediately tested without a
chance to review their notes. There were 40 questions - 10 for each lecture. The questions were
categorized by the researchers into "factual" questions and "conceptual" questions.
Here are their results. What conclusions can you draw from the means and standard deviations
listed below?

ATL: Thinking critically

The study went viral on the Internet when it was published. Do you think that this is a good study?
Why or why not?

60
What do you think about taking notes in the classroom? Is there a more effective way to do it than
was done in this study? How would you be able to demonstrate that your suggestion is a more
effective note-taking method?

Ethics and Internet research: ‘That’ Facebook Experiment . . .

The study by Mueller and Oppenheimer used an experimental design and a volunteer sample. But
as you can see, it was not very natural. The lectures were disconnected from the interests of the
students, the participants were questioned a week later without being allowed to access their notes,
and the trivia-style questions that were asked all made for a rather artificial experiment. Field
studies are also being used in psychology to study the effect of technology on our cognitive
processes.. However, attempts to avoid demand characteristics by carrying out field experiments
have raised serious ethical concerns with regard to informed consent.
Interest in how we study the impact of the digital world on the way we think, the decisions we make,
and our emotional state intensified following the publication of a study often referred to as a ‘secret
experiment’ conducted by Facebook.
Many people were angry that the study (Kramer et al, (2014)) had manipulated the information they
received in their Facebook feed in order to test how this slight manipulation might affect them
emotionally. Despite widespread and high-profile criticism, Kramer responded with a passionate
defense of the study.
This research raises important questions about the way in which research should be conducted as
well as the extent to which corporations should be bound by the same rules as academics. The
study was conducted as part of an internal investigation within Facebook, thereby falling beyond the
scope of the ethics committee at the relevant university. Facebook confirmed that the manipulation
fell within their own Data Use Policy. It is worth considering the fact that everything that appears in
your Facebook feed does so.

Ethics in psychology: Kramer et al (2014)

Kramer et al (2014) wanted to test the idea that information in an individual’s Facebook feed could
cause emotional contagion - that is, the transfer of emotional states from one person to another.
Emotional contagion is well established as something which can happen in face to face interaction
and it seemed clear that this could also occur in response to the information we see on our
Facebook feed.
To test this possibility the research team collaborated with Facebook to alter the content of the news
feed seen by 689,003 Facebook users. The research used an existing Facebook algorithm and a
software system to identify posts containing positive and negative words. For some participants
between 10% and 90% of the ‘positive’ posts (posts containing one or more positive words) of their
friends were omitted from their feed. For other participants, 10% to 90% of the negative posts of their
friends were omitted. A control group for each condition was also assessed, where a proportion of
their feed was omitted at random. Importantly, researchers never viewed or altered any posts
manually; this was all done automatically by algorithms. The words used by participants in their own
posts were analysed during the week of the experimental manipulation and the percentage of
positive and negative words used in these posts was recorded.

61
As expected, when participants had the positive content of their news feed reduced, they were less
likely to use positive language in their own posts.
Also as expected, when participants had the negative content of their news feed reduced, they were
less likely to use negative language in their own posts.
Kramer et al concluded that the emotional content to which we are exposed through our Facebook
feed does indeed affect our own emotional state; when we see fewer positive posts we are less
likely to post positive events or positive opinions of our own.
Thinking critically
Do you think that this is an ethical approach to research? Why or why not?
Please note - emotion is not an example of a cognitive process. This study is included to encourage
thinking about ethics.
The manipulation of news feed was done remotely and without any direct involvement of any
researchers or Facebook staff. All participants were still able to see all posts if they took the time to
view their friend’s ‘wall’. Kramer has argued that the research was important given the scale and
intensity of social media use, especially Facebook. However, as none of the participants were
aware of any manipulation, there is little reason to suppose they would do so. Kramer argues that
the benefit of such research outweighs the costs of failing to provide any form of consent.

Survey research

Much research into the way we are affected by the digital world has been conducted using survey
data, often collected online. This method has several benefits, most notably the absence of any
significant ethical concerns as participants are often fully informed or are at least provided with a full
debrief and the right to withdraw their data if they are unhappy when the study is completed.
However, research conducted with surveys consistently raises concerns in terms of both internal and
external validity.

62
One limitation is social desirability effect. Even when survey data is collected anonymously it
remains true that many participants will be reluctant to provide any information about themselves
which could be negatively judged. For example, participants may feel that is not socially desirable to
spend too much time online and may, therefore, under-estimate the average time they spend in
online activity. It is also likely that people are unwilling to honestly describe what they are doing
when they are online; use of pornography and online gambling are certainly likely to be under-
represented in any survey seeking to measure Internet use!
Another limitation is sampling bias. Surveys are often sent out or made available to very large
numbers of people on the assumption that only some of them will choose to respond. This is very
sensible from a practical point of view, (especially if surveys can be distributed without cost by
electronic means) but it can reduce the population validity of the research. We might consider why
some people would take part in a survey about social media while other people choose not to do so.
For example, is it likely that those taking part have a particular interest in social media (or a
particular aversion to it)? In either case, this may make it difficult to generalize results to a wider
population.

Memory in the Digital World

In 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote an article for the magazine
“The Atlantic” which asked a provocative question: Is
Google making us stupid? As computers have become not
just a significant part of our social life, but also our day at
school, the use of technology has raised many questions.
There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence where people
claim that computers either help or hinder their learning, but
up until now, there is no definitive answer to Carr’s
question. The belief that people are using the Internet as a
personal memory bank is referred to as the Google effect.
The question is, does it really exist?

A different type of memory?

So far in this unit, we have discussed short-term and long-term memory, procedural memory,
episodic memory, and semantic memory. Wegner et al (1985) suggested that an additional form of
memory might exist within groups of closely linked individuals. Such transactive memory systems
are expected to be more than just the sum total of memories stored by the members of the group.

63
They also include knowledge of where information can be found (i.e. who knows what) and how to
access it (i.e. the best way to extract information from another member of the group). Collaboration
between group members may also be essential to the retrieval of essential information.
We often see this type of memory in relationships. For example, Dad may not remember the
birthdays of the family members because he knows that mom will remember them. Mom does not
remember who starred in which film because she knows that her son will remember that. Because
the relationships allow access to that information whenever it is needed, there is no need to commit
that information to long-term memory.

ATL: Reflection

If you are like most people, there are some things that you
do not remember, but that you rely on others for recalling
the information.
What are some examples of things that you rely on your
parents for remembering? Your siblings? Your friends?
Although transactive memory can be a positive way to
manage our lives, can you see how it could be detrimental if
you always study with the same friends for your psychology
exams? What could be some of the drawbacks of reliance
on this type of memory?
Frequent use of Internet search engines and databases may represent a new type of transactive
memory system that reduces reliance on our own individual memory stores. Sparrow et al, 2011
wondered if the Internet has become an enormous transactive memory store. In this model,
individuals would no longer need to remember information but would simply need to remember how
to search for it effectively using a search engine such as Google.
One prediction would be that we invest less effort in committing information to memory if we believe
we can simply retrieve the information from an external memory store such as Google at a later
date. Sparrow investigated this type of transactive memory in a simple but effective lab experiment.
Participants were asked to type 40 trivia facts into the computer. Some of the facts were expected to
represent new knowledge (An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain) whilst other facts were more

64
likely to be already known to the participants (The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-
entry over Texas in Feb. 2003).
The experiment used a 2 x 2 independent samples design – meaning that two independent variables
were manipulated at two different levels. Half of the participants were told that the computer would
store everything they typed for later reference while the other half were told the information would be
erased. Within each of these groups, half of the participants were explicitly asked to try to remember
the information. This meant that four conditions were present in the study:

Save Remember Save not asked to remember

Erase Remember Erase not asked to remember

The results showed that being asked to remember the information made no significant difference to
the participants’ ability to recall the trivia facts, but there was a significant difference if the participant
believed that the information would be stored in the computer.

Percentage of trivia facts recalled

Asked to remember Not asked to remember

Computer will save info 19 22

Computer will erase info 29 31

Participants who believed they would be able to retrieve the information from the computer appear to
have made far less effort to remember the information than those who knew they would not be able
to do this. However, it is not really possible to measure the “level of effort” in this study – so although
we can see that there is an effect on recall, we cannot be certain as to why this difference exists.

ATL: Critically thinking about research

The results of Sparrow’s research demonstrate a difference in the level of recall when people believe
that the information that they are typing will be saved or not saved. It is possible that the reason for
the difference in the two conditions is the result of a difference in the amount of effort used to learn
the trivia facts. How could each of the following factors perhaps be used to explain the results?
● Participant variability

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 ● Confounding variables
● Demand characteristics

In a follow-up study, Sparrow et al tried to measure how well people recall where information can be
found compared to recall of the information itself. In this experiment, participants were asked to read
and type a series of trivia facts. After typing each fact participants were given the name of a specific
folder that this information would be stored in. There were six folders in total but participants were
not explicitly given this information or asked to recall the folder names, (‘facts’, ‘data’, ‘info’, ‘points’,
‘items’ or ‘names’)
Participants were then given ten minutes to write down as many of the statements as they could
remember. They were then given a part of a statement and asked which folder it was saved in. For
example, “What folder was the statement about the ostrich saved in?”

Percentage of correct answers regarding the recall of facts or

location

Mean Standard deviation

Recall of trivia fact 23 14

Recall of location 49 26

But these results do not tell us much. They are significant at p < 0.001, but since they are the
average for the group, we do not know, for example, if those that recalled the most facts are also
those that also recalled the most locations. So, the researchers looked at the data in a bit more
depth.

Percentage of recall

Mean Standard deviation

Recall both statement and folder 17 16

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 Recall statement, but not the 11 08
folder

Recall folder, but not the 30 16

statement

Recalled neither statement nor 38 24

folder

This data helps us to see that participants were much more likely to remember the name of the
folder (i.e. where the information could be found) than the information itself. The highest rate of recall
was for the name of the folder when the information itself was forgotten, suggesting that participants
were prioritizing their memory of where information could be found, exactly as expected if we are
using the Internet as an external store in a transactive memory system.
This research seems to suggest that the Internet is increasingly occupying an important role in
human memory, acting as an external store in a transactive memory system. Furthermore, our
confidence in this external store appears to discourage us from investing effort in encoding and/or
retrieval of potentially important information in our individual long-term memory stores.
As long as the Internet remains operational, we might feel confident that we can continue to rely on
what is after all a colossal external memory store. However, evidence from Storm et al, (2016)
suggests that our confidence in the internet leads to diminishing effort in remembering things for
ourselves; the more we use Google, the less we seek to remember.

Research in psychology: Storm et al (2016)

Storm et al (2016) aimed to test the idea that successful use of Google to retrieve information made
it more likely that participants would rely on Google in the future rather than recalling information
from their individual memory store.
60 undergraduate volunteers took part in this lab experiment. They were randomly allocated to one
of three conditions: Internet, memory or baseline. In the first phase of the procedure, participants in
the Internet condition were told to use Google Search to answer a series of eight difficult general
knowledge questions. Participants in the ‘memory’ condition were asked to answer the same
questions, but relying entirely on their own memory to do so. Participants in the baseline condition
were not asked any questions.

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In the second phase, all participants were asked to answer eight easy general questions as fast as
possible. All participants were given access to Google Search but without any explicit instruction to
use it. The dependent variable was the proportion of questions for which participants chose to use
Google Search in the second phase of the procedure.

Internet memory baseline

Proportion of 83% 63% 65%

answers using
Google Search

These results clearly suggest that using Internet search engines to retrieve information makes us
more likely to do so, (and therefore less likely to use our own memory) in future information recall
tasks.

Both Sparrow et al and Storm designed experiments that clearly manipulate one or more
independent variables and demonstrate a clear relationship between the IV and the DV. Both
experiments, however, rely on trivia information. It could be argued that this compromises the
ecological validity of the study – as why should we exert effort to remember trivia? If they were
recalling meaningful information in their own day-to-day experience would we find the same pattern
of dependence on external sources?
These studies raise important questions about the way in which the Internet is changing the way we
learn and commit information to memory. However, the research in this field is relatively new and
needs to be rigorously tested for reliability. At this point, it is not advisable to draw any definitive
conclusions; doing so may open you up to confirmation bias - that is, using insufficient evidence to
confirm what you already may believe to be true, while not seeking out information that may
challenge what you believe.

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Links to TOK

When we consider our knowledge systems, we often

consider how much individuals know and how they
know it. In the modern era, it may be that we are reliant
on the Internet for our memory system and knowledge.
Consider the following three questions based on your
understanding of psychology and TOK.
What are the benefits and disadvantages of such a
memory system? How desirable is it to depend on an
external memory source that is not based on personal
experience, but rather on information over which we
have no control and may not always be accurate?
Should teachers perhaps reconsider the wisdom of setting ‘internet research’ tasks as activities for
their students? Instead, should students spend more time dedicated to developing their individual
memory stores?
What if the Internet went down for an extended period of time or - let's say in an amazing cyber
terrorism attack - was completely destroyed. What would be the effect on us as human beings?
Would the end of the Internet "destroy our knowledge?" What types of "knowing" would remain?

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Technology and Thinking
There are many conflicting claims in the media about
the role that technology has in our thinking. On the
one hand, there is a lot of research that seems to
indicate that we are easily manipulated by technology
- including what we see on our Facebook feed. This
research has been gobbled up by marketing
companies looking to take advantage of our System 1
thinking to sell us things that we don't need.
Another set of research seems to show that engaging
with technology may improve our problem solving,
spatial reasoning and creativity. So which one is it? Is
technology limiting our ability to make good decisions?
Improving that skill? As you can probably guess, it appears to be a bit of both.
As we have seen, dependence on heuristics in System 1 thinking can result in cognitive biases -
consistent but mistaken beliefs about how the world works. This process could be influenced by our
immersion in a digital world such as our engagement with social media.
Frequent use of social media could reinforce cognitive biases such as confirmation bias as we can
select the information which confirms our view. Algorithms used by social media networks may
further amplify this effect as information that is in line with our status updates or browsing history is
‘pushed’ to us through social media feeds. Even in our online shopping, we are exposed to
advertisements that fit our past purchasing behavior.
Frequent use of social media may also intensify negative cognitive biases based on comparisons
between ourselves and the apparent experience of our online friends. Research indicates that social
media may have an effect on both our self-concept and our self-esteem.

Psychology Terminology:

Self-concept and self-esteem are clearly linked, but they are not the same thing.
In simple terms, the difference can be thought of as follows:
● Self-concept refers to our view of who we are. Baumeister (1999) defines self-concept
as the individual's belief about oneself, including the person's attributes and who and
what the self is. Self-concept includes how we perceive our own personality, what we are
good at and what we like to do. There is no element of ‘judgment’ in self-concept, it is
simply our view of who we are rather than an emotional feeling about who we are.
● Self-esteem refers to our emotional response to our self-concept. For example, are we
happy about who we are? Self-esteem is a person's overall subjective evaluation of his
or her own worth.

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Social Comparison Theory and social media

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954) postulates that there is a drive within individuals to
have accurate self-evaluations. We determine our own social and personal worth based on how we
compare to others. People compare their experience to that of those around them as a way to work
out what kind of person they are (self-concept) and how they should judge themselves (self-esteem).
We might compare our feelings, experiences, abilities, and situations with those of our friends as a
way to judge our own value and place in the world.
Many social media networks provide an increased opportunity for social comparison as they allow
users to maintain a very clear idea of ‘what everyone else is doing’ (for example, through status
updates) and compare this to their own daily routine. Although we all engage in this kind of social
comparison to some extent, it seems clear that some people are more interested in doing so and
may be more influenced by any negative comparison. These individuals may be more vulnerable to
a negative cognitive bias - a tendency to compare themselves negatively to others, thereby
reducing their self-esteem and potentially impacting their mood.
This risk of negative comparison may be further intensified due to the likelihood that comparisons
based on information from social media are upward comparisons – comparisons where we deem
the experience, behavior, and characteristics of others to be preferable to or better than our own.
This is because most people present a ‘best case scenario’ of themselves online. People are
strongly motivated to post a status update describing something they are doing with friends which
seems exciting and enjoyable rather than an update stating that they are currently not doing much
and feeling a bit bored on their own!
Evidence from Chou and Edge (2014) suggests that the availability heuristic is also a factor in the
way our use of social media influences our thinking. We are likely to base our self-esteem on those
examples we can most easily remember (the most available) and that are likely to be the most
different from our own experience. In simple terms, we are most likely to remember the posts
describing people having the most fun and excitement and compare our own experience against that
benchmark.

Research in Psychology: Chou and Edge (2012)

71
Chou and Edge (2012) aimed to test the influence of the availability heuristic on how Facebook
users evaluate themselves in comparison to other people.
They used an opportunity sample of 425 US undergraduate students. Participants completed a
survey including a 10 point Likert scale allowing them to indicate how strongly they agreed with a
series of statements such as “many of my friends have a better life than me” or “many of my friends
are happier than me”. They also indicated how many hours a week they spent on Facebook, how
long they had used FB, the average time spent actually with friends per week and the number of
‘friends’ on Facebook whom they did not actually know personally.
The results showed that participants who spent the most hours per week on Facebook were more
likely to agree that ‘other people are happier than me’. By contrast, those who spent the most time
out with friends in the ‘real world’ were very unlikely to feel that ‘other people are happier than me’ or
‘many of my friends have a better life than me’. Interestingly, those participants who reported having
a larger number of contacts not personally known to them were very likely to agree that ‘many of my
friends have a better life than me’ but did not feel that other people were happier.
Chou and Edge concluded that more time spent on Facebook means that examples of other people
engaged in exciting, fun and social activities are more ‘available’ - and Facebook users are very
likely to compare their own lives to these examples. In addition, they found that we over-estimate the
extent to which the behaviour of other people reflects their disposition rather than their situation. For
example, we tend to think “Mary is always posting exciting status updates because she is much
more fun than me” rather than “Mary is away on holiday at the moment; of course, she is posting lots
of interesting things”.

Like a lot of research on the impact of the digital world, this study relies on self-reported survey data
from younger people. This could be seen as appropriate as this age group may be more engaged
with social media and therefore more vulnerable to any negative consequences. However, this
assumption may disregard the potential impact on a wider population of users.
A growing body of research seems to confirm the idea that more intense use of social media can
have negative effects. For example, a large, longitudinal study by Shakya and Christakis, (2017)
demonstrated a negative correlation between ‘liking’ other people’s content and mental health. In
simple terms, Facebook users who clicked ‘like’ more often were likely to have less positive mental
health. Although interesting, this evidence may suffer from bidirectional ambiguity; does more use of
Facebook reduce mental well-being or do those people already suffering from poor mental health
make greater use of Facebook?

TOK: Ethical Thinking

It is important to recognize that the interaction between

cognition, emotion and use of social media seems to depend on
individual differences; many people may be at little or no risk at
all for lowered self-esteem and/or depression. Gibbons and
Buunk (1999) have proposed a Social Comparison Orientation
(SCO) - that is, a personal trait in which people exhibit different
degrees of uncertainty about reality and self-knowledge which
leads to higher or lower levels of social comparison.

72
This research raises important questions about who uses social media, and how they use it.
Questions to consider
Should people be made aware that they could be more or less at risk of negative cognitive biases
and low mood if they use social media like Facebook? Should this be something Facebook and
other social media networks are responsible for?

Positive influences of technology on thinking

Contrary to what many of the headlines out there tell you, there is research that indicates that
technology may actually be improving thinking and decision making skills - especially in the study of
the effects of moderate video gaming.
A recently published meta-analysis (Uttal et al., 2013) concluded that the spatial skills improvements
that result from playing shooter video games are comparable to the effects of high school and
university-level courses aimed at enhancing these same skills. Further, this recent meta-analysis
showed that spatial skills can be trained with video games in a relatively brief period, that these
training benefits last over an extended period of time, and crucially, that these skills transfer to other
spatial tasks outside the video game context. In addition to spatial skills, researchers have also
found evidence that video games are an excellent means of developing problem-solving skills.
According to Glass, Maddox, and Love (2013), playing a fast-paced video game can improve
strategic thinking. In their study, they used a sample of 72 female undergraduate volunteers. In
order to be in the sample, the participants had to regularly play video games for less than two hours
a week on average.
At the beginning of the study, the researchers measured the volunteers’ cognitive flexibility - that is,
their ability to switch between cognitive tasks and to "think on their feet" when solving problems. The
participants were then asked to play video games for 40 hours over an eight week period - either a
fast-paced game that required strategic thinking (StarCraft) or a simulation game (The Sims). At the
end of the eight weeks, the results showed that those who had played StarCraft had shown greater
improvement in cognitive flexibility. A limitation of the study, however, is that the study was not
longitudinal. The participants' level of cognitive flexibility was measured at the end of the study, but
not after a later period. We do not know if the effects were long-term.
Daphne Bavelier argues that the effects are long-term and that they transfer to solving a large range
of problems.

Research in psychology: Bavelier at al (2011)

To investigate the connection between action games and decision making, Bavelier and her team
first studied two groups of men and women, average age 26, who said they had not played video
games in the past year. One group was told to play two action video games for two hours for a total

73
of 50 hours. The second group was asked to play a simulation game in which they had to make
decisions about a character's life.
After the 50 hours of game time, members of both groups were asked to look at a computer screen
and do a simple test. The computer screen showed a pattern of dots. Participants had to determine
which way the majority of dots were moving by pressing a key on the keyboard. Some of the
patterns were easy - with pretty much all of the dots heading in the same direction. Others were
more complex.
Findings showed that although both groups could accomplish the task, those who had played the
action video did the task faster and with fewer errors - that is, they were able to decipher a large
amount of information more quickly and come to a decision.
Bavelier and her lab have carried out a lot of research on the positive effects of gaming on cognitive
processing. Watch the following video clip to get a better understanding of her research and its
findings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FktsFcooIG8

It appears that gaming may actually change our

brains. Kühn et al (2013) carried out a study to
determine the effects of prolonged video game
playing on the brains of young adults. In this study,
the researchers had participants play Super Mario 64
for 30 minutes every day for two months. The
experiment used a pre-test / post-test design. The
researchers carried out MRI scans on the participants
both before and after the two-month period of game
playing. In addition, the MRIs were compared to a
control group that did not play video games.
The MRIs showed that the volume of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and
cerebellum had increased and was on average larger in the gaming group than in the controls.
Remember the roles of the different parts of the brain:
The prefrontal cortex is involved in strategic planning, decision making, and cognitive control.

74
 The hippocampus is involved in memory formation, with the right hippocampus being
particularly involved in spatial navigation.
The cerebellum is involved with fine motor function.
These findings seem to lend biological support to some of the studies above. However, we should
use a bit of caution. First, the sample size was small. In order to trust these findings, the study
would need to be replicated and obtain similar results.

Technology, Emotion and Cognition

We now live in a world of "breaking news", social media,

and 24-hour news coverage. When something bad
happens, our phones alert us and we are often able to
watch events happen live.
What has the availability of this technology
done to our memories? Has technology
and our emotional reaction to what we see
led to a higher rate of flashbulb memories?
Is the constant access to information
actually creating traumatic memories that
could have an effect on our mental health?

Flashbulb Memories

Before discussing the role of technology in

flashbulb memories, we should review the
important components of the theory.
Although Brown and Kulik (1977) argued

75
that surprise was the key to flashbulb memories, modern adaptations of the theory recognize that
the theory is much more complex than they proposed.
Our prior knowledge and experience play a key role in what will actually be a flashbulb memory. This
helps us to determine whether an event is important to us - and it will also determine the level of
surprise or emotion in our reaction to the news. If the event is important, we will discuss this with
others or ruminate (think a lot about) this event, thereby engaging in overt rehearsal. It is the
combination of these variables that may lead to a flashbulb memory.
The question is whether "reception context" should also be considered a variable in this model.

Does the reception context make a difference?

How we hear the news, known as the reception context, may make a difference in how we recall
the news. A study by Schaefer et al (2011) wanted to see if there was a difference in memories of
the 9/11 terrorist attacks depending on whether people heard the information on television or from
another person. Obviously, when we first hear news from another person, visual images are absent.
The researchers wanted to know just how important these visual images are in the creation of
flashbulb memories.
The sample was made up of 38 students from the University of Winnipeg (mean age 20.3). They
were asked to do a free recall of when they heard the news about the terrorist attack both 28 hours
after the event and then again six months later. They were not told at the time of the first recall task
that they would be tested again six months later.
The participants were divided into two groups: immediate and delayed viewing of television coverage
of the event. Those in the immediate group (n = 27) saw the event live on television or turned on
television within minutes of hearing the news. Those in the delay condition (n = 11) saw the event
on television hours after being informed.
The responses were coded by two independent research assistants who were blind to the
hypotheses. They coded the responses for nine canonical categories: time, location, what they were
doing, informant, presence of others, clothes worn, first thought, feelings, what they did immediately
thereafter.
The quantity of information provided in the initial and follow-up reports, based on the number of
canonical categories and word length, did not differ with regard to reception context. However, the
delayed viewing of images resulted in less elaborate and less consistent accounts over the 6-month
interval.

The Problem with September 11th FBM Research

The terrorist attack of 9/11 led to a lot of research on

flashbulb memories. However, we have to be cautious in our
interpretation of the research. Because there is no way to
control for the amount of media exposure over time, many of
the studies have low internal validity. In the case of national

76
tragedies, anniversaries of the tragedy receive more media coverage which then encourages overt
rehearsal. 9/11 has intense media coverage every anniversary; meanwhile, personal tragic events,
such as the death of a loved one, would not.
The initial "breaking news" media coverage may play a critical role in encoding a flashbulb memory,
but it may be the annual reinforcement of this memory that actually plays a role in its vividness and
accuracy over time.

Hirst et al (2008) looked at two different national tragedies in the US - the Challenger disaster that
was famously studied by Neisser and Harsh (1992) and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The researchers
wanted to see if there was a correlational between the amount of media coverage and the accuracy
of their memories of the event.

As you can see from the

graph to the left, there was a
higher level of accuracy in
the 9/11 memories; however,
there was also more media
coverage of the 9/11 attacks
over the three years following
the event.
Looking at the model at the
top of the page, you can see
that in this case, it may be
that emotion played a key
role in the formation of the
memory - and the media's
annual reminder of this
emotional event results in
overt rehearsal that leads to
the flashbulb memory. It is
not possible for researchers to say that the initial exposure to the media alone was responsible for
the accuracy or vividness of the memories.

Does social media make a difference?

Berntsen (2009) argued that another potential factor in the development of a flashbulb memory is
when an event activates one’s social identity. This would lead to a sense of heightened personal
significance of the event, an emotional reaction to the event, and rehearsal of that event within one’s
social group. Therefore, one would expect social media sites would enhance vividness and
confidence in the accuracy of memories.
As social media is still a relatively new phenomenon - and it takes time to measure the accuracy of
flashbulb memories - there is very little research done on this question. Talorico et al (2017) carried
out a study to see if the reception context would make a difference in the vividness and accuracy of
memories of the assassination of Osama bin Laden - the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. She
and her team compared the memories of those who learned about the assassination through
television, social media, or another person.

77
The sample consisted of 329 psychology students. They were asked to recall how they heard about
the event and what they remembered two days after the assassination and then again either 7, 42,
224, or 365 days later. After two days, the findings were that television exposure was strongest both
in accuracy and the vividness of the memory. For accuracy of recall, personal communication was
the weakest; for vividness, it was social media. When examining the consistency of flashbulb
memory over time (up to one year later), the reception context did not make a difference.

Could the Effect of technology be indirect?

When looking at the model above, could
technology be responsible for another variable -
international significance? Today when there is
a national tragedy, the news media sends out
the "breaking news" around the world. But in
addition, there is also feedback - both in social
media and in television news - that shows
international support and a sense of solidarity
which reaffirms our emotions and gives meaning
to our national tragedy. Gandolphe and El Haj
(2016) argue that this variable plays a key role in
the creation of flashbulb memories.
On 7 January 2015 at about 11:30 am, two gunmen forced their way into the offices of the French
satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. They killed 12 people and injured 11 others. On
11 January, about two million people, including more than 40 world leaders, met in Paris for a rally of
national unity, and 3.7 million people joined demonstrations across France. The phrase Je suis
Charlie became a common slogan of support on social media with many people replacing their
profile picture with the slogan.
Gandolphe and El Haj (2016) recruited a sample of 235 participants of French nationality and living
in France to answer a web-based questionnaire. It also asked participants not to search for answers
on the Internet for information about the event. The questionnaire asked about the participants'
memory of the event, vividness, and predictors of flashbulb memory.
The researchers found that:
● The vividness of flashbulb recall was strongest for those that had seen more visual
imagery of the event.
● Those that felt that the event was of international importance had more detailed and vivid
memories.
● There was a correlation between the rating of the international importance of the event
and the number of people with whom discussions were held about the attack.

In the case of the Charlie Hebdo attack, international importance seems to play an important role as
the attacks led to an international debate about freedom of expression and speech, not to mention
international condemnation of terrorism and solidarity with the victims - all of which was facilitated by
television and social media.

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Why does this matter?

It appears that technology may play a role in the creation of flashbulb memories. The images that
we see in the media lead to a strong emotional response and overt rehearsal of the event. This
research may play a significant role in a disorder that is linked to our inability to filter memories of
trauma - PTSD. Research indicates that it is not just that we learn about an event by watching visual
images on the television or computer screen, but it also matters which images we are seeing.
Ahern et al (2002) wanted to investigate the role that viewing graphic television images may play on
PTSD. The researchers wanted to see if this would play a more significant role than the amount of
time exposed to the media.
Their sample was made up of 1008 adult residents of Manhattan. They carried out a telephone
survey in which the participants' exposure to media and symptoms of PTSD were discussed. The
findings showed that specific disaster-related television images were associated with PTSD and
depression. They found that participants who had repeatedly seen “people falling or jumping from
the towers of the World Trade Center” had a higher prevalence of PTSD (17.4%) and depression
(14.7%) than those who did not (6.2% and 5.3%, respectively).
In addition, the personal relevance of media coverage played a role in mental health. For
participants who were personally affected by the attacks - for example, they lost a family member -
there was a correlational between the frequency of television viewing and the prevalence of PTSD.
For those participants who were not personally affected by the attacks, there was no association
between the frequency of television viewing and PTSD.

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