Cognitive Approach

Introduction

 Main assumptions of the cognitive approach:

o behaviour and emotions can be explained in terms of the role of cognitive processes
such as attention, language, thinking and memory

o similarities and differences between people can be understood in terms of individual

patterns of cognition

Andrade (Doodling)

 Title: What Does Doodling Do?

 Year: 2010

 Psychology being investigated:

o People have been known to daydream frequently when presented with something
boring.

 Background

o Before this study, it was unknown whether doodling impairs attention processes by
removing resources from the primary attention task or aids concentration towards
the primary task, additionally maintaining arousal.

o It is common in research on attention to pose the participants with dual tasks to

monitor performance and then see which cognitive processes are needed to
complete these tasks.

 Aim

o To test whether doodling aided information processing when performing a tedious

task.

 Procedure

o Research Method: Laboratory Experiment

o Experimental Design: Independent Groups

o IV: Doodling or Non-doodling (Control) Group

o DV: Mean correct recall, false alarms and memory scores

o Sample: 40 members of the MRC Applied Psychology Unit participant panel at the
University of Plymouth (UK). They were aged 18-55 and paid for participating.
Participants were assigned randomly to the control (20 - 18 females and 2 males) or
doodling (20 - 17 females and 3 males) group.

o Sampling Technique: Opportunity Sampling (they had volunteered for a different

study and were then recruited immediately after participating in that unrelated
study)
 o The researcher recorded a mock telephone message using a cassette recorder.

o A somewhat monotonous voice was used.

o It was 2.5 minutes long, with an average speaking rate of 227 words per minute

o The recording was being played at a comfortable volume for the participant to listen
to.

o The script included the names of 8 people who would be attending a party alongside
the names of 3 people and 1 cat who would not attend. 8 place names were also
mentioned.

o Participants were recruited after finishing an unrelated experiment for another

researcher and asked if they would mind spending another 5 minutes helping with
research.

o The intention was to enhance the boredom of the task by testing people who were
already thinking about going home.

o The participants were randomly assigned to the two conditions (doodling or control)

o Participants were tested individually in a quiet and visually dull room.

o They were asked to note down the names of all people attending the party and
nothing else. They were also told they did not need to remember anything.

o Participants in the control condition were given a piece of lined paper and a pencil.

o Participants in the doodling group were given a piece of A4 paper with alternating
rows of 10 squares and circles, 1 cm in diameter, with a 4.5 cm margin on the left-
hand side where they could write any target information.

o The doodling group was asked to shade the shapes

o They were told that “it does not matter how neatly or quickly you do this - it is just
something to help relieve the boredom.”

o Participants listened to the tape for 2.5 minutes and wrote down the information as
directed.

o As soon as the recording finished, the researcher collected the sheets and talked to
the participant for a minute.

o This conversation included a debriefing and an apology for misleading them about
the memory test. The participants were asked if they suspected a memory test.

o Half the participants recalled the names of people, then places and the other half
the places, then names. (Counterbalancing)

 Results

o Participants in the doodling group shaded a mean of 36.3 shapes (range 3-110). One
participant did not doodle and was replaced

o None of the participants in the control group doodled.

 o 3 participants in the doodling group and 4 in the control group suspected a memory
test. However, none of them claimed they actively tried to remember the
information for the test.

o If a response indicated a plausible mishearing, it was scored as correct.

o New names not similar to the ones given, names of people who could not attend, or
responses such as “sister”, which are relational words, were scored as false alarms.

o MONITORING PERFORMANCE SCORE = number of correct names - number of false

alarms

o 15 Participants in the doodling group and 9 Participants in the control group scored
the maximum score.

o Monitoring performance was significantly higher in the doodling condition (mean =

7.7; SD = 0.6) compared with the control condition (mean = 6.9; SD = 1.3)

o Each participant generated a name score and a place score. The monitoring and
recall phases had to be the same if a plausible mishearing was presented.

o Those in doodling condition recalled a mean of 7.5 pieces of correct information

compared to the control group (5.8).

o Monitored names were recalled more than places.

o The recall was significantly better for those in doodling condition

o Memory scores were entered into a 2 (doodling, control) and 2 (names, places)
mixed measures ANOVA, which confirmed that the monitored names were recalled
better than the incidental places.

o Removing data from participants who had suspected a test were removed from the
analysis, there was still a significant difference (p=0.01)

 Conclusions

o Participants who performed a shape-shading task concentrated better on a mock

telephone message than those who listened with no concurrent task.

o It is unclear whether doodling led to better recall because doodlers noticed more of
the target information (better attention) or whether it aided memory recall by
encouraging deeper processing of the message (better memory).

 Ethical Issues

o Deception about the memory test

o Debriefing

o Lack of protection from harm- were given an unforeseen test on place names, which
can cause distress if they cannot remember the places.

 Strengths

o Standardized procedure - easy to replicate for reliability

 o Many controls - more confident about the causal relationship

 Weaknesses

o Low Generalisability: The sample was from a volunteer participant panel. Therefore,
they may be qualitatively different, and the results may not reflect the population.

o Participant Variables might have affected the findings

o Low mundane realism

o Low ecological validity

o It lacks any measure of daydreaming. A replication that included thought probes

during the telephone message or retrospective self-report of daydreaming would
test whether the effect of doodling on memory occurred via effects on daydreaming.

o Future neuroimaging studies could test the hypothesis that doodling selectively
reduces cortical activation associated with daydreaming

 Issues and Debates

o Application: Useful for students while revising or in class and improves learning by
simultaneously using visuospatial and auditory tasks, leading to better information
processing.

o Individual and Situational Explanation: This study supports both. Individual -

participants may have used a similar strategy before or have a personality type that
requires stimulation when processing information.

o Situational: the process of doodling could have caused the improvement in recall.

Baron-Cohen et al. (Eyes Test)

 Title: The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test Revised Version: A Study with Normal Adults
and Adults with Asperger Syndrome or High-functioning Autism

 Year: 2001

 Psychology being investigated:

o The main idea of the eye test was to investigate the theory of mind.

o This is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself or another person, which is
how we make sense of or predict another person’s behaviour.

o The notion is that many autistic individuals do not understand that other people
have their plans, thoughts, and points of view.

o It appears that they have difficulty understanding other people's beliefs, attitudes,
and emotions.

 Background

o In 1997, the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test was developed to assess the theory
of mind. This appeared to discriminate between adults with Asperger syndrome (AS)
or high-functioning autistic (HFA) adults and control adults.
 o The two former groups scored significantly worse. However, the researchers were
not happy with elements of the original study and wanted to “upgrade” their
measures to make it better.

 Aims

o To test a group of adults with AS or HFA on the revised version of the eyes test. This
was to check if the deficits in this group found in the original study could be
replicated.

o To test if, in a sample of normal adults, an inverse (negative) correlation would be

found between performance on the (revised) Eyes Test and the Autism Spectrum
Quotient (AQ).

o To test whether females scored better on the Eyes Test than males.

 Procedure

o Research Method: Natural Experiment (as the IV is naturally occurring) and

Questionnaire

o Experimental Design: Independent Groups

o IV: Four groups of participants (naturally occurring)

o DV: Score on Eyes Test and Autism Spectrum Quotient

o Sample: Group 1: 15 male adults with AS or HFA. Recruited via adverts in the UK
National Autistic Society Magazine or equivalent support groups. They spanned an
equivalent range of socioeconomic classes and educational levels, as seen in group 2.

Group 2: 122 normal adults drawn from the adult community and educational classes in Exeter or
from public library users in Cambridge. They had a broad range of occupations and educational
levels.

Group 3: 103 normal adult students (53 male; 50 female) studying for undergraduate degrees at
Cambridge University (71 in sciences, 32 in other subjects). This group is not representative of the
general population and can be considered to have a high IQ.

Group 4: Randomly selected 14 adults from the general population who were matched for their IQ
with group 1.

o Initially, the first two authors of this study chose the “correct” word and the “foil”.

o They were then piloted on 8 judges (4 m 4 f)

o For the correct word and its foil to be used, 5 out of 8 had to agree with the choice.

o No more than 2 judges should pick the foil

o Participants tested individually in a quiet room in Cambridge or Exeter.

o Participants in the AS/HFA group were asked to judge the gender of each eye pair
additionally.

o Groups 1, 3 and 4 completed a questionnaire to measure their AQ.

 o Participants were asked to read through the glossary and ask if they were unsure of
any word. They were also reassured that they could refer to the glossary anytime.

o Sampling Technique: Opportunity and Volunteer Sampling

Topic Original problems New design elements

Forced choice between two

responses meant that only a narrow
Forced choice remained, but four
range of 17-25 correct responses out
response options remained.
of 25 would be statistically above
chance.

This meant that the range of scores

Choice There were 36 pairs of eyes used,
for which the test could reveal
giving a range of 13-36 correct
individual differences is only 9, which
responses.
is too narrow.

This meant that individual

differences could be examined
better in terms of statistics.

When the first version was given to

parents of children with AS, they
scored below the general
population. However, they scored at
a similar level with the AS or HFA
adults even though they did not
have the condition.
Example

This highlights that the test has a too

narrow range of scores to distinguish
between someone with the “lesser
variant” or the “broader phenotype”
and someone with the condition
itself.

In this version, only complex

There were both basic and complex mental states were used to make
mental states, and so contained the task much more challenging,
Mental state some items that were easy and and in this way, increasing the
which therefore risked producing likelihood of obtaining a greater
ceiling effects. range of performance in a
random sample of adults.

Ease of solving Some pairs of eyes could be solved They were excluded in the revised
Topic Original problems New design elements

easily by looking at the gaze

version.
direction of the face.

More female eye pairs than males. An equal number was used.

Gender
This allowed a control condition -
judging the gender from the eyes.

Increased the level of difficulty by

Target word and foil were always
ensuring that the foil words had
Ease of guessing semantic opposite making it too easy
the same emotional valance as
to guess.
the target word.

There may have been

A glossary with all terms was
Ease of comprehension problems that might
included, which was available for
comprehension have contributed to an individual’s
the P’s to use at all times.
score.

 Results

o Group 1 performed significantly worse on eyes test than the other groups.

o Females scored higher than males on the eyes test, although this result wasn’t very
significant.

o Group 1 scored higher on AQ test than group 3 and 4 participants.

o No correlation between Eyes Test score and IQ

o Negative correlation between Eyes Test and AQ

 Conclusion

o Revised eyes test was successful in being a more sensitive test for social intelligence
of adults. AQ test and Eyes Test showed a significant negative correlation as
hypothesized showing that both can be used as tests for severity of autistic traits.

 Strengths

o High internal validity due to changes made to the Eyes test- 4 options, equal female
and male eye pairs shown, glossary provided to all participants.

o Standardized procedure- images all of same size, black and white, 4 options with
three foils

 Weakness

o Low ecological validity: in real life setting, eyes are not static and body language
hints can help guess the emotional state of people.
 o Low generalizability- only 15 males used in ASD group so not generalizable to
females with ASD. In student comparison group, all students were from a highly
selective university (Cambridge university) which is not representative of intellect of
all regular students.

 Ethics: if they were not able to guess the emotions, it might cause distress or embarrassment
leading to low self-esteem and psychological harm.

 Issues and Debates

o Application: Plan support lessons or therapy for students or people with AS/HFA

o Reductionist: doesn’t take into account the full picture of understanding emotions

Pozzulo et al. (Line-Ups)

 Title: The Culprit in target-absent Lineups: Understanding Young Children’s False Positive
Responding

 Year: 2011

 Psychology being investigated:

o Memories can be distorted by other information known as ‘Post-event information’

that we are exposed to during and after the encoding stage of information
processing.

o Post-event information can produce ‘False Memories’, pieces considered accurate

but result from additional untrue details.

o How reliable are children at giving eyewitness testimony as required by the law?

o False positive response- Giving an affirmative(positive) but incorrect answer to a

question.

 Background

o Loftus and Palmer 1974 used a classical experiment to prove that words used in a
question (post-event information) can impact participants’ speed estimates of a
vehicle seen in a video.

o Pozzolu and Lindsay in 1997 concluded that children are less likely to say

‘I don’t know’ even though they know they were allowed to.

o Child witnesses were more likely to make incorrect decisions when shown a lineup
due to perceived forced choice, perception of authority figures, and pressure to
make a choice.

 Aims

o Investigate whether social factors affect child witnesses more than adult witnesses.

o To explore the impact of social versus cognitive factors in children’s performance as

child witnesses

 Hypothesis
 1. Children will be as good as adults at identifying cartoon faces in a target present line-
up

2. Children will be worse than adults in rejecting cartoon faces in a target-absent line-up

3. Children will be worse than adults in identifying human faces in a target present line-up

4. Children will be worse than adults at rejecting human faces in a target-absent line-up

 Procedure

o Research Method: Laboratory Experiment

o Experimental Design: Independent measures (children versus adults), Repeated

measures (target present versus target-absent and cartoon versus human)

o IV: Age (children versus adults), Line-up type (target present versus target absent),
Familiarity of target (cartoon versus human)

o DV: Whether the correct face was selected in the target-present lineup, whether an
empty silhouette was chosen in the target-absent lineup.

o Sample:

Children group- 59 children (21 females and 38 males) between the ages of 4-7 recruited from pre-
kindergarten and kindergarten classes of three private schools in Eastern Ontario, Canada. Mean age
of 4.98 years

Adult group- 53 adult participants (36 females and 17 males) between the ages of 17-30 were
recruited from the Introductory Psychology Participant Pool at Eastern Ontario University. Mean age
of 20.54 years

o Sampling Technique: Opportunity Sampling

o 4 Video Clips, one photo-array per clip

o HUMAN: 2 Video Clips, 6 secs each

1. Man, putting on a coat

2. Woman brushing hair Two human 'targets' were photographed wearing

different clothes. Four foils are made per target, similar in hair, facial
features and colour. Photographs are cropped until the neck.

CARTOON: 2 Video Clips, 6 secs each

3. Dora interacting with the audience.

4. Go! Diego! Go! Putting on safety gloves Two cartoon 'targets' and four foils
were picked per target from the internet, similar in hair, facial features and
colour. Photographs are cropped until the neck. Positions of targets were
randomized, and all photos were black and white. In all four lineups, the
position of the target or its matching foil was counterbalanced. Videos and
photo arrays were presented on a 13-inch laptop screen.

o Each child and adult was tested individually and shown the first video
 o Instructed to pay attention because they would be asked some questions and offered
some pictures after watching the video

o Following each of the four videos, all participants were asked their first free recall
filler question, ‘What did the cartoon character/person look like?’

o For adult participants: The second question asked was, ‘Do you remember anything
about the cartoon character/person?

o For child participants: The second question asked was a non-specific probing
question: ‘Do you remember anything else?’

If children did not respond to the first free recall question, they were asked, ‘Do you remember
anything from the video?’ and the researchers recorded replies.

o After each filler task, child participants were told to look at a photo array, point to
the cartoon/person photo if they see it, and point to the black silhouette box if the
cartoon/person is not there.

o Similar instructions were given for adults, but they indicated their responses on a
matching sheet.

o This procedure was repeated for all four videos.

 Results

o Responses to cartoons were generally more accurate than responses to human

targets.

o Children have similar accuracy as adults in identifying cartoon faces

o Children are significantly less accurate than adults when rejecting cartoon faces.

o Children are significantly less accurate than adults when identifying human faces.

o Children are significantly less accurate than adults when rejecting human faces.

 Conclusions

o Any errors in the target-absent lineup for cartoons result from social factors, not
cognitive factors.

o For children, social factors play a more significant part in decision-making in target-
absent line-ups than in target-present ones.

 Ethical Issues

o Deception regarding aim

o Otherwise, it was a very ethical study as informed consent was taken, children had
the right to withdraw, no psychological or physical harm was caused, and
confidentiality was maintained.

 Strengths

o High standardization along with controls

 o Use of objective quantitative data enabling the use of statistical analysis

o High internal validity due to minimal information given to participants regarding aim-
lower demand characteristics

 Weaknesses

o Low ecological validity and mundane realism because the line-up was not accurate
and lacked the emotional experience of a genuine police line-up

o Order effects are due to repeated measures of seeing all four videos and answering
the same questions. This can lead to demand characteristics.

 Issues and Debates

o Application to everyday life: Improve reliability of child witness information

o Individual versus situational: This study supports a situational explanation due to

the impact of social factors like authority.

o Children as participants: Practical changes were made to the procedure to ensure

children could easily access tasks. Consent was gained in a child-friendly way.