IB HL Psychology Unit 3: Cognition

1966
A: see experimenter expectancy effect or Pygmalion Effect teachers’ biases towards students scoring well on IQ test D: Oak School students given IQ tests (TOGA) masked as Harvard Test of Intellectual Acquisition (predictor of academic growth) 3 classes of teachers given list of last names of students in top 20%: top assigned at random R: students that teachers expected to have a greater intellectual growth increased more than the control group I: teachers’ expectancy based on what told can impact students’ lives—some ahead and some left out L: younger students: more malleable, non-established reputations IQ controversy ethnic/cultural bias

2007
A: see how mindset affects learning; one’s self-theory about intelligence influences motivation to learn D: how fixed/growth mindset affects NYC middle school math grades fixed= concerns with how smart now, enjoys comfortable tasks growth= willing to face new challenges even if don’t succeed 8-week intervention program teaching Dweck’s theory R: over 2 years, fixed mindset students had downward academic trend; growth moved ahead students in IV (Dweck’s theory) improved grades and study habits I: mindset affects learning, praise about efforts> intelligence L: operationalising intelligence, using middle schoolers

1948
A: prove complexity of cognition (anti-stimulus response model= reaction based on environment) D: 3 groups of rats in maze that requires special orientation (pick path in direction of food reward) Control (every time reward)= few errors No Reward = did not learn maze Delayed Reward (every 10x)= few errors until rewarded
ran experiment 18 times I: rewards trigger mental map (do not need stimulus) L: not everyone is motivated to learn/ generalization from rats to humans

1932
A: see if memory is encoded/retrieved the same D: told War of the Ghosts Story (Native American folktale) to participants, asked to relay story R: people remembered what they understood in relation to their own schemas rationalized confusing ideas to own cultural standards (to make familiar, conventional) I: memory does not work like videotape: selective memory, reconstructive memory L: one story

1974

A: study free recall in educated v uneducated kids D: 1000 Liberian/American kids IV: education DV: free recall memory kids given list of words (culturally relevant) and 10 seconds to memorize—trials over time R: uneducated kids did not improve while educated did I: educated use chunking while uneducated use story format L: only US and Liberia Confounding variables controlled for

1992
R: universal facial expressions I: not all cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural factors: a happy face is seen as a happy face nearly universally L: surprise/fear was confused

1974
A: see if language used in eyewitness testimony can alter memory of event D: 45 American students shown slides of car accident IV: words used DV: none “About how fast were the cars going when they hit/smashed/bumped/collided/contacted” R: estimated speed was affected by verb used asked 1 week later if remembered broken glass at scene, smashed group said yes I: memory is distorted with leading questions L: ecological validity, no emotional impact as witnessing real life accident no DV yet attempt to establish cause/effect

Clive Wearing A: see how brain damage affects memory processing D: herpes infection made musicologist, Wearing with no recollection of any time, past or future brain scan technology, diaries R: hippocampus, frontal regions damaged memory span= seconds anterograde and retrograde amnesia (no memory after/before trauma) episodic+ semantic memory lost but still has implicit+ emotional L: one phenomena

Milner and Scoville HM (1957) D: removed tissues from temporal lobe to stop seizures (epilepsy) R: unable to have new memories (anterograde amnesia) could not remember faces of people just met, magazines scan= hippocampus/amygdala lesions I: parts of brain correlate to function

Anderson/Pichert (1978) A: if schema processing influences encoding+ retrieval D: participants told a story about a house under different perspectives: burglar or house buyer 12 minutes distracting task DV: told story again under same perspective IV: told story again under different perspective asked to recall R: if had to retell under different schema, remembered more information I: schema affects retrieval/encoding