Reliability+of+Cognitive+Processes

**Evaluate the extent to which a cognitive process is reliable**
=== Cognitive Process: **Memory. It is believed that memory is reconstructive and we for schemas (groups) to be able to recall things. Memory can be affected by a persons emotional connection as well as how recent the event occurred. Whit this being said, memory is not very reliable. Thus, humans can recall information in an outline and they "fill in the gaps" with their own memory.**===

The War of Ghosts (Frederic Bartlett, 1932)

 * ** Aim: **
 * **This study wanted to prove that our brains can reconstruct memory**
 * ** Method: **
 * **Experiment**
 * ** Procedure: **
 * **Three different groups: Europeans, Americans and Native Americans**
 * **Researchers asked participants to read a native american folk story**
 * **After reading the story, 15 minutes later, the participants were asked to recite the story**
 * ** Results: **
 * **European and American participants, their version of the story left out details or they replaced details with memories which they had in their own cultural schema**
 * **Native American remembered the story better, and were able to recite it better**
 * ** Conclusion: **
 * **The results showed that more complex information are likely to be forgotten**
 * **Humans try to fin patterns, which are familiar**
 * **Reconstruct the past by fitting it into different schemas**
 * ** Evaluation: **
 * **There was no independent, dependent or control variables**
 * **Cannot be** **generalized as it is specific to European, American and Native American culture**

Cultural Variation

 * Psychologists believe that memory is influenced by different cultures.**

Thanks for the memories (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)
media type="custom" key="23892970"
 * ** Aim: **
 * ** The aim of this study was to see if changing the verb in the question would effect speed estimation **
 * ** Method: **
 * ** Lab Experiment (lacks ecological validity) **
 * ** Procedure: **
 * **Shown a video of a car crash**
 * **Asked to estimate the speed the cars were going when they "hit, contacted, smashed, bumped"**
 * ** Results: **
 * ** Words like "hit and contacted" had slower speed estimates than words like "smashed and hit" **
 * ** Conclusion: **
 * ** When using different verbs different schemas are activated **
 * ** The false verb provided a subtle form of new information that integrated into the original memory of the event **