1 hour question

4/21/2012

3 Comments

 
To what extent do social or cultural factors affect one cognitive process? (1 hour)

You first need to identify what cognitive process on which you are focusing. Using different research studies and theories (as many as you can) support your answer.  Let's focus on 2 cognitive processes:  1.  Memory    2.  Schema theory   Identify which process you are referring to and list theories/research studies to explain how the process is affected.  Tough one - but I know you can do it!!! 
3 Comments
A. Flanagan
4/28/2012 10:29:47 am

Memory!

affects of memory by social and/or cultural factors:

-where you grew up/where you currently live. This can affect a person's memory and what a person is accustomed to hearing/understanding. EXAMPLE; a person living in the United States would have a different memory of 9/11 than a person living in England. People who live in England would not have as much of an emotional impact than the US.

-Frederic Bartlett
War of Ghosts
-The experiment done by Bartlett, using the story, War of Ghosts
-serial reproduction
-He passed around a Native American legend to his participants
-He found that as the stories were passed around, it became more difficult for people in the western culture to reproduce --> unfamiliar style and content
-He also found that the story began to shorten after each reproduction; found that the story remained coherent, no matter how different it was to the original story; The story also became more conventional (kept certain details that remained the same in their own culture)
-Bartlett also found that people try to reconstruct their past to fit it into their current schema (or mental representation of knowledge)
-Bartlett experiment supports the third principle of the cognitive process of analysis (which states that cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural factors) --> the different story interpretations shows how people incorporate past memories from their background and use them to reconstruct present thoughts and ideas.

Is this on the right track? I hope this answered at least a bit of the cultural part. For the social content, would it be okay to discuss Loftus' experiment with reconstructive memory? How a person's interaction with another person, (using the example of court cases) through questions can decrease the reliability of one's memory and support that sometimes memory can be distorted.

I hope this sounds somewhat decent!

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Mrs. Brown
4/29/2012 10:33:28 pm

Very Nice!!! And yes - you can include Loftus in your answer. Using both Bartlett and Loftus would be a great 1 hour essay answer!! Just be sure to explain how their theories relate to the cognitive process, in this case memory, and make sure you note the cultural/social significance. Bartlett relates to the cultural factors and Loftus relates to the social factors. Social simply means the interaction with others - presuppositions?!?! This would be a great answer for an essay!!! Great job!

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Ray
5/1/2012 05:06:22 am

For this i would talk about Bartlett's The War of Ghosts in both Social and Cognitive terms because the people remembered the story by making it fit into their previous schemas-referring back to Schema theory. Also the Westerners used as participants had a tough time grasping the story because it was culturally different from the style and structure of language that they were used to so they changed the story to fit better into their cultural schemas, again relating back to schema theory and that memory can be easily distorted based on perception.

I would also use Niesser and Harsch's study on the memories of those that viewed the Challenger accident. They asked the people to recount the event 24 hours after it happened and then two years later. They found that two years later the memories were about 40% incorrect and distorted. This shows that though flashbulb memories are very vivid due to the emotion involved with it which is processed in the amygdala, they are also reconstructed due to post-event information and also because of current appraisals of the event....i hope this would be good enough

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