20 minute essay

4/19/2012

5 Comments

 
Identify one study from the cognitive perspective, and explain one strength and one limitation of the research method used in the study.  (20 minutes)

Pick any research study and explain.  There are many possible answers - just be sure you have a strength and a limitation of the RESEARCH METHOD used in the study NOT a strength and limitation of the theory.  Give me some answers! 
5 Comments
Christina Diana
4/22/2012 11:19:24 am

Case study of HM - by Milner and Scoville
-HM suffered head injury at young age and suffered seizures - surgery was performed and doctors removed temporal lob and hippocampus
-after surgery: HM couldn't remember could remember old memories but couldn't form any new ones (anterograde amnesia) and can't remember faces of new people he meets; can read and reread same thing and not remember
-1997-researchers used MRI to study brain - showed more detail into which areas of the brain were affected

Case Study method:
Strength: opportunity for researchers to investigate phenomena that couldn't otherwise be studied -- HM's case is unique and provides insight to the processes of specific areas of the brain

Limitation: difficult to determine if findings relate to all cases. only specific to HM and cannot ethically reproduce all factors of the situation...so not definitely applicable to all cases

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Mrs. Brown
4/22/2012 10:51:58 pm

Very Nice, Christina!!! Your answer is exactly what it needs to be - a mention of a case study and then analysis of the research method. Anyone have another answer?

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Kim Alderman
4/23/2012 10:46:11 am

Frederic Bartlett- The War of the Ghosts
-Bartlett believed memory is reconstructive and schemas affect a persons ability to recall an experience, story, etc.
- He used serial reproduction, a method in which one person tells another a story, the second person tells a third person the same story, and so on, to test his participants ability to correctly recall a Native American legend.
- He found the amount of words in the story became shorter each time it was reproduced, the story remained coherent in each reproduction, and it only retained details that pertained to the shared past experiences of the participants

Strengths (sorry, these aren't very good)
- controlled conditions, which helps to limit confounding variables
- provides data that can be used to show a cause and effect relationship

Limitations
-ecologically validity- there was a point in the experiment in which the participants were in a laboratory setting, which is unnatural and may have caused distorted answers
- confounding variables are difficult to control. ex: a spider crawling on the wall may distract a participant from giving their full attention

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Mrs. Brown
4/26/2012 07:24:19 am

Great research study!!! When you explain the strength and limitation you need to relate it to the research study you identify in your answer. Be specific. You can start general but it also needs to tie into the specific research.

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Alice
4/30/2012 07:23:20 am

Elizabeth Loftus’ experiment-Reconstructive memory
Loftus and Palmer (1974)- investigated role of leading questions in recall
-Aim to see if changing one word in certain critical questions would influence speed estimates
-used 45 students, who first saw films of traffic accidents and then had to estimate the speed of the car in the film
-Critical question (Ind. Variable) was: “about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”-> “hit” replaced by “smash”, “collided”, “bumped”, and “contacted” in separate trials
-Dep. Variable was the estimation in speed (in mi/hr)0 researchers found that the mean speed estimate was in fact affected by the words so that “smashed” and “collided” increased the estimated speed.
-Results showed that use of different verbs activates different schemas in memory-Participants hearing word “smashed” actually imagined the accident as more severe than participant who heard “contacted”
Strengths:
-Method->experiment allowed Loftus to easily manipulate variables and keep records of findings using statistics
-numbers allow other researchers to understand the results of her research and effects of reconstructive memory.
-experiment was simple, easy to do, seen as though only instructions needed to be given in order for the experiment to progress
-films very realistic- provided students with an almost real-life experience as if they were an eye-witness
Limitations:
-Very time-consuming->had large groups of participants, so calculating all the data would have taken a lot of time/effort
-Ecological validity?-> controlled lab experiment
-Participants all US students-> sample was culturally biased
-research also begs question of how well ppl are able to estimate speed-> may influence results

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