H567/02 Section B - Cognitive psychology

Studying mental processes

Cognitive psychology investigates processes such as attention, perception, memory, language and thinking.

A person does not respond to every event as a passive recorder. Attention selects some information for processing; perception interprets sensory information; memory involves encoding, storage and retrieval. A failure to remember can therefore arise because an event was not attended to, because it was encoded differently, or because useful retrieval cues are absent. These are different explanations requiring different evidence.

The information-processing approach describes how information passes through mental operations. A computer analogy can help separate input, processing and output, but human thought also involves emotion, goals and social meaning. A model simplifies these processes to make predictions; it is not a literal photograph of the mind.

Mental operations are usually inferred from observable performance. For example, a researcher records what a witness reports, then considers which memory process could explain it. This inference needs care: an incorrect answer might reflect misunderstanding, guessing or social pressure instead of altered memory. Define the target process, choose an appropriate task and compare alternative explanations.

Memory and attention as evidence

Manipulating information and recording responses allows researchers to test predictions about mental processes.

Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed participants traffic-accident films and varied a verb in a later speed question. Different wording produced different mean estimates. In a second experiment, participants asked a question using “smashed” were more likely than the other groups to report broken glass a week later, although the film contained none. The manipulated wording and common film support a role for post-event information in later reports. The cognitive explanation is reconstructive memory: later information may combine with the original event representation, rather than recall simply replaying a recording.

Distinguish evidence from certainty about the mechanism. A changed immediate estimate could reflect response bias, and later reports can also involve guessing or expectations. The second experiment strengthens the reconstruction account by examining a later detail, but a verbal answer still does not give direct access to the person's memory trace.

Grant et al. (1998) manipulated quiet or noisy study and test contexts for meaningful reading material. Performance was better when study and test contexts matched than when they differed. This supports the role of context as a retrieval cue: information available during learning can help access material later. It does not mean noise always improves memory; matching was the relevant pattern, and the study did not find an overall advantage of noise.

Simons and Chabris (1999) showed that people performing an attention-demanding counting task could fail to notice an unexpected event. This illustrates limited selective attention: looking towards a scene does not ensure every event is consciously registered. Together, the studies distinguish failures of attention, effects of later information and difficulties of retrieval. They do not reduce all forgetting to one process.

Testing explanations of an unseen process

Cognitive research is strongest when its measures discriminate between competing explanations.

A strength is that controlled experiments can test specific predictions. Loftus and Palmer kept the viewed event common while changing question wording, so systematic differences in responses can be related to that manipulation. This is more informative than merely observing that witnesses disagree. Standardised stimuli and scoring also make procedures replicable, allowing other researchers to test the pattern.

A weakness is the gap between a task score and the inferred mental process. Reporting glass does not itself show precisely when or how a memory representation changed. An answer could reflect a decision to guess. Researchers can refine a design with delayed tests, alternative questions or measures of confidence, but these still require interpretation. This links to construct validity in Component 01: a dependable score is not automatically a valid measure of the intended process.

Laboratory tasks may also simplify real remembering. Watching a brief accident film with no personal involvement differs from witnessing a frightening event. The controlled procedure helps identify a wording effect, but generalising its size to every real witness would overlook emotion, delay and prior knowledge. Similarly, a counting task demonstrates attentional limits under particular demands rather than proving that people always miss unexpected events.