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Unit one – Attachment, memory and research methods

2. Describe two strategies for improving memory. AO1 = 6 marks

Candidate 1:

Strategy 1 - Mnemonics. Use the start of every letter to spell out a word or sentence that is easy to remember. Each letter stands for a particular word/phrase you are wanting to remember. E.g. COPD for the cognitive interview technique.

Strategy 2 - Story technique. Put all the words you are wanting to remember into a story so if a person an remember the story that has meaning, they will remember the things in it. (4 marks)

Candidate 2:

Strategy 1 - Creating hierarchies to organise the material into meaningful patterns. Hierarchies allow you to visually see the details of topics and create links between topics, which makes the information more meaningful to you so you remember it better. Organising by meaning is particularly useful in the LTM which codes information semantically (i.e. by meaning).

Strategy 2 – Using mnemonics such as the method of loci. This is where items that need to be remembered are associated with familiar places i.e. the rooms in your house. So you form a mental image of the items in each of the rooms, so when it comes to recall the rooms are effective retrieval cues and you simply picture the items that were there. (6 marks)

Candidate 3:

Strategy 1 – By linking certain information to familiar places in ones mind, one can improve their memory. They can link certain information for example a certain playing card by linking it to a particular place for example their living room in order to be able to retrieve the information easier.

Strategy 2 – Changing the information slightly in order to make it more in somewhat personal such as using acronyms, putting it into a rhythm or a song. For example, a teacher trying to remember the 3 names; Gordon, Andy, Paul could use the acronym GAP in order to improve memory and retrieval. (2 marks)

3. Psychologists carried out a laboratory experiment to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive interviews. All participants watched the same film of a robbery. They were randomly allocated to Group One or Group Two. Participants were then asked to recall the robbery. The investigator used a cognitive interview to assess recall of participants in Group One and a standard interview to access recall of participants on Group Two. 3 b. Explain one limitation of the design that was used in this experiment. AO3 = 2 marks

Candidate 1: Demand characteristics – where the participant feels under certain pressure to give certain results. They may not complete the experiment as asked and so can influence the results in a negative way. (0 marks)

Candidate 2: Participant variables may affect the results. For example, participants in group 2 (recalled more correct items) may have been more bright and had better memory than those in group 1. (2 marks)

Candidate 3: The results may be affected by different individual differences of the participants in different groups. (1 mark)

3 c. Explain what the results suggest about the effectiveness of the cognitive interview. AO3 = 2 marks

Candidate 1: It can produce a high amount of accurate and correct statements, better than the standard interview, but can still be incorrect. (1 mark)

Candidate 2: The results suggest that a cognitive interview gets a lot more correct statements than a standard interview however they get no less incorrect statements. (2 marks)

Candidate 3: That the number of correct statements given increases when the cognitive interview was used. However, the same number of incorrect statements were given when the cognitive interview was used when compared to the standard interview technique. (2 marks)

3d. Participants in the standard interview were simply asked to describe what happened in the film.

Suggest one way in which participants in the cognitive interview condition could have been asked to recall what happened. AO2 = 2 marks

Candidate 1: Detail – to recall all the details of the event, even if they viewed them as irrelevant. (2 marks)

Candidate 2: Participants could have been asked to recreate the original context of the incident. This means that participants should try to visualise exactly what happened as the robbery occurred. (1 mark)

Candidate 3: They may have been asked to recall the event in a different order. For example, they may have to recall in reverse order or start from a point and go forwards/backwards. This encourages many retrieval paths and allows recall to be more accessible. (2 marks) 3e.What is meant by the term investigator effects? Explain possible investigator effects in this study. AO3 = 4 marks

Candidate 1: Investigator effects are expectations on the side of the researcher that can affect how they conduct the experiment and how they behave towards the participants. This in turn can make the participants behave in a certain way which could be different to their natural behaviour. For example in this study just the appearance of the interviewers could have affected participant behaviour. Also the interviewers may expect more of a positive result with the cognitive interview so they may ask easier/blatantly obvious questions so that participants in this interview can answer more questions correctly. (4 marks)

Candidate 2: Investigator effects are unintentional effects on the results so possible effects could be that it’s set in a lab so it’s low in ecological validity and it’s not generalisable to other situations and to real life situations. (0 marks)

Candidate 3: Investigator effects are when the result or outcome is changed due to what the investigator has done. In this study the investigator could have increased anxiety when interviewing, affecting the results. He/she could have also made them feel easy and at home when interviewing them and so the answers to the interview could have been different. (2 marks)

4. Jamie wanted to contact his doctor. He looked up the number in his telephone directory. Before he dialled the number, he had a short conversation with his friend. Jamie was about the phone his doctor, but he had forgotten the number.

Use your knowledge of the multi-store model to explain why Jamie could not remember the doctor’s number. AO2 = 4 marks

Candidate 1: Baddeley and Hitch (1974) produced the model where sensory information enters the sensory store – the visual of the number in the directory. Through encoding this goes to the short term memory (STM) where little information 7 +/- 2 items can remain for just 20 seconds. This is where the phone number was stored before his conversation. The conversation acted as an interference task and prevented rehearsal of the number, so it left the STM. Therefore, Jamie forgot the number. (2 marks)

Candidate 2: The doctor’s number would have been stored in Jamie’s short term memory, but out short term memory can only hold information there for the duration of 20 seconds. So, if the short conversation that Jamie had with his friend lasted more than 20 seconds, then the information (phone number) could have been lost. Information can only stay in our short term memory if it is rehearsed and eventually it would to into our long term memory. But in this case, it is not so as the phone number has removed itself from Jamie’s short term memory store. (4 marks) Candidate 3: The multi store model by Atkinson and Schiffrin suggests that in order for things to pass into our short and long term memory they have to be rehearsed or encoded acoustically or semantically. The phonecall with Jamie’s friend meant that rehearsal was prevented so it didn’t encode into his memory. (1 mark)

5. Outline and evaluate the working memory model. AO1 = 6 marks + AO2 = 6 marks

Candidate 1: The working memory model is was a study of memory, with certain stores such as phonological loop, visual scratchpad, central executive, inner ear and inner voice all working together make up the working memory model. Central executive being the main store as all the information was passed here. Then the visual scratchpad this where you would think of images in your head e.g. how many windows of your house, so this is where you pick visual images up from. Then there’s the inner ear which you would remember verbally so you would listen and it would be stored within, inner voice is the part as you would try to remember things subvocally so you would talk with in your head, you won’t be saying the words out loud but in your head repeatedly.

The limitations of the stores are that the central executive is not reliable and its meant to be the main one but has a very limited duration capacity also there isn’t a lot of research for the central executive to prove that it is actually correct. Whereas the phonological loop has a lot of research supporting it and has a good capacity rate.

Information is formed from the central executive to the visual scratchpad; inner ear and voice and phonological loop is where rehearsal is done. (3 + 1 marks)

Candidate 2: The working memory model is a structural model is made up of five different parts. The central executive is used for attention and to supply orders to the other ‘slave’ components. Although the central executive is supposed to be the main part of the WMM, very little is known about it and it can’t be measured. There is also very little known about the episodic buffer as it was only added in 2000 by Baddeley. The phonological loop is where auditory information is processed and stored. Information enters into the phonological store (inner ear) where it can be held for two seconds and then lost so information is repeated by the articulatory store (inner voice) to be saved (like remembering a phone number).

Baddeley and Hitch found that you can’t do two auditory task at once, as they tried to get participants to remember a set of words while subvocally repeating ‘la la la’ suppressing rehearsal, and none or very little of the words could be recalled. The visual sketchpad is used to store visual and spatial information, like picturing your house to remember how many windows there are. Baddeley also found that you can’t do two visual task at once, as he showed participants the letter F then asked them showed them angles that could fit that letter and asked them whether it was part of the F, while they followed a light on the board. He found that while participants were following the light, they couldn’t recall angles in F correctly. However, he did say that you could do a visual and audio task at the same time. He gave participants a set of paired letters and then asked them questions about them, for example ‘does B follow A?’ and found that most participants got the answers correct as they were using different stores. Although the WMM goes into detail about short term memory, it says nothing about long term memory. (3 + 4 marks)

Candidate 3: The working memory model was developed by Baddeley and Hitch and it proposes that the short term memory (STM) is divided into different stores. The central executive is the key component which controls attention. It has a limited capacity and it controls the ‘slave’ systems. One of these slave systems is the visuo spatial scratchpad – which stores visual and spatial information – it is responsible for setting up and manipulating mental images (inner eye). The visuo spatial scratchpad has a limited capacity. There is also the phonological loop which stores auditory based information. It consists of two components – the phonological store (inner ear) which holds acoustic coded information for a brief time and the articulatory control process for verbal rehearsal (inner voice). The phonological loop also has a limited capacity. The limited capacities of the phonological loop and the visuo spatial scratchpad are independent – so this means two tasks can be carried out simultaneously using the different stores without performance being affected on either one. More recently, the episodic buffer has also been added to the model and this is capable of binding together information from different stores into chunks. It too has a limited capacity.

The working memory model could be described as a reliable model for describing short term memory because it is supported by studies done on interference tasks. These studies found that participants had difficulty doing task simultaneously that used the same store – e.g. repeating ‘the, the, the’ whilst silently reading is very difficult. This is because both these tasks use the phonological loop which, as the working memory model shows, has a limited capacity so cannot deal with both task at once and performance is affected on both. Whereas participants had not difficulty with task that used different stores, e.g. repeating ‘the, the, the’ whilst tracking a moving object – indicating that STM is composed of different stores. The working memory model can be applied to things we do everyday and so has ecological validity as it efficiently explains how STM works. For example, it efficiently explains how we carry out mental arithmetic by storing information and at the same time actively processing it. Furthermore, the working memory mode is supported by research on brain damaged patients, such as K.F. His problem was that he could not recall words that were presented to him verbally, but he had no problem with visual information. This suggests an impaired phonological loop but fully functioning visuo spatial scratchpad, which supports the working memory model’s view of different stores making up the STM.

The biggest criticism of the working memory model is of the central executive. It is described as a ‘key’ component but very little research has been done on it and non one has been able to quantify it experimentally. So psychologists criticise it for being too vague. The model is also quite complex and difficult to make sense of. (6 + 6)

6 a. Mary Ainsworth studied insecure and secure attachment in infants by using the ‘Strange Situation’.

Describe how Ainsworth studied types of attachment. AO3 = 4 marks

Candidate 1: Mary Ainsworth used observation in a controlled environment to observe and record how an infant could behave to a stranger, this mother’s separation, and being alone. She put several toys in a room and asked the mother and infant to enter. The infant would explore. Then a stranger came in and interacted with the mother. The mother left and the stranger tried to comfort the infant. The mother returned, the stranger left. Then the mother left the infant on its own but soon returned. Ainsworth observed each of these 8 stages to see how the infant’s behaviour would change in each circumstance and recorded the findings e.g. if the baby cried as the mother left the room, then this shows that the infant was distressed upon separation. (5 marks)

Candidate 2: In this study Mary Ainsworth placed infants in 7 different situations in order to see how they would respond. Some of these included leaving he child with a stranger, letting the mother outside the room or letting the mother comfort the infant. From this research she devised 3 different types of attachment this included secure, insecure and avoidant. (3 marks)

Candidate 3: Mary Ainsworth studied children in American whereby she went through different episodes, where the mother is present and when she left. She found two types of different attachment, this is when the mother left the baby would start to become distressed and cry, also the baby wouldn’t be comforted by strangers. Whereas insecure attachment the babies are easily comforted by strangers and don’t have an effect on them when the mother leaves. These are the 2 studies Ainsworth went through to find different attachment types. (1 mark) 6 b. Some people say that Ainsworth’s studies lacked validity.

Explain this criticism of Ainsworth. AO3 = 4 marks

Candidate 1: The results could not be generalised very easily. The children and carers were from one certain region and so were not representative of the complete population as a whole. Also, such situations like that are not representative of situations that happen in everyday real life and so that may have affected the child’s actions and ultimately the results and data gathered. (4 marks)

Candidate 2: Validity is how well something measures what it sets out to measure. With Ainsworth’s study you know she is measuring how well the infant is attached to the mother, but she is supposed to be measuring attachment type, and the infant may have a better attachment to another relative. (2 marks)

Candidate 3: Ainsworth’s study lacked ecological validity because the study was done in a controlled environment and therefore greatly lacked ecological validity, because did the study measure what it set out to measure? Ainsworth was trying to discover different attachment types in infants and so she observed the behaviour of infants. The distress of the infant could have been due to stranger anxiety or it could be due to the unfamiliar surroundings. So, it is difficult to say whether she measured attachment sufficiently. (4 marks)

7 a. Explain the difference between privation and disruption of attachment. You may use examples to help explain the difference. AO2 = 4 marks

Candidate 1: Privation is when a child never forms a bond with a primary caregiver e.g. feral children, who never get human contact. This causes severe psychological and physical effects. Genie is a real life example of disruption of attachment until the age of 13 causing permanent and unchangeable psychological harm. Cases of privation have formed attachment later in life, and become normal. Cases of disruption however seem to show more irreversible effects. As the child never seems to reform or remake attachments. (2 marks)

Candidate 2: Privation is the prevention of forming an attachment altogether whereas disruption of attachment occurs during the attachment and something interferes with that. In a study of a young girl called Genie, she was neglected and abused, this means she did not form a single attachment and suffered greatly from it, whereas in Hodges and Tizzard’s study of 65 children, they had formed original attachments with carers but it had been disrupted due to being put into care. (4 marks) Candidate 3: Privation is where an attachment to the caregiver is never established, for example Genie. Whereas disruption of attachment is where attachment is disrupted due to an absence of the child from the caregiver for a long period of time. For example John, when his mother went into hospital. (2 marks)

7 b. Explain how child care has been influenced by findings of research into attachment. AO2 = 4 marks

Candidate 1: Childcare has been influenced so that there is a low staff turnover and a small ratio of staff to children so they can form attachments to that caregiver. It has also influenced how staff are trained, so that they know how to respond to the children’s’ needs and requirements. (3 marks)

Candidate 2: Findings have shown that good quality day care makes the children more sociable with better peer relations. For example, Shea et al videoed 3 and 4 year olds’ behaviour in good day care and she found children were more sociable and less aggressive. Baker et al followed the growth in day care in Quebec. He found because the day care had so many children compared to staff that the children became more aggressive towards each other. (1 mark)

Candidate 3: Research in attachment such as evolutionary theory shows that sensitive responsiveness is key in healthy development and secure attachment. This influences child care as the child’s need for sufficient attachment is taken into consideration. Also, disruption of attachment studies e.g. Laura have made hospitals change their rules of not allowing parents to visit children in hospital. Now parents stay with children if the child is hospitalised. (4 marks)

8. Learning theory provides one explanation of attachment. It suggests that attachment will be between an infant and the person who feeds it. However, the findings of some research studies do not support this explanation.

8 a. Outline research findings that challenge the learning theory of attachment. AO2 = 4 marks

Candidate 1: Schaffer and Emerson said that a bond was not formed with the person who feeds it, but with who responds correctly to the child’s needs. Harlow’s monkeys also found that the monkey’s spent more time with the cloth monkey for comfort, and only went to the wire monkey for food, then moved straight back to the cloth monkey, supporting that they didn’t form an attachment with the wire monkey who supplied food. (4 marks) Candidate 2: Howter did a study in which he made 2 ‘surrogate mothers’ for 2 baby monkeys. One was made of wire mesh, with a feeding bottle on it; the other was a soft cloth monkey, that brought them some comfort. The monkeys spent over two thirds of their time on the cloth monkey and only went to the wire one to feed, so the monkeys formed a type of attachment to the cloth monkey which offered comfort not food. (2 marks)

Candidate 3: Harlow and the rhesus monkey is a study that challenges it as Harlow put out two wire surrogate mothers for the babies, one with just a wire another with a milk bottle and another with comfort, with warmth. Harlow found that the monkeys would always go for the comfort and go to the food only when they really need it. The monkey’s chose comfort over food which challenges this, an infant wont always go for food but the comfort of his/her caregiver. (3 marks)

8 b. Outline and evolutionary explanation of attachment. AO1 = 5 marks

Candidate 1: Attachment is innate. A baby give off social releasers and the mother is sensitive to the babies needs. The human race adapts to survive. Attachment helps survival. When the baby attaches to its mum, its fed, happy, clean and in a good state. Without an attachment to the mother most babies wouldn’t be able to survive. The social releasers of a child mean that the mum attaches to the child too. (2 marks)

Candidate 2: Bowlby said that there is a critical period from birth up until two and a half years when the brain develops and an attachment must be formed, otherwise this will affect the internal working model, which is when the attachment which is formed as a child influences adult relationships in the future. The evolutionary explanation for attachment is heavily deterministic as it is focused on the biology of our body. It states that we are innately programmed to form attachments with a primary caregiver. This means that we have a natural human instinct to form an attachment as a child and we cannot change this as it is deterministic. (4 marks)

Candidate 3: Bowlby’s evolutionary theory. He said that attachment is adaptive and innate – babies are born with the drive to become attached. They elicit caregiving through social releasers which adults respond to. He suggested babies suggest form one special attachment (usually with mother) – monotropy – and forming this attachment has survival value as staying close the mother ensures food and protection. The first two and half years is the critical period to form this attachment or it might never do so. Also forming the attachment is vitally important in developing the internal working model as the caregiver’s sensitivity will form the basis of the child’s future attachments and relationships. (5 marks) 9. A psychologist assessed the aggressive behaviour of 100 five year old children who were starting school. The children had attended day care for at least 20 hours a week. Fifty of the children had attended day nurseries. The other fifty children had been looked after by childminders. The children who attended the day nurseries were more aggressive than the children who had been looked after by childminders.

9 a. Explain why this is an example of a natural experiment. AO3 = 2 marks

Candidate 1: It is a natural experiment as it was carried out in the children’s natural environment. It can also be generalised as it is actually real life situations. (0 marks)

Candidate 2: The independent variable occurs naturally. So the children had only 2 options; day care in the form of nurseries or childminders. Researcher could not have manipulated this. (2 marks)

Candidate 3: The psychologist was taking advantage of a naturally occurring situation in order to conduct their experiment. (1 mark)

9 b. Suggest one way in which the psychologist could have measured the children’s aggressive behaviour. AO3 = 2 marks

Candidate 1: Behavioural categories i.e. not sharing, pushing. (1 mark)

Candidate 2: They could’ve measured how many times the child came into aggressive contact with another child, for example pushing someone. (2 marks)

Candidate 3: By making a behaviour schedule and having categories i.e. fighting that show aggressive behaviour and every time the behaviour was observed they could record it by tally. (2 marks)

9 c. Explain two ethical issues which the psychologist should have considered when carrying out this research. AO3 = 4 marks

Candidate 1:

Issue 1 – Informed consent – because the children can’t give informed consent for themselves as he would have to get permission off the parents.

Issue 2 – Right to withdraw – the parents need to know they have the right to withdraw their child from the experiment including all findings about their child. (4 marks) Candidate 2:

Issue 1 – Consent. The child was allowed to be observed and he/she is under age and needs a parent/guardian to approve of the research.

Issue 2 – Debrief. The parents or guardians of what the study was about and what they found out about the child. (2 marks)

Candidate 3:

Issue 1 - Right to withdraw. The children would have been unaware that they were being a part of an experiment and therefore did not have the right to withdraw.

Issue 2 – Informed consent. As they are very young they could not give informed consent and this issue would have to be resolved by asking a parent or guardian to give informed consent. (3 marks)

9 d. The researcher then decided to investigate how day care affects peer relationships. Explain what is meant by peer relations. AO1 = 2 marks

Candidate one: What bond the child has to the staff, if he/she is social at all. (0 marks)

Candidate two: Peer relationship is how well the child forms a relationship with their peers, so how well the child makes friends. (1 mark)

Candidate three: Peer relations means how well you get along with children your age or those in your class for those who attend school. This may mean the amount of interaction you have with them or how friendly relationships are with other children. (2 marks)

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