IB Psychology

Levels of Analysis — Options — Research Methodology — Internal Assessment — External Assessment

General Learning Outcomes

The general learning outcomes (GLO) at the cognitive level of analysis (CLOA) include all of the information that is within this level.

There are four general learning outcomes:

GLO1: Outline principles that define the cognitive level of analysis.
GLO2: Explain how principles that define the cognitive level of analysis may be demonstrated in research.
GLO3: Discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the cognitive level of analysis.
GLO4: Discuss ethical considerations related to research studies at the cognitive level of analysis.

Note that any example responses are not necessarily worth full marks, but exist simply to provide an idea of how an example looks.

GLO1

Outline principles that define the cognitive level of analysis.

There are several principles that define the cognitive level of analysis. Such principles are:

Mental processes can be investigated scientifically and non-invasively.
Human beings are information processors and mental representations guide behaviour.
Cognitive processes may be influenced by social and cultural factors.

Mental processes can be investigated scientifically and non-invasively

Mental processes are the activities that occur during human thinking, memory, or emotion. These can be investigated with scientific analysis, through the use of Brain Imaging Technologies (BITs) or through particular studies. When investigating mental processes, researchers must use non-invasive modes of investigation. That is they must not cause harm or undesirable effects to the subject whom they are researching.

Supporting Study: Loftus and Palmer (1974) aimed to investigate whether the use of leading questions would affect recall in a situation where participants were asked to estimate speed. A leading question is a question that prompts or encourages a particular answer. The 45 student participants engaged in a laboratory experiment requiring that they watched a short video of several car accidents. They were then asked to approximate the speed of the cars by answering the question: "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" The verb "smashed" was interchanged with hit, collided, bumped, or contacted for different conditions. The results showed that the harsher the verb was, the higher the speed was estimated to be. In the ‘smashed’ condition the speed estimates’ mean average was 40.8 mph, which was the highest, whereas, the average speed estimate for ‘contacted’ was 31.8 mph, which was the lowest. It was concluded that leading questions can affect the memories of people giving eyewitness testimonies. They followed this study up with a second part to this study. The participants were asked if they saw any broken glass. There was no smashed glass in the videos. Loftus and Palmer discovered that the participants in the smashed condition were more likely to answer that there was broken glass.

Human beings are information processors and mental representations guide behaviour

This principle can be broken into two parts: human beings are information processes and mental representations guide behaviour.

Human beings are information processes

This suggests that humans can be likened to computers in terms of information processing. Computers consist of hardware and software. Hardware is the physical components of the computer such as motherboards and hard drives. Alternatively, software is the intangible functions of the computer, such as the coding and processing components. In the brain the structures, chemicals, and neurotransmitters are like the hardware in that they form the brain in a physical perspective. Thoughts, emotions and feelings are the intangible 'software' part of the brain. Hence humans, like computers, are information processes.

Mental representations guide behaviour

What differs people from computers is that how people view things (their perspective of the environment) can influence their behaviour. For example, if somebody from a western culture saw another person eat a sheep's brain, it would likely evoke a disgust response. However, if the same situation was observed by someone who belonged to a culture where eating sheep's brains was accepted than it would evoke a different response. It is in how people view the world that dictates behavioural responses. This occurs on a multitude of levels. For example, stereotypes, or fixed ideas of a group of people, can lead to behaviours of discrimination. Perception of the world is often based less on reality than on things like context or recency, especially when we have to interpret ambiguous events. This means that the cognitive processes of interpretation drive our behaviour when we respond to them. Schemas or networks of knowledge and beliefs about aspects of the world, help drive our behaviour. Human beings are schematically biased to view things certain ways; they construct mental images of their environment and of other people. These mental representations guide behaviour because schema -a mental representation of knowledge stored in the brain - directs human expectations and beliefs.

Supporting Study: Bartlett (1932) aimed to investigate whether people's memory for a story is affected by previous knowledge (schemas) and the extent to which memory is reconstructive. Bartlett read the 20 British participants an unfamiliar Native American legend called "The War of the Ghosts". After two readings, the participants were asked to repeat the story immediately, and then over a period of months or years (serial reproduction). Bartlett found that the participants remembered the main idea of the story but they changed any unfamiliar elements, ones that did not fit their schema, to familiar terms which fit their own cultural expectations. Despite being changed, the story remained coherent and whole, although, it became evidently shorter after each reproduction. Bartlett concluded that remembering is an active process. Memories are not copies of experience but rather "reconstructions".

Supporting Study: Anderson and Pitchert (1978) did a study where participants were told a story with points related to house-buyers and burglars. Half were asked to read it with the mindset of a home buyer or of a burglar. These schemas later impacted recall, so that people remembered more points related to the schema they had been prepped with.

Cognitive processes may be influenced by social and cultural factor

Our social and cultural environment demand certain cognitive processes. If a child is born in a Westernised culture, they will learn times-tables and rote learning; alternatively, a child born into a Ugandan culture will not learn such cognitive processes, but instead they will learn processes that will aid in their survival, such as how to construct shelter, find food and water, and how to protect themselves. Hence, cognitive processes, such as rote learning or survival, may be shaped and influenced by social and cultural factors.

Supporting Study: Cole and Scribner (1974) aimed to investigate different memory strategies in two different cultures: the USA and the Kpelle people in Liberia. There were three conditions in the study, which were USA schooled children, Kpelle schooled children, and Kpelle non-schooled children. The USA schooled children were compared with the Kpelle schooled children; and the Kpelle schooled children were compared with the Kpelle non-schooled children. Cole and Scribner used twenty items that were familiar to both the USA children and the Kpelle children. These objects were separated into four distinct categories by the researchers: utensils, clothes, tools, and vegetables. The participants were read the items from a list and asked to recall them in any order (free recall). The results of the study revealed that the USA and the Kpelle schooled children recalled about the same amount of objects. They not only learned the list rapidly but used the categorical similarities of items in the list to aid their recall. After the first trial they clustered their responses, recalling for example items of clothing, then items of food, and so on. The non-schooled Liberian participants did very little such clustering, indicating that they were not using the categorical structure of the list to help them remember. The Kpelle non-schooled children, however, improved their performance on these tasks very little after the age of nine or ten. They remembered approximately ten items on the first trial, and managed to recall only two more items after fifteen practice trials. However, when the items where included in a narration, the non-schooled children outperformed those who went to school. The implication of these memory studies is that although the ability to remember is a universal intellectual requirement, specific forms of remembering are not universal, and the problem with many memory studies is that they are usually associated with formal schooling.

Supporting Study: Rogoff and Waddell (1982) aimed to investigate cross-cultural differences between Mayan children and those from the US. The researchers sample was 30 US children and 30 Mayan children from Guatemala. For their procedure, the researchers constructed a diorama of a Mayan village located near a mountain and a lake, similar to the place in which the children lived. They also constructed a diorama of salt lake city in the US for the American children. The experimenter selected 20 miniature objects from a set of 80 and placed them in the diorama. The objects included cars, animals, people, and furniture, as would be expected in a normal town. Then the 20 objects were returned to the group of 60 others remaining on the table. After a few minutes, the children were asked to reconstruct the full scene they had been shown. The results were, that under these conditions, the memory performance of the Mayan children was slightly superior to that of their United States counterparts. Rogoff and Waddell concluded that children of any culture are skilled at remembering if information is presented in a meaningful context.

Supporting Study: Bartlett (1932) [see above] can also be used for this principle.

Example response

There is no example response yet for this outcome.

Additional Notes

This outcome is very similar to GLO2 except that its focus is on the outcomes themselves as opposed to the research. Additionally, if the question restricts the outcome to one study, you must only use the first part of the Loftus and Palmer (1974) experiment if you are doing [[#Mental processes can be investigated scientifically and non-invasively|"Mental processes can be investigated scientifically and non-invasively"].

GLO2

Explain how principles that define the cognitive level of analysis may be demonstrated in research.

Example response

There is no example response yet for this outcome.

Additional Notes

This outcome is very similar to GLO1 except that its focus is on the research rather than the outcomes themselves.

GLO3

Discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the cognitive level of analysis.

Example response

There is no example response yet for this outcome.

Additional Notes

There are no additional notes yet for this outcome.

GLO4

Discuss ethical considerations related to research studies at the cognitive level of analysis.

Example response

There is no example response yet for this outcome.

Additional Notes

There are no additional notes yet for this outcome.

Levels of Analysis

Biological Level — Cognitive Level — Sociocultural Level

Cognitive Level

General Learning Outcomes — Cognitive Processes — Cognition and Emotion