The Three Stages Of Cognitive Psychology

Introduction

Cognitive psychology deals with the mind as an information processor within a scientific inquiry. Cognitive psychologists look at how we process information we receive and how the treatment of this information leads to our responses. There are many areas in cognitive psychology including sensation, perception, and language acquisition and so on, but among these, memory appears as one of the most interesting subjects to investigate with a scientific inquiry. Memory is related to past experiences that individuals have witnessed, however some memories are created by individuals although they have never experienced particular events in their lives. This phenomenon is known as false or fake memory and it is an interesting topic in cognitive

The researchers thought that doctored photographs have more influence than narratives according to Hymann’s three stages. Hymann gives information about how false childhood memories are formed in this three stages. The first stage is about how people rely on photographs and consider them a frozen capture from back in time. Hence the photographs are a rich source, and it is easier to create a false memory with respect to the photographs. Accordıng to Hymann’s study the third condition of creating a fake memory is to judge these generated images as genuine experiences.

The goal of this research is to explore whether the subjects would or would not be swinged by doctored photos and to gather information about possible mechanisms of influence.

20 participants who had not take a hot balloon trip with their family, with 20.2 average of age and at least 18 years old and local university students were selected for the study. Participants were shown 3 real photographs about their childhood and one fake hot air balloon trip photograph which digitized via photoshop. Hot air balloon trip image was selected because it’s likely to be experienced by lots of New Zealanders. This fake photo was presented as the third image to the

Generally the participants are unaware that they literally started to create fake childhood memories according to doctored photographs. Thus, a participant truly admits she/he remembered the fake childhood memory, the answer is filtered according to a structure.

The researchers evaluated the answers by three stages. If a participant recalls the missing things from the doctored image, such as details like feelings, clothes and family members very clear, it has been admitted that the subject created fake childhood memories due to digitized photographs. The lower category is called partial remembering. The participants who recall the fake memories partially can enrich the details about the pictures but they fail to give specific details about the hot air balloon trip such as how the sun set.

The lowest category within the evaluation is called trying to recall. If subjects create images with respect to the past, they can remember as little parts but not as memories, they are classified as trying to recall. Their memories about their past are like photo