Practise discussing how social and cultural factors shape memory, perception, attention, language and decision-making with IB Psychology evidence.
Discuss how social and/or cultural factors affect one cognitive process.
Refer to the paper 1 section B assessment criteria when awarding marks.
The command term "discuss" requires candidates to offer a considered and balanced review that includes a range of arguments, factors or hypotheses, supported by appropriate evidence, of how social and/or cultural factors affect one cognitive process.
Candidates should give a considered review of the way in which social and/or cultural factors have a bearing on one way in which people process information, for example, memory, thinking, perception, attention, decision-making or language. As the concepts of social and cultural factors are arguably very much related, such distinction is not necessary.
Candidates may discuss theories and/or methodological issues as well as giving the findings of studies.
Examples of appropriate factors include, but are not limited to:
- Cultural norms and past experience (Bartlett, 1932)
- Social identity's effect on formation of flashbulb memories (Luminet and Curci, 2009)
- Schooling's effects on encoding strategies (Cole and Scribner, 1974)
- The effect of poverty on cognitive processing (Mani, 2013;
Pollitt, 1995)
- The role of environmental factors (Deregowski, 1972;
Segall et al.'s carpentered world hypothesis, 1966).
If a candidate discusses more than one cognitive process, credit should be given only to the first discussion.
Candidates may discuss a smaller number of factors in order to demonstrate depth of knowledge, or may discuss a larger number of factors in order to demonstrate breadth of knowledge. Both approaches are equally acceptable.