Answer to Question #192078 in Psychology for Nratings

Question

*23 Adelyn is researching the role of interference in short-term memory recall. She conducts a laboratory experiment where participants recall words from a word list. Participants count backwards from 100 for 30 seconds before they recall the words. The number of words recalled are counted. Adelyn then compares her results to a group of participants who recalled the words immediately. Those who counted backwards recalled fewer words than those who recalled the words immediately. Adelyn uses her results to conclude that interference prevents words from remaining in short-term memory and prevents transfer to long-term memory. Adelyn's research and explanation of memory could be considered reductionist. Assess whether reductionism is useful in cognitive psychology. (9)

Answer 1

Reductionism is a phenomenon of psychology centered on reducing complex psychological processes and events into more minor elements. It argues that the best way to understand a phenomenon is by breaking it down and looking at its constituent pieces. Reductionism is useful in cognitive psychology because it can help a researcher understand how people gather, store, process, and utilize information. Similarly, it allows cognitive psychologists to easily study the broken down parts of a phenomenon and thus be able to focus on a specific problem. For instance, when investigating depression, instead of considering all the various forces that may contribute to it, the reductionist approach may suggest that biological processes within the body are the causes of depression.