Cognition Articles Summaries Smith, Haynes, Lazarus and Pope (1993)Cognition goes with emotion.

With appraisal theories, cognitions are important to the determining of emotion (like in Schachter-Singer). Emotions are evoked by an evaluation of the significance of ones circumstances in other words, emotions come based on your appraisal of the situation (whether it is good or bad for you). Because you have to quickly sum up a situation in order to determine emotion, knowledge of ones circumstances, ones goals and beliefs, and the demands and opportunities present in the environment are vital to accurately accessing the situation. One type of causal attribution (the perceived causes of an event) have been studied by emotion researchers a lot. It has been shown that as long as the attributions are fact oriented, they are not important enough to cause emotion. Attributions typically consist of three dimensions: causal locus (whether the cause is internal-intentional or external-causal); stability (whether this is short-lived or a long-lasting/constant state); and controllability (whether it is subject to control). In other words, we think differently about a sibling who hits us on accident, or because they are very angry at the parents and this is a one-time anger management thing OR if the sibling intentionally, constantly hits even thought they could control their anger. However these researchers (Smith et al.) suggest that once someone has an event, and then makes a causal attribution, it is then the appraisal of that attribution that causes the emotion. In other words, lots of things happen to us every day and we have lots of thoughts about those events; some of them are thoughts about cause; but, it is only when we make an appraisal (that we care, that the thing is good or bad for us) that we actually have an emotion. These researchers feel it is important to make a distinction between attributions and appraisals and to recognize that attributions come first and lead to part of the information accessed in the appraisal. Smith et al. have defined a specific theme for each emotion (in anger, your appraisal is that someone has hurt you, and you blame them; in quilt, you blame yourself for things you did to others). This is based on motivational relevance (extent to which personal goals or concerns are affected; its importance), motivational congruence (extent to which the event is consistent or inconsistent with your goals; how desirable it is), and accountability (who or what is to receive credit or blame for the outcome). STUDY ONE: The point was to suggest that appraisals are more important than attributions in determining emotion (specifically anger, guilt, fear-anxiety, sadness, happiness, and hope-challenge). 136 subjects filled out a 2hour survey; each had one of 8 prompts (4 that evoked positive memories, and four, sad) where the subject was asked to think of a specific memory from their past (you got a big honor, did well on important test, had a meaningful conversation with parents, had interest returned from a crush, you question your career plans, received a low grade on important test, parents wont let you do something and your dating partner criticized you), and write an open-ended description of the memory. Attributions were measured by asking the person to list the cause or causes of the event and then to relate it to either mood, physique, personality, ability, effort, the difficulty of the task, luck, and the personality or behavior of someone else. Appraisals were measured by getting the person to rate motivational relevance, motivational congruence, etc., as well as how many of 54 statements they agreed with. Emotions were measured by asking subjects to check how many of 50 emotional adjectives described their feelings at the time. Results were basically figured out by looking at lots of correlations (in a regression model) and saying do the appraisal measures or the attribution measures best predict the emotion described by the subject. Both appraisal and attributions alone seem to account for the emotion; however, the real difference is when you look at the two together most of what attributions explain can be explained better by appraisals, suggesting that appraisals include attributions AND appraisals are much better at explaining emotions. STUDY TWO: Just looked at anger and guilt, and tried to be more in line with other peoples research. Four attributional dimensions were studied: causal locus (blame others in anger; blame yourself in guilt), controllability of cause, how intentional was the cause, and the forseeability of the outcome. The researchers wrote emotional and negative vignettes in which they varied the above factors and asked subjects (120 undergrads) to imagine that this event had actually happened to them and then rate their emotions, appraisal and attributions (on provided scales).

Results show that vignettes were effective at varying causal locus, controllability, intentionality and forseeability (meaning that the researchers really are trying to show the importance of attributions even though they believe appraisals are more important). Again the results showed that while attribution explained much of the emotion, it was really appraisal (which took into account the attribution) that was a much better predictor of emotion. Attribution influences emotion by helping to define the factual nature of a persons circumstances, but the appraisal of those facts with respect to their implications for personal well-being is what directly evokes emotion. In other words, I can attribute a mean act to someones willful, controllable urge to hurt me, but if the act actually doesnt hurt me then I might not have an emotional reaction; and yet someone can unintentionally hurt me where my goals are shattered and I might have a strong emotional reaction. While this study does not explain really how or why we make appraisals and attributions, it shows that we do and those cognitions are vital to understanding our emotional reactions to things. Rogoff and Waddell (1982)This article attempts to do a cross-cultural comparison of Mayan and American childrens memories. It points out that past studies have shown American children to have superior memories, yet this study points out that most of those studies tested childrens memories for words or non-sense syllables (because they were trying to remove any cultural context). Children who are not schooled in the traditional western sense do not have a lot of practice memorizing random lists of words, so those studies may not be measuring memory, so much as they are measuring the effect that schooling has on teaching students strategies for memorization. To counteract these problems, the researchers suggest using a contextual task like might appear in real-life. 30 Utah schoolchildren (average age 9 years, 4 months) were randomly selected from a school; 30 Mayan schoolchildren were randomly selected; 15 boys and 15 girls were used in each sample. While all children attended school, the tasks and skills taught varied between the two schools. Standard listmemory tests showed much better performance by US children over Mayan. THE TASK: A 3-D panoramic scene was created with mountains, building, a road, a lake, a beach and some trees. The panorama was created to match a Mayan scene (their version included volcano, grass house, adobe house ) and was then adapted piece by piece to match an American scene (mountain, log cabin, brick house). 80 3D objects were created to go in the panorama (furniture, cars, animals, people, household items, etc.). Each subject was tested individually by a native speaker in their native language. The child named all 80 items, then 20 random items were placed one at a time in the panorama, and the child was asked to study the scene until they had it learned (~40 sec for both samples). After 4 minutes, the child was given unlimited time to place the 20 items (which were scattered among the whole 80 items). After the experimenter corrected the child, they repeated the task with another 20 items. Errors were recorded if the child forgot an object, placed in the wrong location (minor if within an inch; large error if farther); wrong orientation (more than 90 degrees off); substitution of a similar item (car instead of truck) or inclusion of a wrong item. RESULTS: Children got 13 of 20 correct on the first task and 14.3 correct on the second; showing both samples learned to do a bit better the second time. There was NO statistically significant difference between the Mayan and American schoolchildren (in fact, the raw data had the Mayans slightly better - although not statistically higher enough to be significant). An analysis of errors showed that Mayan children were more likely to substitute a wrong item for the right one, while American children were more likely to just omit items. They still made the same number of errors (Mayans 7.1 errors per task and Americans- 7.7 errors per task) although their thought may have been different (when in doubt, Americans just left an item out while Mayans took more risks and placed something close). The big take home message is that there did not seem to be cultural differences in peoples memories. When the task is memory in a contextually organized situation (like we all do every day: how to get to the store, where items are in my house, etc.), cultural and schooling differences between groups seem to fall away, suggesting that core memory abilities are universally the same (although how we practice and use them may be a product of things like culture and schooling) .

Loftus (1975)- You should know this, but for the sake of completeness, I gave you a summary here too! Loftus research shows that memories are not stable, as we commonly believe, but that they are malleable and changeable over time. Reconstructive memory is a result of our use of new and existing information to fill in the gaps in our recall. The four studies in this article show that the mere wording of questions asked of eyewitnesses could alter their memories of events when they were later asked other questions about the events. She measured the power of presupposition a condition that must be true for the question to make sense (How many people were in the speeding car? presupposes a speeding car). Even if you recognize the speeding as false info, you might incorporate the new false info into your memory and thus testify later that the car was speeding. STUDY ONE: 150 Ss saw a film (less than a minute) of five-car accident (took about 4 seconds) when a driver ran a stop sign into oncoming traffic. 10 Questions were asked; half got How fast was car A going when it ran the stop sign? and half got How fast was car A going when it turned right?. The last question was did you see a stop sign for car A? 53% in the stop sign group said yes; only 35% in the turned-right group said yes; this was statistically significant. STUDY TWO: 40 Ss were shown a 3-minute clip showing a class being disrupted by 8 antiwar demonstrators. After viewing, Ss answered 20 questions, all were identical except for either Was the leader of the four demonstrators who entered the classroom a male? OR Was the leader of the twelve demonstrators who entered the classroom a male?. One week later (delayed memory tested here) they returned and answered 20 new questions; one question was How many demonstrators did you see entering the classroom?. The group who had the 12 question reported seeing an average of 8.85 and the ones with the 4 question reported 6.4 demonstrators; this was statistically significant. STUDY THREE: here Loftus wanted to see if a false presupposition would cause people to remember objects that werent actually there. 150 Ss watched a short video of an accident with a white sports car and then answered 10 questions; For one question, half got How fast was the white sports car going when it passed the barn while traveling along the country road? and half got How fast was the white sports car going while traveling along the country road?. Again they returned a week later and got 10 new questions; one was Did you see a barn? Remember there was no barn in the video 17% of the barn question group said yes; only 2.7% in the other question group said yes. It was statistically significant. STUDY FOUR: This study measured if something just mentioned (and not part of a false supposition) would be enough to affect memory. 3 groups of 50 Ss each watched a 3-minute film that ends with the car colliding with a baby carriage pushed by a man. Group C got 40 filler questions about the film; Group D: the direct question group got the 40 filler questions plus 5 direct questions about non-existent objects (Did you see a barn in the film?); Group F was the false supposition group who got 40 filler questions and 5 questions with presuppositions (Did you see a station wagon parked in front of the barn?). One week later, all returned and were asked 20 direct questions, five about objects not in the film 29% from the false-presupposition group said they saw the item, 15.6% of the direct-question group, and 8.4% of the controls said yes. The difference between false-presupposition and direct-question was significant for each item and overall. DISCUSSION: this suggests that people integrate new information into an old memory; since eyewitnesses are often questioned multiple times before they testify in court, there is the danger that their memory will be affected both by false presuppositions or direct questioning. Loftus helped law officials train police officers on how to ask questions so they hopefully dont manipulate eyewitnesses. Note that Loftus extension of this work to eyewitnesses in court and to repressed memories of child sexual abuse has been highly controversial.