cognitive

Question 1

WHAT is the key question

Answer 1

How can psychologists understanding of memory help patients with dementia?

Question 2

WHY is it a key question

Answer 2

850 000 people in the UK suffer from dementia having symptoms such as memory loss, slow thinking and low understandment

Question 3

knowledge from psych applied

Answer 3

• Dementia patients begin by forgetting life events (more recent = most effected)
• explained by TULVING theory of LTM
• episodic memories (autobiographical) are effected before semantic (factual)
• This suggests dementia patients may need the help of external sources to remember events E.g. a diary or post it notes

Question 4

knowledge applied
WM

Answer 4

WORKING MEMORY
- central executive impared
- dementia patients struggle to multi task and follow instructions
BADDELEY - alzheimers
1. verbal digit span
2. visual tracking
3. dual task (peformence declined)
- SIMPLIFY instructions so that stores arent working simultaniously

Question 5

limitation to how cognitive psych can help

Answer 5

• Doesnt explain why newer memories are lost first
• models only help with stratergies to cope it doesnt provide a treatment
• models are oversimplified - doesnt give us gender differences
• tasks (dual tasks + digit strings) lack eco.v cant be applied to real life

Question 6

Conclusion

Answer 6

Psychologist reaserch into cognitive psychology can help dementia patients through using external sources such as writing stuff down to help with episodic memory and can simplify instructions so that two stores arent working together simultaniously due to the impared central executive