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IB DP Psychology — Cognitive Approach | SL & HL | Paper 1
🎯 Learning Intentions By the end of this note, you will be able to:
- Define cognitive strategies such as elaborative encoding, spaced practice, retrieval practice, and the method of loci using IB-aligned terminology.
- Explain how each strategy improves memory encoding, storage, or retrieval, and the cognitive mechanisms underlying each.
- Describe the role of schema, depth of processing, and spacing effects in enhancing long-term retention.
- Evaluate research evidence for cognitive improvement strategies using supporting and opposing studies in ACAS format.
- Apply cognitive strategy concepts to a real-world case study from the cognitive approach perspective.
- Discuss the extent to which cognitive strategies provide a complete and practical explanation for improving human memory and learning.
- Analyse research on cognitive strategies using relevant concept areas: Bias, Causality, Measurement, and Perspective.
Introduction & Context
Have you ever crammed for an exam the night before, only to find that by the following week you could barely recall what you had studied? Or perhaps you have noticed that some memories — a childhood holiday, the lyrics to a favourite song, the smell of a grandparent's kitchen — seem to persist effortlessly for years, while others vanish within hours. This contrast is not random. It reflects something fundamental about how the human mind encodes, stores, and retrieves information.
Psychologists working within the cognitive approach have long been interested in understanding why some learning strategies produce durable memories while others do not. Rather than treating memory as a passive recording device, cognitive researchers view it as an active, constructive process — one that can be deliberately shaped and improved. The question, then, is not simply whether we can improve our cognitive processes, but how, and why certain techniques work better than others.
This note explores a set of evidence-based strategies — elaborative encoding, spaced practice, retrieval practice, and the method of loci — that have been shown to meaningfully enhance memory and learning. Understanding these strategies requires us to first appreciate the cognitive architecture they are designed to work with: how information moves from perception into long-term memory, and what determines whether it stays there.
🔧 Analogy — Filing vs Scribbling on a Sticky Note Imagine your long-term memory as a vast, well-organised filing cabinet. When you use a good learning strategy, you are carefully labelling a document, placing it in the right folder, and cross-referencing it with related files — making it easy to find later. When you cram or passively re-read, you are scribbling a note on a sticky note and slapping it somewhere random. It might stick briefly, but it is almost impossible to retrieve when you actually need it. Cognitive strategies are essentially techniques for filing information properly.
Core Concepts
Before examining specific strategies, it helps to understand the cognitive principle that underpins most of them. When we encounter new information, we do not simply store it like a photograph. Instead, the brain processes it at varying depths, and the depth of that processing largely determines how well the information is retained. This idea was formalised by Craik and Lockhart in 1972 as the levels of processing framework, and it remains one of the most influential ideas in cognitive psychology.
📖 Key Definition — Levels of Processing Levels of processing refers to the idea, proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972), that the depth at which information is cognitively processed determines the strength and durability of the resulting memory trace. Shallow processing (e.g. noticing the appearance of a word) produces weak, short-lived memories, while deep, semantic processing (e.g. relating a