Clara has been struggling with attention and working memory processing difficulties that cause her to feel easily overwhelmed. She struggles to filter out background noise in busy environments, frequently misinterpreting social cues and becoming defensive around colleagues.
Clara has previously received two formal warnings at work for sudden verbal outbursts when stressed. On another occasion, police found her wandering disoriented in a multi-storey car park late at night, unable to remember where she had parked her vehicle.
Recently, Clara confronted a colleague, accusing him of whispering malicious remarks about her. The colleague insisted he was only humming a song to himself, but Clara told their supervisor that the colleague was lying to cover his tracks. During the subsequent HR meeting, Clara struggled to recall the chronological sequence of the argument.
The HR department referred Clara to an occupational health specialist, who recommended she undergo a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment to evaluate her executive cognitive functioning.
Evaluate how well knowledge from cognitive psychology could explain Clara's situation.
Practise Edexcel A Level Psychology Content with exam-style questions for A Level Psychology. 100 questions covering Main features of classical conditioning, Pavlov (1927) salivation in dogs, Main features of operant conditioning, Properties of reinforcement, Behaviour modification and shaping, Main features of social learning theory, Social learning stages, Bandura (1961, 1963) Bobo doll experiments, Bandura (1965) vicarious reinforcement, Learning theories and phobias, Treatments for phobias, Individual differences, and Developmental psychology, matched to the Edexcel A Level Psychology (9PS0) specification and written in Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 3 style. Every question includes a full worked solution and mark scheme, so you can see where marks are awarded rather than just whether you got the answer right.