Baddeley Flashcards
What is the aim of Baddeley?
To investigate the influence of acoustic and semantic word similarity on learning
and recall in short-term and long-term memory
What is the sample of Baddeley?
72 participants (male and female) from the applied psychology
research unit
What is the procedure of Baddeley?
Word list of 10 - either acoustically similar,
acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar or semantically dissimilar
Given a hearing test
Each word was presented for three seconds
Required to complete six tasks involving memory for digits and asked to write down the words in the correct order (4 times)
Given a 15 minute distractor task involving copying
numbers
Surprise recall - putting words in correct order
What are the results of Baddeley?
Acoustically similar words were recalled worse than dissimilar words during
the initial phase (trial 2 in particular was statistically significant at P<0.05)
Semantically similar (approx. 60%) were significantly harder to recall in the surprise recall than the semantically dissimilar (approx. 85%) (p < 0.005)
Short term memory is acoustically encoded
Long term memory is
semantically encoded
Why is it a strength that Baddeley conducted a lab experiment?
Standardised e.g. the timings of the procedure, so we can repeat the experiment to see if we get the same results about encoding
Why is it a weakness that Baddeley conducted a lab experiment?
Different from everyday life, in real life you wouldn’t
have to recall monosyllabic words in a selected order and so the study lacks mundane
realism/ecological validity, this means the results about memory encoding can’t be
applied to real life
Why is it a strength that Baddeley made the participants have a hearing test prior?
High level of control so extraneous variables (like
distractions/hearing problems when the words were read) are eliminated
meaning that they were able to focus on the effects of the IV on the DV (we know it’s
the type of word which affected the word recall not something else like a hearing
issue)
What is a weakness of the Baddeley’s sample?
Taken from an applied psychology research unit and may share characteristics with each other, meaning their results may not represent how others
may have done
Why is it good that Baddeley used independent measures?
Reduced order effects so they wouldn’t get bored or tired by doing four lists of words (AS, AD, SS, SD) meaning the results from the study about encoding type would be more valid
What is a weakness of Baddeley using independent measures?
Participant variables between the participants e.g. natural memory, intelligence etc
which could affect their scores on the memory tests used making it less valid at
measuring how word type/encoding affects memory
