Baddeley Flashcards
What is the aim of Baddeley (1966B) ?
To see whether long term memory is encoded acoustically or semantically.
What is the IV of Baddeley (1966B) ?
- Acoustically similar word list or Acoustically dissimilar word list
- Semantically similar word list or Semantically dissimilar word list
- Performance before 15 minute ‘forgetting’ delay and performance after
What is the DV of Baddeley (1966B) ?
Score on a recall test of 10 words - words must be recalled in the correct order
What is the sample of Baddeley (1966B) ?
Men and women from the Applied Psychology Research Unit at Cambridge university (mostly students).
There were 72 altogether and were 15-20 in each condition - 15 in acoustically similar and 16 in semantically similar.
Describe the procedure of Baddeley (1966B).
- Participants were split into four groups.
- Each group views a slideshow of a set of 10 words, each word appearing for 3 seconds.
- Examples of words in the acoustically similar condition were man, cab, can, max etc.
- Examples of words in the semantically similar group were great, large, huge, big etc.
- All participants then carried out an interference task that involved hearing then writing down 8 numbers 3 times and then recalling the words from the slideshow.
- There were four trials where the words stayed the same each time - they were displayed on signs around the room so participants only had to focus on the order of them.
- After the 4th trial the participants were given a 15 minute break to perform an unrelated interference task.
- They were then asked for a 5th time in a surprise trial to recall the list order again.
What were the results found in Baddeley (1966B) ?
Recall of acoustically similar words was worse than dissimilar words in the initial stage of learning (30% correct in trial 1 vs 80% correct in trial 5 where it has changed over to LTM).
Recall of semantically similar and dissimilar words was not significant (30% in trial 1 vs 55% in trial 5) - interfering with semantic encoding as the words all mean the same making it harder to put into the correct order as their encoding is confusing it with same meaning words.
This suggests acoustic and encoding was initially difficult but did not effect LTM recall.
What is the conclusion of Baddeley (1966B) ?
Participants found it harder to recall list 1 suggesting STM is largely acoustic, so acoustically similar words are harder to encode.
Later retest recall of list 3 was impaired because they were semantically similar suggesting LTM encodes semantically.
Strengths of Baddeley (1966B).
G - Memory is universal meaning that everyone in the world has short and long term memory. This means that this study is representative of the target population of those with fully developed memory due to the large sample size of 72 males and females. Therefore the findings that semantically similar words are harder to order can be generalised to everyone as long term memory exists in everyone’s cognition.
R - Baddeley employed standardised procedures into his study by stating that the 10 words were displayed on a slideshow with each remaining on the screen for 3 seconds for each of the four trials and adding an unexpected fifth trial.This is good because it provides a clear method for the study to be replicated. From this, other researchers will be able to easily test and compare the results of their studies to Baddeley’s. This helps to ensure that the findings of LTM being encoded semantically are consistent, increasing the reliability of the experiment.
A - Baddeley’s research has lead to positive applications due to the conclusion that the similar meaning of words is encoded into LTM rather than the similar sounding of words. This has allowed students to understand ways to improve their memory when revising for exams such as creating mind maps for each individual topic to have the similar content all in one place, improving recall. Therefore this study has positively impacted society in order to help the knowledge of different memory stores improve and has ultimately led to the development of the Working Memory Model.
V - This study had high levels of control over extraneous variables. Baddeley made sure to make the words visible on signs around the room to ensure that the study was not a test of memorising words but memorising the order they were presented. This meant that the results were clear and more accurate as participants did not have to worry about remembering the words as well as the order because they could just look around the room for them. Therefore the internal validity of the study was relatively high due to the controls Baddeley put in place to ensure nothing would impact the findings of the word list order recall.
E -
Weaknesses of Baddeley (1966B).
G - The participants of this experiment were 72 British volunteers from Cambridge University. This is an issue because British words may be potentially easier to memorise due to more simple sounding words compared to foreign languages such as Spanish. Therefore this study could be considered ethnocentric as it doesn’t consider how different languages may affect the results.
R -
A -
V - Baddeley used a lab experiment to collect his data. This is bad because it can be too artificial for participants as they are more likely to focus and perform to their best ability because they are aware of the significance of the data. The actual tasks involved themselves were not realistic to real life situations. This means that task validity was significantly poor in the first four trials, questioning the credibility of Baddeley’s conclusions.
E - An ethical issue with this study is that the surprise 5th trial meant that informed consent was not able to be gained for this retest trial. This may have affected participants as they might not have been prepared to continue with the experiment as they may have been fatigued from the 4 previous trials, resulting in poor performance in the 5th. Therefore by deceiving the participants through the 15 minute interference task, Baddeley may have caused some involved to feel pressured and anxious when discovering that there was a surprise trial to finish the experiment.
