Baddeley (1966b) (Classic Study) (2)

Question 1

What was the aim of Baddeley’s (1966b) Study?

Answer 1

Aim: Alan Baddeley conducted a study where he showed that recall of acoustically similar words from the short-term memory was poor. However STM was not affected by semantically similar words. He wanted to reproduce this with long term

Question 2

What was the procedure in Baddeley’ s (1966b) study?

Answer 2

• He used 75 young servicemen
• They were all given a hearing test prior to the test
• The lists played out loud each word for 3 seconds
• they then had 40 seconds to write out the words
• they then had a 20 minute interference task
• then had to write down the words again in order
• this was done with 4 groups and different lists

Question 3

What were the findings in Baddeley’ s (1966b) study?

Answer 3

There was very little difference in recall of semantic words

The Acoustically similar words were recalled better than the acoustically dissimilar

Question 4

What were the 4 word lists in Baddeley’s study

Answer 4

• List A- Acoustically similar words
• List B- Acoustically Dissimilar words
• List C- Semantically similar words
• List D- Semantically Dissimilar words

Question 5

What does Acoustically similar mean

Answer 5

Sound similar (Mat - Cat - Spat)

Question 6

What does Acoustically dissimilar mean?

Answer 6

All sound different (fat - bad - dog)

Question 7

What does Semantically similar mean?

Answer 7

Mean the same (small - tiny - mini)

Question 8

What does Semantically dissimilar mean?

Answer 8

All different meanings (Good - bad - ugly)

Question 9

What were the conclusions of Baddeley’s (1966b) study?

Answer 9

Due to the conclusions of his study being so different to his expectations Baddeley repeated his experiment in different ways due to a lack of understanding of the results.

Question 10

What are the strengths of Baddeley’s (1966b) study?

Answer 10

• high internal validity

- very controlled procedure

Question 11

What are the weaknesses of Baddeley’s (1966b) study?

Answer 11

• high internal validity made it unrealistic

- low external validity (encoding in the study was unlike in real life)

Question 12

Application of Baddeley’s (1966b) study to learning:

Answer 12

Baddeley’s study’s showed us more than rehearsal is needed to learn things and methods such as spider diagrams are better for learning.

Question 13

What were the Aims of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 13

To Investigate the influence of acoustic + semantic word similarity, on learning and recall in the STM and LTM

Question 14

How many lab experiments did Baddeley conduct in his 1966 study?

Answer 14

Three different lab experiments were conducted

we focus on Experiment Three

Question 15

How many participants were there in Baddeley’s study, and what levels of the IV were there?

Answer 15

72 participants

The 4 Lists of 10 Words:
List A: Acoustically Similar
List B: Acoustically Dissimilar
List C: Semantically Similar
List D: Semantically Dissimilar
(Lists B + D were baseline control groups for Lists A + C respectively)

Question 16

What was the Procedure of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 16

The words were presented via projector
They were projected One Word Every Three Seconds

They were asked to recall the words within a minute, in the correct order
They repeated this over 4 learning trials, as this was a test of memory, and not learning the words

15 minute interference task
They copied down 6 lots of 8 digit sequences at their own pace
This was to block out Rehearsal

After this, they were given a surprise retest

Question 17

What were the Findings of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 17

Recall of Acoustically Similar was Worse than Acoustically Dissimilar
These results, however, were not significant

This demonstrates that Acoustic Encoding is Initially Difficult, but didn’t affect LTM recall

Recall of Semantically Similar Words was Worse than Semantically Dissimilar
These results were significant

Question 18

What did Baddeley conclude in his study?

Answer 18

The STM is Largely Acoustic

The LTM is Largely, but Not Exclusively, Semantic

Question 19

What were the strengths of Baddeley’s 1966 study?

Answer 19

Internal Validity: Lab Experiment

Internal Validity: Control Group

Reliability: Standardised Procedure

Practical Application

Question 20

What were the weaknesses of Baddeley et al’s 1966 study?

Answer 20

Ecological Validity: Lab Experiment

Ecological Validity/ Mundane Realism: Unnatural Behaviour
^^ Therefore, Generalisability is Questioned

Ethics: Participants weren’t informed about the surprise retest