Baddeley et al. (1966b) Flashcards
what was the aim of the study ?
to find out the effects of semantically and acoustically similar words on word recall in the LTM
how many groups were there ?
4 - acoustically similar/disimilar and semantically similar/disimilar
what test was given to the 75 ppts before the study ?
a hearing test, 3 were excluded as a result
how were the word lists presented ?
on a tape, one every three seconds
how many words did they have to remember ?
10, in order
how long did they have to recall the words ?
40 seconds
what did the ppts do after the initial test ?
they spent twenty minutes trying to recall 8 digit sequences
what control was done for the second test ?
the ppts were not told about it, so they were not rehearsing the words in their head during the twenty minutes they were doing the digit task
how was the ppts performance measured ?
on how many words they remembered in the correct position
how were differences in performance between the four tests compared ?
using the Mann-Whitney U test
what were the findings for acoustic lists ?
1) in the initial test, recall of the acoustically similar words was consistently lower than for the control list (acoustically dissimilar words)
2) on the recall after 20 minutes there was no significant forgetting of the acoustically Similar words, however there was of the non acoustically similar words
what were the findings for the semantic lists ?
1) there was no significant differences in recall of the two semantic lists on the learning trials
2) on the recall tests, there was significant forgetting on both the lists
what conclusion can be made from the study ?
performance on the acoustically similar words is the only list to show no forgetting in the LTM, suggesting that encoding in the long term memory is acoustic rather than semantic.
