Classic and contemporary study - Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
What was the aim of Baddeley’s classic study?
In a previous study, Baddeley showed that recall of acoustically similar words from STM were poor but STM wasn’t affected by semantically similar words. In this study, Baddeley aimed to apply the same procedure to see patterns of LTM
What was the procedure of Baddeley’s classic study?
-75 participants who were young servicemen
-List A: Acoustically similar words
List B: Semantically similar words
List C: Acoustically dissimilar words
List D: Semantically dissimilar words
-Each list was presented on a loud tape, one word every 3 seconds
-Participants had 40 seconds to write down as many of the 10 words they could recall. Procedure carried out 4 times
-An unexpected task was set 20 minutes later which the participants didn’t know would happen
What were the findings of Baddeley’s classic study?
Recall of list A was consistently lower than list B
There was no significant difference between list C and D
What was the conclusion from Baddeley’s classic study?
Performance on list A was the only list to show no forgetting in LTM suggesting LTM coding is acoustic rather than semantic
Because the result was so unexpected, some aspect of the procedure meant the semantic nature of encoding in LTM was being “hidden”
Evaluation of Baddeley’s classic study
Strength is that each experiment used controlled procedures. This is a strength because it avoids potential confounding variables that would decrease internal validity
- A limitation is that an important confounding variable wasn’t controlled. The procedure didn’t rule out STM as an influence on later recall from LTM because the participants could still rehearse between trials
Limitation is they were tightly controlled which made the experiments unlike real life. Therefore, encoding in the study may not resemble encoding in real life as this study may exaggerate the role of semantic encoding in LTM
Understanding that encoding in LTM is mostly semantic can help to improve long term recall of information. This is useful for student’s revising for exams. This is a strength because it allows Baddeley’s study to show its applicable in real life situations
What was the aim of the contemporary study?
Investigated the development of the phonological loop in WMM. They aimed to do this by using verbal digit span as measure of capacity and compare the findings with English people that digit span increases with age and levels off at 15 years
What was the procedure of the contemporary study?
-Participants were 570 children from pre, primary and secondary school in Madrid
-Participants were tested during break times
-Materials uses consisted of sequences of random digits that gradually increased by one length at a time
-Participants listened to each sequence and asked to repeat in order
What were the findings of the contemporary study?
Clear increase in digit span with age. The youngest age group had a significantly lower average digit span (3.76) than the older age groups (5.28).
Digit span increased smoothly up to 11 years but the rate slowed at 17 years
The pattern of findings for a group of people with dementia was similar to healthy elderly people
Conclusions of the contemporary study?
Both current and previous research with Anglo-Saxon elderly participants show digit span increases with age up to adolescence.
-In Spanish children the increase continues until 17 years but in English children it increases until 15 years. The researchers explain these differences through “length effect”. It takes more time to understand Spanish words as there are more syllables
-Word length occurs because we rehearse words sub vocally but we don’t begin this till 7 years. This means there should be no difference in digit span between Spanish and English children younger than 7 years.
Evaluation of contemporary study
Strength is researchers used several standardised procedures. This ensured the experience of the study didn’t vary greatly from one person to another. The use of standardised procedures helped to control confounding variables
-However, the procedure lacked control in some areas.
E.g. it lacked ecological validity because it was done in
an unrealistic circumstance in a school and it was also
an artificial task
Weakness of the study was the sample size was too small. There were only 9 participants with FvFTD so the findings related to dementia may have only been become the sample size was small. Therefore, the study doesn’t have any statistical prods to reject the null hypothesis
Digit span has been applied to understand specific cognitive abilities. e.g. people with larger digit span are better readers and have higher general intelligence
