Classic Study - Baddeley 1966 Flashcards
What research design was used for baddeley’s experiment?
Independent measures because it changed every time
Provide a summary of experiment 1 and 2
- Baddeley started off trying to test the LTM. He gave the participants four trials at learning the order of a list of words. Then he used a 20 minute delay (to remove STM) and then asked participants to recall as many of the words as possible. He then compared their score in the 5th trial with their score in the 4th trial 20 minutes earlier to see how much they had forgotten
- Baddeley’s results weren’t what he expected as he realised the participants STM was helping their LTM out, with the two memory stores working together . To remove this confounding variable, this time the participants would have to perform an interference task so the participants would habit to perform an interference task so the participants were only using LTM to perform the tasks
What was the method of baddeleys experiment?
A lab experiment due to the artificial task and controlled settings
What was the aim of Baddeleys study?
To see if the LM was like STM or more specifically if in LM acoustic similarity of words would lead to more memory impairment than would semantic similarity of words. (Studies of STM show that acoustic similarity of words
(Studies of STM show that acoustic similarity of words leads to worse recall than semantic similarity of words; would this be the case in LTM?)
How long does STM last?
Up to 30 seconds
How long does LTM last?
Potentially forever
What does a study do when it wants to look at STM?
Then the learning and recall must occur within around 30 seconds
What must a study do if it’s looking at LTM?
It needs to go beyond 30 seconds to ensure that the information has gone to the LTM
Why did Baddeley’s studies have 3 parts to it?
Due to the confounding variables he had to conduct three versions to ensure the credibility of the results
What did previous studies suggest about STM?
When words are acoustically similar, recall is negatively affected. This is ore so than when words are semantically similar
What’s the IV of Baddeley’s experiment?
How the words were listed (acoustic and semantic)
What is the DV of Baddeley’s experiment?
How many words were remembered in the correct order (in a test)
Who was the sample from the experiment made up of?
A lab experiment was used and participants were made up of males and females selected from ‘The Applied Psychology Research Unit’
What were the four conditions that the participants were assigned to?
A- Acoustically Similar (experimental)
Participants learned words that sound similar to each other
B- Acoustic dissimilarity (control)
Participants learned words that don’t sound similar
C- Semantic similarity (experimental)
Participants learned words that meant the same kind of thing
D- Semantic dissimilarity (control)
Participants learned words that didn’t mean the same thing but are used as much as those in Control
How did the third experiment work?
Each list of 10 words were presented via projector at a rate of one word every three seconds in the correct order. After presentation, the participants were required to complete six tasks involving memory for digits. They wee asked to recall the word list in one minute by writing down the sequence in the correct order. This was repeated over 4 learning trials. As it was not a test of learning words, but a test of sequence order (remember in STM when we recall information we usually in the order that we learnt them) the world list in random order was made visible on a card in the room.
After 4 learning trials, the groups were given a 15 minute interference task involving copying eight digit sequences at their own pace. After the interference task, the participants were given a surprise retest on the word sequence
Why did participants have an interference task of recalling digits?
To block the STM and make sure the LTM is being used only
What was the purpose of completing the task 4x?
To see how their memory gets worse
What do the acoustic result graphs demonstrate (see booklet)?
ACOUSTIC:
In trial 1&2, as it is harder to learn the list of acoustically similar words as the STM is trying to hold the information
By trial 3&4, the words are being transferred into LTM (which isn’t affected by acoustic similarity) so % reduced becomes similar
In the retest condition, the words have already been transferred to LTM so there is no difference in the recall between trial 4 and the retest
How was the recall of the acoustically similar words in comparison with the dissimilar sounding words? In the different trials
It was worse during the initial stage of learning (trial 2 in particular)
However the real of the similar and dissimilar sounding words was not statistically significant, demonstrating that acoustic encoding was initially difficult but did not affect long term memory recall
How did participants recall the semantically similar words compared to the semantically dissimilar words?
They found it more difficult and recalled significantly fewer semantically similar words in the retest
What’s the conclusion of the study?
Baddeley concludes that LTM encodes semantically and his earlier experiments suggest that STM encodes acoustically
This is why LTM gets confused when it has to retrieve the order words which are semantically similar; it gets distracted by the semantic similarities and muddles them up. It has no problem retrieving acoustically similar words because LTM pays no attention to how the words sound
The “slow start” in the Acoustically Similar condition would be because the interference task doesn’t block the STM 100% - some of the words linger on in the rehearsal loop.
This means in most conditions, the participants LTM gets a bit of help from the STM.
But in acoustically similar condition, STM gets confused by the similar sounds the way that LTM gets confused by similar meanings. It cant be of much help so this group lags behind the Controls until all the words are encoded in LTM, at which point the two groups finally get similar scores
Where did the study take place?
Cambridge university
How long were words visible?
For 3 seconds
What was the rate at which the intervening sequences were read out?
1 second rate and the subjects were allowed 8 seconds to write out each sequence and then 1 minute to write out the 10 word sequence
What did each separate group of subjects do?
Learned each one of the 4 lists from experiment 1
What did subjects do after the 4 trials?
They performed a task involving 15 minutes of self paced digit copying. They then attempted to recall the word sequence
What was the sample used?
Men & women from the A.R.P.U panel subjects
How many people learned the acoustically similar words?
15
How many subjects were in the control group for acoustically similar words?
20
How many people were semantically similar?
16
How many people were in the control group for semantically similar?
21
What did the results imply?
That the learning of word sequences was impaired by semantic similarity. The influence of STM is minimised in experiment 2
How many subjects were there?
72 subjects, 20 on average in each group
How were the subjects presented the words lists?
10 words presented for 3 seconds
What was the digit task ?
8 seconds to write MEANING that acoustic encoding was presented in the STM
What was the actual test itself?
Asked to write down the word list in the correct order
How long was the digit copying task?
15 minutes
What was the surprise recall test on the word list?
To e recalled in order (words around the room)
Baddeley Generalisability strengths and weaknesses
STRENGTHS: it included male and females (which can be applied to the wider population)
WEAKNESSES: sample size was only 72 ppts (and they all included people from Cambridge university. Therefore the findings aren’t very representative (not enough about future and nationality
ETHNOCENTRIC because memory is universal
Baddeley Reliability (strengths and weaknesses)
STRENGTHS: study is easily replicated, as it’s 10 words per 3 seconds, 1 minute recall + a 15 minute interference can be easily replicated to check the consistency of findings in the future
WEAKNESSES: wont have the exact same participants
Baddeley Application strengths ad weaknesses
STRENGTHS: studying / learning
We can learn about peoples memories and how’s they function when it comes to the recall of words
Studying and revision
WEAKNESSES: this study can influence people to improve their recall and improve learning techniques
Baddeley validity strengths and weaknesses
STRENGTHS:
- OBJECTIVE INCREASES INTERNAL VALIDITY FREE FROM EXPERIMENTER BIAS
- control over extraneous variables ; listening test and the interference task (stops STM from affecting the LTM)
- size of sample helps validity as anomalies in the data do not show results. Results therefore become more accurate and increases the internal validity
WEAKNESSES:
- ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY IS LOW BECAUSE IT IS AN ARTIFICIAL SETTING (Cambridge uni) - reduces application to the wider population
- mundane realism is low because of the artificial task (recalling words in order)
How does LTM encode?
Semantically (gets confused when retrieving similar sounding words, but pays no attention to how the words sound)
STM encodes…
Acoustically (confused about similar sounds)
What was the aim of Baddeleys study?
First he conducted a study where he showed that recall of acoustically similar words from the STM was poor
In 1966b, he aimed to apply the same procedure to find out if a similar pattern of results existed for LTM
Give the procedure of Baddeleys experiment?
- laboratory experiment
- independent groups design
- there was a hearing test (in order to exclude some people from the study)
- list A - acoustically similar (man, can, mad, map)
- list B - acoustically dissimilar words (pit, few, cow, pen)
- list C - semantically similar words (huge, great, large, big)
- list D - semantically dissimilar words (good, safe, thin, deep)
- 18 ppts list A
- 17 list B
- 20 list C
- 20 list D
- each list was presented aloud on tape, one word every 3 seconds
- the ppts had 40 seconds to write down all the 10 words in the correct order (they did this 4 times; the learning trials)
- then each ppt spent 20 minutes on an unrelated task (recalling sequences of 8 digits)
- after this time they had to call the ten words in the correct order; an unexpected task (not told in advance)
What were the findings?
The performances were compared using the Mann - Whitney U test
On the learning trials (STM) the recall of the acoustically similar list (a) was consistently lower for the acoustically dissimilar control list (B)
But the recall test after 20 minutes there was no significant forgetting of words in the acoustically similar list , although there was in the acoustically dissimilar control list
There was no significant differences in recall of the two semantic lists (c and d) on the learning trials
For the recall test there was a significant amount of forgetting for both groups
What were the conclusions?
Performance on the acoustically similar list (A) was the only one to show no forgetting in LTM, suggesting that encoding in LTM is acoustic rather than semantic
Th semantic nature of encoding in LTM was hidden because LTM was influenced by material stored in the STM
Evaluate Baddeley’s study
HIGH INTERNAL VALIDITY - they were well controlled procedures (lists A and B were matched with each other in terms of how frequently the words appear in English. This meant that the results could not be explained by participants been able to remember more familiar words.
This degree of control is the strength of the study, because it avoids potential confounding variables that would lower internal validity. This makes the relationship of cause-and-effect between IV and DV much clearer.
However, a competing argument is a limitation specific to experiment one, and that is that an important confounding variable was not controlled. Procedure did not rule out STM as an influence on later, recalled from LTM because the participants could still rehearse the words between learning trials
LOW EXTERNAL VALIDITY - a limitation of Baddeleys experiment is that they were so tightly controlled, and that they were artificial and unlike real life
It was only went Baddeley increase control over the procedure in experience two and three that semantic encoding became obvious in the LTM.
Therefore, encoding in the study may not resemble in coding in real life. This suggest that study me exaggerate the role of semantic encoding in LTM
APPLICATION TO LEARNING TO LEARN - understanding that encoding in Eltham is Messi semantic can help to improve, long-term recall of information. This is useful for students revising for exams rather than just repeating material (rehearsal) students are better advice to think about the information, re-organise it like using mind maps and try to relate it to things they already know about. These strategies allow you to process the meaning of the material which match is the formal encoding in LTM. This is a strength because it shows that badly study has the lady in terms of the applicable to real-life situations.
