Cognitive - Baddeley et al. (1966b) Flashcards
Aim of study
Find out if LTM encodes acoustically or semantically
Done through giving participants word lists (either acoustic or semantic)
Independent variable - Baddeley
- Acoustically similar word list or acoustically dissimilar
- Semantically similar word list or semantically dissimilar
- Performance before interference task and performance after
Dependent variable - Baddeley
Score on recall test of 10 words; must be recalled in correct order
Sample - Baddeley
Volunteer sample (from Cambridge University subject panel) 72 participants (mixture of men and women) 15-20 participants in each condition
The 4 independent groups - Baddeley
Acoustically similar:
Group 1 - acoustically similar words (e.g. man, cab, can)
Group 2 - control group, one syllable acoustically dissimilar words
Semantically similar:
Group 1 - semantically similar words (e.g. great, large, big)
Group 2 - control group, semantically dissimilar words
Procedure - Baddeley
Participants would be shown the words according to their groups. Through a slideshow of 10 words, each word appeared for 3 seconds.
After being shown the words, participants to carry out “interference test” - they had to hear and write down 8 numbers three times.
They were then asked to recall slideshow words in order. (Not told about the test in advance)
Findings - Baddeley
Performance measured by number of words recalled in correct position in the list. Differences in four lists were compared through Mann-Whitney U test.
Learning trials (STM) recall of acoustically similar were lower than acoustically dissimilar.
Recall test (LTM), no significant forgetting in acoustically similar, but forgot acoustically dissimilar.
No significant differences in semantic lists in learning trials.
Conclusions - Baddeley
Performance on acoustically similar list suggests that encoding in LTM is acoustic rather than semantic.
However, due to unexpected result, Baddeley claimed that this procedure was not a true test of LTM, led him to carry more experiments
High generalisability - Baddeley
Large sample: 72 participants, any anomalies would be ‘averaged out’, suggests that you could generalise from this sample
Low generalisability - Baddeley
Conditions: 15-20 participants per conditions, an anomaly could make a difference, lower generalisability
Volunteers: volunteers may have more people who have better memories or like doing memory tests, not representative of people in general
High reliability - Baddeley
Standardised procedures: (e.g. each word was displayed for 3 seconds), this makes it more standardised and easily replicable
Word slides: Baddeley got rid of read-aloud word lists, this allowed those with hearing difficulties to understand the words as well
Application - Baddeley
Cognitive psychologists: built on Baddeley’s research and investigated LTM into greater death
WMM: findings used, applied and developed the working memory model
Revising for exams: if LTM encodes semantically, makes more sense to revise using mindmaps, reading aloud won’t be as effective
High validity - Baddeley
Internal validity: by asking participants to recall word order, it reduced the risk that some words would be hard to recall because they are unfamiliar or others easy to recall
Improved ecological validity: made the last test a ‘surprise’ so participants weren’t expecting it, similar to in real life when you usually aren’t expected to remember random things
Low validity - Baddeley
Ecological validity: recalling lists are quite artificial, especially recalling order of words, this doesn’t resemble how your memory works in real life
Ethics - Baddeley
No significant ethical issues
