cognitive practical

Question 1

what was the procedure

Answer 1

participants were escorted to the room and were given instructions on what to do

word list appeared on projector for 3 seconds and then the word changed

were given 1 minute to write it down

handed in their papers with the word list and participant numbers on them

participants were debriefed after

Question 2

what was the method

Answer 2

lab experiment

Question 3

what was the IV

Answer 3

acoustically similar word list of every day words (man, van, can) and acoustically dissimilar word list of every daw words (pit, few, cow)

Question 4

what was the sample

Answer 4

18 students from Dame Elizabeth Cadbury Sixth Form

aged 16-17

4 17yr olds, 14 16yr olds

11 female

8 male

Question 5

what was the DV

Answer 5

number of every day words recalled in the correct order out of 10

Question 6

what was the apparatus

Answer 6

powerpoint

timings

number of words

type of word

the board

pen

paper

controlled environment

Question 7

what was the sampling method

Answer 7

opportunity

Question 8

what was the aim

Answer 8

to investigate whether short term memory is encoded acoustically

Question 9

what ethical issues were violated

Answer 9

informed consent- we didn’t tell them the aim

deception- not told the true aim

we debriefed them after

Question 10

what were the controls

Answer 10

tested in the same room at the same time

word list and timings were the same

Question 11

what is the null hypothesis

Answer 11

there will be no significant difference between the number of words recalled correctly out of 10 when tested with acoustically similar and dissimilar words

Question 12

what were the acoustically dissimilar words

Answer 12

pit

few

cow

cat

lie

and

mad

pen

sky

who

Question 13

what was the alternative hypothesis

Answer 13

there will be a significant difference between the number of words recalled correctly out of 10 when tested with acoustically similar and dissimilar words

Question 14

what were the acoustically similar words

Answer 14

man

van

can

pan

tan

ban

ran

fan

nan

dan

Question 15

how could we improve this experiment

Answer 15

have a bigger sample with people from different places and a wider age range to increase internal validity

eg. 100 13-18 year olds from schools in Birmingham

Question 16

evaluate the generalisability of the experiment

Answer 16

results cant be generalised to students outside of Dame Elizabeth sixth form

we used 18 16-17 year olds from the sixth form to test STM recall

this is a problem because any memory applications for revision can only be relevant to students from this sixth form

Question 17

evaluate the ethics of the study

Answer 17

ethics were good

we used participant numbers to protect memory results and give confidentiality

this prevents them from having psychological harm due to being shamed for having a poor score

Question 18

what was the conclusion

Answer 18

results suggest that STM encodes acoustically as those in the AD condition scored significantly higher than those in the AS condition

Question 19

evaluate the validity

Answer 19

task was artificial

we used a list of 10 words for each group to remember but that isn’t a daily task

it lacks ecological validity as it doesn’t mirror real life so any memory applications might not be useful

Question 20

what are the practical applications

Answer 20

there could be practical applications

AS words were recalled worse than AD words

could be used to develop better revision techniques like not revising similar sounding key terms at the same time

Question 21

evaluate the reliability

Answer 21

study is quite reliable as memory was tested consistently

each word was presented on the board for 3 seconds and each participant had 1 min to recall words

this increases internal validity as memory recall was fairly tested for each participant

Question 22

how does our study relate to Baddeleys research

Answer 22

our study contradicts his research as we found a significant difference between the 2 word lists and he found no significant difference

Question 23

what were the results

Answer 23

critical value of 17

18 participants

Mann Whitney U score= 1

Two tailed hypothesis