COGNITIVE - PRACTICAL INVESTIGATION

Question 1

AO1:

Answer 1

AIM: to investigate whether the performance of dual task expts is affected by the components of WMM
IV: recall of words lists with/without bop-it distraction task
DV: number of words correctly recalled in the correct order
CONTROL OF EVs: the 2 word lists had no semantically/acoustically similar words, instructions were presented on the board to remove experimenter bias, all words were monosyllabic & therefore matched in difficulty
SAMPLE: 16 ppts, 16-17 years old, males and females, all psych students, opportunity sample

Question 2

AO1: hypotheses

Answer 2

directional: ppts will have lower recall with the bop-it distraction task than without

non-directional: there will be a significant difference in the amount of words correctly recalled with compared to without the distraction task

null: there will be no significant differences in the amount of words correctly recalled in the right order with or without the bop-it distraction task, any differences will be due to chance

Question 3

AO1: procedure

Answer 3

1) a list of 20 words was presented on the board for 1 minute
2) after the minute, the words disappeared and the ppts had to write down as many as they could remember in the correct order in a minute in silence
3)the procedure was then repeated with another set of 20 words, with a bop-it distraction task during recall

Question 4

AO1: findings/conclusion

Answer 4

findings:
-mean word recall WITHOUT bop-it task = 7.19
-mean word recall WITH bop-it task = 4.09

conclusions:
-dual tasking decreased the accuracy of word recall
-as the calculated value (15) is lower than the critical value (25), the experimental hypothesis is accepted and the null hypothesis is rejected

Question 5

AO3: evaluation

Answer 5

G-> (weakness) low generalisability
–>opportunity sample consisting of 16 ppts aged 16-17, male and female, all psych students. This is a very narrow sample as there weren’t many ppts and the age range was very small, also the ppts also had prior psychological knowledge meaning they may react differently to the rest of the population. We also don’t know whether other age groups or cultures would react in the same way
–>therefore, the results cannot be generalised to a wider population

R-> (strength) can test for high reliability due to standardised procedure
–>2 lists of 20 words, 1 min to view on board, 1 min to write, list 1 with no bop-it distraction task, list 2 with bop-it distraction task
–>therefore, other experiments can replicate our experiment and compare the results for consistency

A-> (strength) findings can be applied IRL
–>we can use dual task expts to find out about the use of the phonological loop to do two tasks at once, such as watching TV and having a conversation simultaneously
–>we can use this info to know that we shouldn’t listen to music and revise at the same time as they both require the phonological loop

V-> (strength) high internal validity due to high control of EVs
–>it was ensured that the 2 word lists had no semantically/acoustically similar sounding words so no confusion was caused, the words were all monosyllabic so they were all the same difficulty level and all required the same amount of subvocal rehearsal. Furthermore, the words were presented on a board to avoid experimenter bias as they weren’t read aloud
–>therefore, there were no confounding variables to interfere with the results

E-> (strength) highly ethical
–>ppts gave fully informed consent, and were also debriefed at the end. All ppts had the right to withdraw at any point during the study
–>this means that researchers could conduct this study without deception or harm to the ppts