Grant Flashcards
Background and aim
Do people remember better if they are remembering info in the same context as when they learned the info?
Godden and Baddeley- effect of context dependent memory on deep sea divers. Learnt a list of words on land or water and recalled them on land or water. They did better when learning and recalling was in the same environment.
The aim was to investigate context-dependent memory.
Research method
Lab experiment
IV: noise or silence
DV: Recall and recognition
Experimental design
Independent measures
Sample and sampling method
8 psychology students from Iowa state university acted as experimenters.
They each recruited 5 acquaintances as participants in the study.
One participants results weren’t included in the final analysis leaving a sample of 39 participants aged 17- 56 (mean 23.4) 17 females and 23 males.
4 conditions.
Procedure
-Participants read aloud standardised instructions that described the tasks as part of a class project which emphasised that they were voluntary.
-The article was read once and they could highlight as they read.
-They were told they had to complete a multiple choice task after. Procedure was 30 minutes.
-Participants were tested individually and wore headphones as they read.
-In the study phase, the instructions were:
Silent condition- told nothing would be heard through the headphones while they read.
Noisy condition- told they would be played moderately loud background noise while they read but that they should ignore it.
Between the test and study conditions, participants had a 2 minute break without headphones:
Test phase:
All participants wore headphones and silent and noisy conditions were given similar instructions as in the study phase.
-They did the recall test and multiple choice recognition test.
-All participants were debriefed as to the true purpose of the study.
-No difference in reading/ time found between the silent and noisy conditions: both took approximately the same time to read the article.
What were the 4 test conditions
Matching study context with test context (silent-silent, noisy-noisy)
Mismatching study context with test context (noisy-silent, silent-noisy)
Findings
Quantitative findings
It was found that participants had a higher mean of correct answers out of 10 on the recall task if the test context was the same as the study context. (E.g. silent test- silent study =6.7 vs silent-noisy 5.4).
Participants also had a higher mean of correct answers out of 16 on the recognition task (noisy-noisy 14.3 vs noisy-silent 12.7)
Conclusion
Students are likely to do better in exams if they study with minimum background noise because there was evidence for context dependency so they’re better studying with no background noise as it won’t be present during the actual test.
Ethics upheld and broken
Upheld:
Informed consent- participants given the aim and how the results will be used.
Debrief- results didn’t have to be recorded and were reminded of how results are used.
Right to withdraw- can withdraw at any time.
Deception- participants knew the true aim of the study.
Reliability
Internal:
Highly controlled:
standardised instructions given telling them to read the article once (all read aloud).
All participants wore headphones as they read.
All participants had a two minute break without headphones between the test and study conditions.
Replicable.
External:
Small sample of 39 participants (originally 40), 10 per condition. This can’t establish a consistent effect.
Internal (construct) and external (ecological) validity.
Construct:
Low extraneous variables.
High construct validity- they were asked to recall which is good to measure context dependent memory.
Ecological:
Low ecological because headphones aren’t normally worn without music.
But we normally have background noise when working.
Reading before an exam and answering questions.
Not representative sample: mostly men. All of university age so would have to memorise a lot unlike other ages.
Ethnocentrism
Could be seen as being generalisable to all cultures as cognitive processes such as memory should be the same for everyone and therefore shouldn’t be effected by culture.
However all participants were from America, they had a good education so would have to memorise a lot unlike other cultures (maybe poorer countries with less access to education).
How does this study relate to reductionism/ holism
Reductionism- only focussing on one reason for behaviour which is context of memory, ignoring other factors (upbringing).
How does this study relate to psychology as a science
The study collects quantitative data so is objective.
It’s also replicable (highly controlled) and falsifiable.
How does this study relate to usefulness
Could be useful for students as it proves context dependent memory so students should revise in silence as their exam will be in silence. This will allow them to recall more.
