Grant Et Al Flashcards
What is the area of the study
Cognitive area
What is the key theme
Memory
What is context- dependent memory
Context-memory refers to improved recall of specific episodes of information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same
Recall si better when the ppt is in the same environment during recall as they were when learning occurred
What is the aim of the study
To show that the environmental context can have a more positive effect on performance in a meaningful memory test when the test takes place in the same environment in which the to-be- remembered material was originally studied( the matching condition) than when the test occurs in a different environment (mismatching condition)
What is the research method
Lab experiment
What is the experimental design
Independent measures design
What were the independent variables
Whether the participant read the two page article under silent or noisy conditions
Whether the participant was tested under matching or mismatching conditions
The dependent variable
Recall: a short answer test of 10Qs
Recognition: a multiple choice recall test of 16Qs
How many ppts
39ppts
How old were the ppts
Aged 17-56
How many male and female ppts
17 females 23 males
What was the sample
Opportunity sample
Recruited by 8 psychology students who served as experimenters
Each experimenter recruited 5 acquaintances who would be ppts
What were the materials
Cassette player and headphones
- The to be remembered material- a two page article on psychoimmunology, unfamiliar to ppts
- 16 multiple choice questions
- 10 short answer questions producing single word or phrase answers
What sound did the cassette player make
Cassettes were of background noise recorded during lunchtime in a university cafeteria
It included general hum, occasional distinct words/ phrases movement of chairs and dishes played at a moderately loud level
Controls
The order of the questions in each test followed the order in which the tested points were made in the text
The short answer test was always administered first to ensure that recall of information from the article was being tested and not recall of information from the multiple choice test
All ppts in each condition wore headphones
Procedure
1) ppts were asked to read the article once, highlighting and underlining if they want
2) all ppts wire headphones while they read
Silent condition: told they wouldn’t hear anything
Noisy condition: told they’d hear moderately loud background noise
3) reading times were recorded by experimenters
4) they had a 2 min break
5) the short answer test was given, followed by the multiple choice test
6) ppts were debriefed
The entire procedure was 30 mins
results
( data from one ppt was omitted because his performance was very different to all others so only 39 results were analysed
- ppts in all groups spent roughly equal amounts of time reading the material
- there were no significant patterns for the individual variables: whether material was learned or retrieved in a noisy or silent environment made no difference to scores on short answer questions or multiple choice questions
Matching - mean number 41.3
Mismatching- mean number 35.4
There was no interaction between learning and test conditions showing that studying in the same environment produced better results
There was no overall effect of noise on performance
Conclusions
There are context- dependency effects for newly learned meaningful material- studying and testing in the same environment leads to enhanced performance
- there was no overall effect of noise on performance
- students are more likely to perform better in exams if they study in a quiet environment because the evidence for context- dependency suggests they are better off studying without background noise as it will not be present during actual testing
