Grant et al

Question 1

What is the background behind Grant et al’s study?

Answer 1

• Research has shown that context-dependence may play an important role in numerous situations such as memory for studied material.
• Grant et al were interested in determining whether environmental context-dependency effects would be found with the type of material and the type of tests typically encountered in school.
• If context-dependency occurs with meaningful course material, students’ study habits could be harming their test performance.

Question 2

Aim

Answer 2

The aim of Grant et al. (1998) was to demostrate the positive effects of context upon memory

Question 3

What theories was this study based on?

Answer 3

1) context-dependent memory refers to improved recall or specific episodes of information when the context present at encoding an retrieval are the same.
2) Context effects differ when it comes to what sort of task is being performed. Research by Godden and Baddeley showed the effects of context change on memory retrieval are much greater in recall tests than in recognition tests, suggesting there are differences in the retrieval process involved in the two types of tests.

Question 4

What was the experimental method?

Answer 4

Laboratory experiment

Question 5

What was the experimental design?

Answer 5

Independent measures design

Question 6

What were the two IV’s?

Answer 6

1) Whether the participant read the two page article under silent or noisy conditions
2) Whether the participant was tested under matching or mismatching conditions.

The first IV - study context (silent v noisy)
Second IV- test context (silent v noisy)

• manipulated in a between-subjects factorial design, producing four conditions

Question 7

What was the DV?

Answer 7

The DV was the participant’s performance on a short-answer recall test (out of 10) and a multiple-choice recall test (out of 16)

Question 8

Describe the sample

Answer 8

• 8 members of a psychology lab class served as experimenters
• Each experimenter recruited 5 acquaintances to serve as participants.
• There were 39 participants, ranging in age from 17 to 56
• 17 females, 23 males
• 1 participant was an anomaly

Question 9

What sampling method was used in Grant’s study

Answer 9

Opportunity sampling

Question 10

Procedure - beginning (1)

Answer 10

1) Each experimenter ran one participant for each of the four conditions and an additional participant for one of the conditions.
- Experimenters randomly assigned their participants to their five conditions
2) Each experimenter provided his/her own cassette player and headphones. The eight cassettes were exact copies made from a tape of background noise recorded during lunchtime in a uni cafe.
- background noise contained occasional distinct words/phrases inside conversational hum intermixed with sounds produced by movement of chairs and dishes. moderately loud level.

Question 11

Procedure - continued (1)

Answer 11

3) A two page, three-columned article on psychoimmunology was selected as the to be studied material
4) 16 multiple choice Q’s each consisting of a stem and four alternatives were generated, all of which tested memory for points stated in the text.
5) 10 short answer W’s were derived from those multiple-choice stems that could easily be restated to produce a Q on each test followed the order in which the tested points were made in the text.
6) The short-answer test was always adminstered first to ensure that recall of info from the article was being tested and not recalled from the MCT

Question 12

Procedure (2)

Answer 12

1) Instructions, describing the experiment as a class project and stating that participation was voluntary, were read aloud.
2) Participants were asked to read the given article once, as if they were reading it for a class assignment. They were allowed to highlight and underline as they read.
3) Participants were informed that their comprehension would be tested with both a short-answer test and a multiple-choice test
4) All participants wore headphones while they read.

Those in the silent condition were told they would not hear anything over the headphones

Those in the noisy conditions were told they would hear moderately loud background noise, but that they should ignore it.

Question 13

Procedure (2) continued

Answer 13

5) Reading times were recorded by the experimenter
6) A break of 2 mins between the end of the study phase and the test phase was incorporated to minimise recall from short term memory
7) The short answer test was given, followed by the multiple choice test.
8) Participants were tested in either silent or noisy conditions and were informed of the condition before testing. Regardless of testing condition, all participants wore headphones.
9) At the end of the testing phase participants were debriefed concerning the purpose of the experiment
10) procedure lasted 30 mins

Question 14

Key findings (Table)

Answer 14

SHORT ANSWER TEST (out of 10)

Silent/Silent = 6.7 (mean)
Silent/Noisy = 5.4
Noisy/Silent = 4.6
Noisy/Noisy = 6.2

MULTIPLE CHOICE TEST (out of 16)
Silent/Silent = 14.3
Silent/Noisy = 12.7
Noisy/Silent = 12.7
Noisy/Noisy = 14.3

Question 15

Key findings

Answer 15

• Results suggested participants in all groups spent roughly equal amount of time studying the material. Therefore, reading time was used as a co-variable in the analyses of test performance.
• There was no overall effect of noise on performance.

Question 16

Possible conclusions

Answer 16

• There are context-dependency effects for newly learned meaningful material regardless of whether a short-answer test or a multiple-choice test is used to assess learning.
• Studying and testing in the same environment leads to enhanced performance.
• Students are likely to perform better in exams if they study for them with a minimum of background noise because, although there was no overall effect of noise of performance, the fact that there was o evidence for context-dependency suggests they are better off studying without background noise as it will not be present in exams.