Grant et al

Question 1

What was the aim, research method and experimental design

Answer 1

AIM- to see whether being in the same context at learning and recall aids memory

RESEARCH METHOD - Laboratory experiment

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN - independent measures design

Question 2

Why was it a laboratory experiment

Answer 2

IV - whether the participant read the article under silent or noisy conditions, whether they were tested under matching or mismatching conditions

DV - participants performance on a short answer recall test and multiple choice recognition test

under controlled conditions
- all wore headphones

Question 3

Why is it an independent measures design?

Answer 3

There were 4 separate groups of participants in different conditions

Participants were assigned to either the Matching condition (Study environment and test environment the same)

or the Mis-Matching Condition (Study environment and test environment different)

Question 4

Describe the sample in grant et al’s study

Answer 4

39 participants from America ranging in age from 17-56 with a mixture of males and females

Opportunity sampling

Question 5

Describe how the sample was obtained in this study

Answer 5

Opportunity Sampling
8 members of psychology lab class served as experimenters

Each experimenter recruited 5 acquaintances to serve as participants

Question 6

Suggest one way in which this sample may be biased

Answer 6

participants were all friends and acquaintances of the experimenters

mean they share the same characteristics

unlikely to be representative of the general population

Question 7

Describe the procedure of Grant et al’s study

Answer 7

All participants read an psychoimmunology article with headphones

In the silent condition, the heard nothing. In the noisy condition they heard background cafeteria noise.

A 2 minute break was incorporated to minimise recall of short term memory

Participants were tested on information in the article in either a matching context (silent-silent. noisy-noisy) or mismatching context (silent-noisy or noisy-silent)

Participants were tested using short answer questions to test recall and multiple choice questions to test recognition

The dependent variable (DV) was the participant’s performance on (a) short-answer recall test
(b) multiple-choice recognition test

Question 8

What elements of the procedure were standardised / controlled

Answer 8

Each participant wore headphones

Each participant read the same psychoimmunology article

The 10 short-answer test was always administered first to ensure that recall of info from the article was tested and not recall of info from the 16 multiple choice test

Question 9

What were the results of Grant et al’s study

Answer 9

For both short-answer and multiple choice test, performance was better in the matching conditions than in the non-matching ones

For example, for the short-answer test, the matching conditions had higher mean score

The silent-silent condition led to a mean score of 6.7, whereas the silent-noisy condition had a mean score of 4.6 and the noisy-silent condition had a mean score of 5.4

There was no significant difference in performance on the test in the matching conditions when it was noisy-noisy vs silent-silent

Question 10

What were the conclusions of grant et al’s study

Answer 10

Studying and testing in the same environment leads to enhanced performance

Being in matching context improves recall and recognition

Question 11

Assess the generalisability of grant et al’s study

Answer 11

8 psychology students recruited their acquaintances. Opportunity sampling

group does not represent wider population

likely to be similar type of person to students

likely to be similar age (young)

Question 12

Assess the reliability of grant et al’s study

Answer 12

+Standardised procedure
eg. same article, all wore headphones,

study can be easily replicated to assess consistency of results

not everyone had the same amount of time to read article

reduces reliability as harder to replicate results

Question 13

Assess the applications of grant et al’s study

Answer 13

found that matching environments improve

students should be advised to revise in silence as they will be completing their exams in silence so they are in a matching condition

this should improve students grades and performance

Question 14

Assess the validity of grant et al’s study

Answer 14

high ecological validity

students were given material that was very similar to course material they would receive at uni

they were told to ‘treat this as a class assignment’

better generalised to student educational settings

Question 15

Assess the ethics in grant et al’s study

Answer 15

highly ethical study

=informed consent given by 8 psychology students gathering their friends to participate

= protection from harm
students had as much time as they wanted to read over the article, limiting stress caused

Question 16

How does grant et al fit under the key theme of memory

Answer 16

as it looks at context-dependent memory

specifically, how being in the same context at learning and retrieval eg. silent-silent matching context improves retrieval of information

Question 17

How does grant et al fit into the cognitive area

Answer 17

The cognitive area looks at internal mental processes such as memory.

As Grant et al.’s study investigated context-dependent memory it is in the cognitive area.

Grant et al. found that participants could recall and recognise more information about a psychoimmunology article if they were in the same context as they were when the read it i.e. noisy-noisy conditions and silent-silent conditions.
Those in the mismatching contexts e.g. noisy-silent and silent-noisy found it harder to answer both short-answer recall questions and multiple choice recognition questions about the article.

This relates to the cognitive area because its looking a memory and this is a mental process

Question 18

To what extent does grant et al change our understanding of individual, cultural and social diversity?

Answer 18

INDIVIDUAL
individual differences in memory under different environmental conditions e.g.. when participants learnt and recalled info in the same context, the performed better
didn’t look at how personality or intelligence affected this

SOCIAL
sample in loftus and palmer and grant et al were similar as both used male and female participants.
Loftus = students Grant = acquittances of students
so doesn’t improve understanding of social diversity

CULTURAL
doesnt change understanding og cultural diversity
all participants were from the sa,e culture (USA)