Personal Investigation 1

Question 1

What was personal investigation 1 investigating?

Answer 1

Context dependent memory

Question 2

What research did we use as a basis for our hypotheses?

Answer 2

Godden and Baddeley (1975) investigated whether words learned in one environment (on land) and better recalled in the same environment (on land) or in a different one (underwater).

Question 3

What were the findings of Godden and Baddeley’s (1975) research?

Answer 3

Around 50% better recall when learning and recall are the same, 40% more words are forgotten when the condition changed.

Conclusion: environmental cues do improve recall.

Question 4

What were the operationalised variables of your investigation?

Answer 4

IV (Context): Quiet room - library, loud room - refectory
DV: (Recall): Amount of words correctly recalled out of 10.

Question 5

What is your operationalised alternative hypothesis of your investigation?

Answer 5

The amount of words correctly recalled out of 10 will be significantly higher when the words are learned and recalled in the library.

Question 6

Is your alternative hypothesis directional or non-directional?

Answer 6

Directional

Question 7

What is your operationalised null hypothesis?

Answer 7

There will be no significant difference in the amount of words correctly recalled out of 10 when they are learned and recalled in the library, or recalled in the refectory. Any difference will be due to chance.

Question 8

What are the characteristics of your sample group?

Answer 8

Number of participants: 20, 10 in each variable.

Gender: Both genders

Age range: 16-18 (college students)

Question 9

What sampling method did you use to obtain your sample?

Answer 9

Opportunity sampling

Question 10

What is an advantage of using your selected sampling method?

Answer 10

+ Much quicker and easier to obtain participants, as we could just walk into the library at any given time and ask students if they wanted to participate

Question 11

What is a limitation of your selected sampling method?

Answer 11

• Could mean that our sample is biased, as we chose people that we know or people that appeared smarter, etc.

Question 12

What were the procedures of your investigation?

Answer 12

1. Give participants 1 minute to look at the 10 words they have to recall. All participants have the same 10 words.
2. After minute is up, take words away. Get participants to do a filler task for two minutes, where they have to recite their times tables. One group stays in library, while other walks down to refectory while doing filler task.
3. Once two minutes is up, give participants a piece of paper and get them to write down all of the words they remember. They have 1 minute to do so.
4. Once minute is up, mark their papers and give each participant a score out of 10.
5. Debrief participants.

Question 13

What was the first step of your procedures?

Answer 13

Give participants 1 minute to look at the 10 words they have to recall. All participants have the same 10 words.

Question 14

What was the second step of your procedures?

Answer 14

After minute is up, take words away. Get participants to do a filler task for two minutes, where they have to recite their times tables. One group stays in library, while other walks down to refectory while doing filler task.

Question 15

What was the third step of your procedures?

Answer 15

Once two minutes is up, give participants a piece of paper and get them to write down all of the words they remember. They have 1 minute to do so.

Question 16

What was the fourth step of your procedures?

Answer 16

Once minute is up, mark their papers and give each participant a score out of 10.

Question 17

What was the fifth step of your procedures?

Answer 17

Debrief the participants.

Question 18

What descriptive statistic did you use?

Answer 18

Mean

Question 19

Why did you choose to use the mean for your measure of central tendency?

Answer 19

Easiest to compare

Question 20

What type of graphical representation would you use for this data and why?

Answer 20

Line graph, because there are two different contexts.

OR

Bar charts.

Question 21

What inferential statistic is appropriate for your research and why?

Answer 21

Mann-Whitney U

-Difference: Memory recall based on context (learned and recalled in the library, learned in library and recalled in the refectory).

-Design: Independent measures (one group learned and recalled in the library, one group recalled in the library)

-Data: At least ordinal data, as participants could remember 0-10 words, meaning there is a scale and a true zero.

Question 22

What design did you use in your research?

Answer 22

Independent measures

Question 23

Justify the experimental design that you chose in your research.

Answer 23

-We chose independent groups
-Repeated measures would be inappropriate, as our groups were same context (library and library) and different context (library and refec).
-This means that repeated measures would give an advantage to participants the second time, as they had already seen the words before.
-Independent measures doesn’t have order effect and has a reduced chance of demand characteristics.

Question 24

Briefly describe your findings.

Answer 24

Group 1 (Library group): Participants recalled an average of 7 words correctly. The lowest score in this group was 6/10.

Group 2 (Refectory group): Participants recalled an average of 5 words correctly. The lowest score was 3/10.

Question 25

Identify two issues of reliability in your research.

Answer 25

1. Test-retest: we only conducted the experiment once, meaning that we are unsure of the consistency of our research.
2. Brief: we gave a brief to all of our participants, however we could have said the brief differently to one group, meaning that they heard the brief differently and results could have been skewed.

Question 26

How did you establish that your research was reliable?

Answer 26

1. Conducted a repeat of the experiment to ensure that findings are consistent.
2. Typed up the brief and printed it out and gave to all participants to ensure that all participants got the exact same brief.

Question 27

How did you establish that your research was valid?

Answer 27

1. To ensure that time of day didn’t affect our findings, we conducted the experiment at the same time for both groups (12 o’clock).

2.

Question 28

Identify two issues of validity in your research.

Answer 28

1. Construct validity - didn’t take into account all the factors that can affect memory, e.g. confounding variables (noise in the refec), time of day, caffeine consumption, etc.

2.

Question 29

Identify two ethical issues in your research.

Answer 29

1. Deception - deliberately lied to participants about true aims of the study, so that they wouldn’t be aware of the true aims and alter their behaviour. Then explained true aims (investigating context-dependent memory - library–>library, library–>refec)
2. Confidentiality - participants’ memory recall score could be easily guessed by others if their first names were used

Question 30

How did you establish that your research was ethical?

Answer 30

1. Once study is finished, debrief participants on the full aims of the study. If they did not want their memory recall scores used, we destroyed their sheet and didn’t use their information.
2. To ensure that the participants were given full confidentiality, we did not use participants names. We instead used codes for names, i.e. for the boy that was first participant in the library group, they’d be called LB1.

Question 31

How could you improve your research?

Answer 31

1. Broaden the sample beyond college students to get a variety of ages, so that the findings can be generalised.
2. Do experiment at different times of day
3. Test-retest reliability