Practical Investigation

Question 1

What is the aim of the cognitive practical investigation?

Answer 1

To investigate whether memory recall of words is affected by listening to music at the same time as learning words.

Question 2

What is the Independent Variable?

Answer 2

Whether the participant had music playing (Adele- When we were young) during the 15 word item list or not.

Question 3

What is the dependent variable?

Answer 3

Total number of words correctly recalled from a list of 15 words.

Question 4

What is the One-Tailed Directional Alternate hypothesis?

Answer 4

Participants memory recall of a 15 item word list will be significantly worse when also listening to music by Adele during learning compared to when not listening to music during learning.

Question 5

What is the Null hypothesis?

Answer 5

There will be no difference between the memory recall of a 15 item word list between participants who are listening to music by Adele whilst learning compared to those who are not listening to music during learning.

Question 6

What is the sample of the study?

Answer 6

Opportunity sample of DRHS psychology students present during a cognitive psychology lesson- 14 female students aged 16-17.
This is convenient and the only available technique.
However it is biased sample and only the highly motivated take part.

Question 7

What is the procedure?

Answer 7

Repeated measures (PPS sit both A and B conditions).
Condition A= you will see 15 words, displayed for 3 seconds each, do not write anything down until told to do so- 60 seconds to write.
Condition B= the same but with music.

Question 8

How ethical is my research?

Answer 8

• Maintained confidentiality
• Informed consent
• No harm
• No one deceived
• All debrefied
• Right to withdraw

Question 9

What were the results?
Total positive scores
Total negative scores
The T-Value

Answer 9

35.5
19.5
19.5

Question 10

Is the result significant?

Answer 10

The T value of 19.5 is greater than the critical value of 11 when p < 0.05 in a one-failed test therefore it has no significance and we must accept the null hypothesis.

Question 11

What is the conclusion?

Answer 11

We can conclude that there is no difference in memory of a 15 item word list when listening to music or not.

Question 12

What are 2 strengths of the cognitive practical investigation?

Answer 12

• My cognitive practical investigation was a standardised procedure which had a display time of 3 seconds for each of the word lists of 15 words. It was also as laboratory experiment. This means there is high reliability because the experiment is highly replicable and we are able to check for consistency of results due to it being controlled throughout.
• My cognitive practical investigation was representative of a small improvement in students’ recall of words when listening to music. This means my investigation is applicable because we are able to apply it to students who struggle to study and recommend music might improve it.
• My cognitive practical investigation included the participants being fully debriefed and their confidentiality remained. This means my study is highly ethical as my PPS had the right to withdraw whenever and were never physically or psychologically harmed.

Question 13

What are 2 weaknesses of the cognitive practical investigation?

Answer 13

• My cognitive practical investigation had a sample of 14 female students all aged 16-17 years old who attend a grammar school and study psychology who completed a word recall task either with or without music. This means it lacks generalisability because the sample is not representative of all students learning words so the results cannot be applied to a target population.
• My cognitive practical investigation included recall of 15 words after seeing all of them in a minute. My PPS either completed this task with or without music. This means it lacks ecological validity because the experiment does not represent how we learn in real life as we will never have to recall words repeatedly in a usual setting.
• My cognitive practical investigation involves students who take psychology to complete an investigation that they knew I was trying to find results for. Our results were that it was not significant because we had to accept the null hypothesis. This means it lacks validity because the PPS could’ve shown demand characteristics and guessed the aim of the study from the start, therefore skewing the results due to the repeated measures design.

Question 14

What improvements could I make to my cognitive practical investigation?

Answer 14

• I could have used an independent groups design, having 2 seperate groups who only sat one of the conditions. Eg 7 PPS learnt the 15 words whilst listening to music and the other 7 learnt the 15 words without music. This would reduce the risk of demand characteristics as the PPS would only experience one condition and therefore be less likely to guess I was measuring whether listening to music affected memory.
• I could have used a 3 second timer on the PowerPoint for each word that popped us so I could time how long I showed the PPS each of the 15 words for the correct amount of time during the experiment. This would reduce the risk of not having reliability on the study because it would become more reliable and we would also know it was the IV that impacted the DV and not the researchers error.