What are the main assumptions of the cognitive approach?
- Suggests information is processed the same way in all humans; input - process - output.
- Explains memory process as; paying attention - encoding - storage - retrieval.
What is the psychology investigated in Andrade?
Investigated memory and how doodling affects it, although doodling is often associated with loss of concentration, Andrade proposed that it could possibly enhance concentration.
What are the aims of Andrade?
- To investigate whether doodling improves our concentration on auditory information.
- Whether doodling improves later recall of auditory information.
What is the research method used in Andrade?
Laboratory experiment.
What is the experimental design used in Andrade?
Independent measures design.
What is the IV in Andrade?
Doodling or control condition.
What are the DVs in Andrade?
- Monitoring accuracy: number of correct names out of 8.
- Memory for monitored information: number of correct names after false alarms deducted.
- Memory of incidental information: number of correct places recalled.
What is the sampling technique used in Andrade?
Opportunity sampling.
Describe the sample used in Andrade.
- 40 members of a participant panel in the UK’s medical research council unit for cognitive research.
- 35 females and 5 males.
- Aged 18-55
- Randomly allocated to either level of IV.
- Were paid a small sum for participation.
How’s Andrade’s sample recruited?
- They were recruited from a university participant panel.
- They had all just completed a different study at the university.
- Were asked if they had 5 minutes to help with another study.
Why was Andrade’s sample recruited in that way?
- To enhance boredom of the task as they were already planning on going home.
- Opportunity sampling is faster than volunteer sampling as they are already available to participate.
Describe the material of Andrade’s study.
- Mock telephone call.
- 227 words per minute.
- 8 names attending the party.
- 3 people and 1 cat not attending.
- 8 places mentioned.
- Irrelevant information.
State the controls in Andrade.
- All participants listed to a dot mock telephone call about a party, lasted 2.5 minutes.
- All completed the experiment in a dull, quiet room.
- All were told they’d be tested only on the names of the party go-ers.
- All had a surprise test on the names of places mentioned.
State the standardised instructions the participants of Andrade were given.
- I am going to play you a tape.
- I want you to pretend that the speaker is a friend who has telephoned you to invite you to a party.
- The tape is rather dull but that’s okay because I don’t want you to remember any of it.
- Just write down the names of people who will or probably be coming to the party (excluding yourself).
- Ignore the names of those who can’t come.
- Do not write anything else.
State the procedures of Andrade’s study.
- The order of the tests were counterbalanced.
- Half the participants were asked to recall the names of party-goers then the places mentioned and the other half were asked the opposite.
- Plausible mishearings were counted as correct.
- Named that were mentioned but not party goers were counted as false alarms.
- Other words relating to people such as ‘sister’, we ignored.
Describe the doodling condition.
- Given an A4 paper with alternating rows of squares and circles, ten per row.
- A wide margin on the left for recording the target information.
- Were given a pencil and asked to shade in the squares and circles while listening to the tape.
- They were told it doesn’t matter how neat or quickly it is done.
Describe the control condition in Andrade.
Participants were given a sheet of lined paper to write their answers on.
Explain the debriefing process in Andrade.
Experimenter collected response sheets then talked to participants for one minute and included an apology for misleading them about the memory test. At the end they were asked if they had suspected a memory test.
State the general finding results for Andrade.
- Doodling mean number of shaded shapes was 36.3, ranging from 3-110.
- No participants in the control condition doodled spontaneously.
State the monitoring performance results for Andrade.
- Doodling condition mean - 7.7
- Control condition mean - 6.9
State the recall task performance results for Andrade.
- Doodling condition - 7.2
- Control condition - 4.5
State the overall results of Andrade.
- Doodling - 7.5
- Control - 5.8
- 29% more than the control.
State Andrade’s conclusions about the study.
- Doodling was concluded to aid concentration since those who did doodle recalled more information than those who didn’t.
- It can be assumed that they either noticed more words because their attention was enhanced, or their memory was improved since doodling might have supported a deeper information processing.
