Cognitive Practical

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

• To investigate whether short term memory encoded acoustically similar words better or acoustically dissimilar words better

Question 2

One tail hypothesis

Answer 2

• Participants should be able to recall more acoustically dissimilar words in order than acoustically similar words in order from the list of ten

Question 3

Null hypothesis

Answer 3

• There is no difference as to which word list participants recall better in order

Question 4

Procedure

Answer 4

• This was a replication of Baddeley experiment
• Participant gave informed consent and instructions before the experimented started
• Then shown 1 of 2 words lists of 10 words, each word being displayed for 3 seconds on a screen using an independent groups design
• After all the words are shown the words will be shown again in a jumbled order
• Participants will need to write down the words in order that the words were shown
• Due to this study being an independent groups design, Mann Whitney U test is utilised to see if the difference between the performance of the group are significant

Question 5

One strength

Answer 5

• The participants were all given standardised instructions and tasks
• The resources used in the experiment were all standardised, the order of the word lists was the same, the duration that the word showed up on the screen
• The word chosen were equally common in the
  English language
• This level of control means that I have eliminated the extraneous variables of familiarity of certain words affecting my participant’s ability to recall the word list in order

Question 6

One weakness

Answer 6

• The environment in which my participants were tested was not consistent
• Due to the limitation of my resources, some participants had to be tested in noisy, public environments, while others had silent rooms
• This means variables such as the noise could of affected the concentration of my participants, this lacks of control decreased the internal validity of my study as environmental factors could of affected the recall abilities of my participants rather than the acoustics of the word lists

Question 7

Improvements

Answer 7

• Increase the number of participants as the sample sized used was 2 participants
• May not be representative of memory encoding of the STM in the wider population
• Increase the sample used to 100
• Increase the control used
• Limited controls used in the testing environments
• Memory recall ability may have been affected by distractions rather the acoustics
• Do experiments in lab conditions with no distracted and consistent environments