Null Hypothesis: There will be no significant difference in the number of words recalled from the related and unrelated lists; any difference will be due to chance
Methodology
Subjects
The group of people of interest for this study are teenagers, mainly 16-18 year olds. Most of the participants were family and friends. Twenty people took part in the study – 10 males and 10 females and the mean age of all the participants was 17 years of age. To recruit the participants for the 2 conditions opportunity sampling was used as it was convenient. It consists of taking the sample from people who are available at the time the study is carried out and fit the criteria the experimenter is looking for.
Design
For the study it will be conducted as a laboratory experiment, using an independent measures design. The independent variable in the experiment is the related and unrelated lists (see appendix 2). One list of words is related; in this case the words are related to clothes, will be given to the experimental group. The other list contains completely unrelated words with no connection, which will be given to the control group. The dependant variable in the experiment will be the subject’s memory of the words, operationalized as the number of words remembered correctly.
Materials / apparatus
40 common nouns were used as the learning material and a set of standardized instructions to give the participants (see appendix 5). A stop clock was used to time the participants. It was decided that this apparatus should be used because it filled the necessary criteria, such as complete homogeneity for easy replication.
Procedure
A potential participant would be approached and asked whether they would like to take part in the experiment. The experimenter would have a set of standardized instructions that he/she would have to follow. Subjects were randomly assigned to a group. In the experimental condition, the participant would be shown the related word lists but in the control condition another participant would be shown the unrelated word list. The experimenter would show the test subject the list of related or unrelated words, making sure that the participant had 3 minutes to read and remember each word properly. The experimenter would then put the words out of view and ask the participant to write down as many words as they can remember on a separate piece of paper. The participants had 2 minutes to do this. After the experiment is over the participant would be debriefed and told the actual aim of the experiment (see appendix 4). No ethics arose during this study. I gained full consent from the participants as it would be wrong to deceive them. None of the participants were harmed during the experiment. The subjects were not lied to. The subjects were allowed to withdraw at any time although none of them did this. They were debriefed at the end of the experiment and told the actual aim of the experiment. All the variables were controlled to make it fair. The experimenter used a stop clock to make sure that every participant had the same amount of time. A set of standardised procedures and instructions were carried out the same every time.
Results
Table 1
Table 1 displays the mean, median and mode, showing average recall from the related world lists was superior.
The table above shows that there were far more words recalled from the related list, than the unrelated list. The mean number for the related list is considerably higher than the mean number for the unrelated data. This means that on average more related words were remembered. The variation ratio is higher for the unrelated data than the unrelated data and it is tri modal. This suggests that the mode for the related data is more representative. The range for both conditions was the same and quite large.
Inferential Statistics : For the Mann Whitney U-test the results were:
Critical value – 127 Calculated Value - -0.5
Significance statement - U = -0.5 Na = 20 Nb = 20 p<0.05
(see appendix 1)
A Mann Whitney U-test is an independent measures design; it is fair to say that the experiment was reliable as there was only a 0.5% chance that the significant difference in results was due to chance. It shows the test result obtained is smaller than the critical value at the 5% level of probability and is significant. Therefore the related words are more easy to recall than the unrelated words
Conclusion in terms of the experimental hypothesis : The experimental hypothesis was accepted. The results of the Mann – Whitney U-test show that there was only a 0.5% chance that the significant difference in results was due to chance.
Conclusions is terms of the null hypothesis : The experimental hypothesis was accepted and the null hypothesis has been rejected. Therefore the experiment suggests that “chunking” leads to better recall.
Discussion
The results support the experimental hypothesis and provide evidence that association of words does aid memory. The findings are very similar to those reported by Bower et al (1969).
The tendency to recall words from the same category supports the beneficial effect of association and suggests people often spontaneously use association to help their memory. With association the complexity of the memory task is simplified as recall of one part of the information may serve as a natural prompt for another part.
However consideration needs to given to all aspects of the experiments. They may be a likelihood that different results may have been obtained if anything was changed. The validity of the results can be questioned. The experiment is testing what I wanted to test however I could have included more categories of words. The results do not show a representative of the whole population as most of the participants were aged between 16 and 18 – the sample was not varied. This makes it less reliable and makes it harder for generalisations to be made. Using more subjects of different ages would enable results to be applied more widely. This could have been improved by systemic sampling.
The results may have been attributable to individual differences to individual differences between the subjects in each condition, due to the use of the independent measures design.
The words used were all common nouns and may have contributed to the high scores obtained at recall. It would be interesting to vary the complexity of the words, using less well known words, to see if this affected the results. This would increase the ecological validity of the study. The time allowed for studying the words (3 minutes) may have not been long enough for the participants to learn them. Similarly, the time allowed for recall (2 minutes) may not have been long enough for some participants to write down all the words they remembered. Allowing more time in both cases would increase validity.
The experiment also lacked ecological validity, as it is not what people do in every day life. The experiment only focused on a narrow, specific aspect of behaviour, the memory. There may be aspects that affect the memory that were not considered here.
No ethical concerns arose in this study. Full consent was gained for the participants and no lies were told. No harm came to anyone and the participants were allowed to withdraw at any time.
There are many different alternative methods that could have been used to carry out the experiment. Instead of words being written on pieces on paper, pictures of the objects could have been used instead. The results may have differed if this method was used. Some people can remember pictures more easily. This would be good further study that could be conducted in the future.
The results are very useful as they tell us about the memory and how it works. These results would be useful to doctors as it could help them with their research about memory problems. Word association could help people with a poor memory – it could help to improve it. Incorporating some kind association into revising information for exams could prove beneficial.
References and Appendices
Bower, G.H., Clark, M., Lesgold, A. and Winzenz, D. (1969) ‘Hierarchical retrieval schemes in recall memory of categorized word lists’ in R. D. Gross (Ed) Psychology: the science of mind and behaviour (second edition) London: Hodder & Stoughton
Coolican, H. (2004) Research Methodds and Statistics in Psychology (4th Edition) London : Hodder & Stoughton
Appendices
Appendix 1
Calculations of statistical analysis
Ua = Na Nb + Na(Na +1) -Ra
2
Therefore: Ua = 20 x 20 + 20 x (20 + 1) - 204.5
2
Ua = 400 + 20 x 21 - 204.5
2
Ua = 400 + 420 - 204.5
2
Ua = 400 + 210 – 204.5
Ua = 610 – 204.5
Ua = 405.5
Ub = (Na Nb) – Ua
Therefore: Ub = (20 x20) – 405.5
Ub = 400 – 405.5 = -5.5
Calculated value – 127
Significance statement - U = -0.5 Na = 20 Nb = 20 p<0.05
Appendix 2
Experimental group Control group
(related word list) (unrelated word list)
Sock T-shirt Tracksuit Green Orange Red
Jumper Skirt Boots Dentist Fish Cat
Coat Shirt Trainers Germany Cheese Dog
Trousers Blouse Bikini Girl Italy
Shoes Cardigan Boy Blue
Scarf Shorts Phone Cheese Tights Slippers Rose Builder
Hat Dressing gown Teacher Rabbit
Appendix 3
This table displays shows how many words were recalled in each group
Appendix 4
The debrief given to subjects on completion of the experiment
Thank you for participating in this experiment. It was an investigation of whether association of words leads to better learning and memory. Previous research has shown that the association of words make it easier to learn and remember.
Two groups of subjects were used, one receiving a collection of words related to clothes, the other given a collection of words that were completed unrelated. It was hypothesized that the group studying the related list would remember more words than those who studied the unrelated words. You will have participated in just one of the two groups, and should not be disappointed if your recall score was poor (especially if you studied the unrelated list). The results have not been analysed yet, but if you’re interested you can assess them at a later day.
Appendix 5
Standardized instructions
You will be given a set of words to try and remember and have exactly 3 minutes to do this. Then you will have 2 minutes to write down as many words as you can remember on a separate piece of paper. Do you have any questions?