In 1977, Craik showed that participants remembered far better when they were asked questions about themselves. This was because the material they were asked to recall had a semantic meaning to the individual. This is a similar effect to the effect of mental imagery on memory of material. The Atkinson and Schiffrin model does not explain why when unrelated words are easily committed to memory through mental imagery. This is clearly shown in Bower’s experiment of 1972.
Subjects were given a set of one hundred word cards with a pair of unrelated nouns, such as ‘dog’ – ‘hat’, written on them. The ‘imagery’ group was asked to form a mental image of the two words interacting with one another, i.e. to form the mental image of a dog wearing a hat. The control group was instructed to learn the word pairs by rehearsing them. Then both groups were shown the first word of each word pair and asked to recall the second word. The imagery group recalled 80% of the pairs, whilst the other group only recalled 33%. This illustrated the influence of mental imagery on recall of material.
This provides evidence to suggest that mental imagery helps in the encoding, storage and retrieval of information.
Bower's experiment can be used for the basis for my own memory experiment. The aim of this research is to see Bower's study and investigate the effect of mental imagery and repetition on memory. Therefore my hypothesis is based on Bowers findings: that imagery will be a better form of memorization then rehearsal as that is what bower found.
Hypotheses:
Experimental Hypothesis:
Participants who are asked to recall the word pairs using the technique of imagery by the form of a mental image will remember more word pairs than the participants who are asked to recall the word pairs using repetition.
Null Hypothesis:
Participants who are asked to recall the word pairs using the technique of imagery by the form of a mental image will remember no more word pairs than the participants who are asked to recall the word pairs using repetition.
Method:
This experiment uses a repeated measures design. I will be using this design because as I am trying to discover whether people remember word pairs more efficiently by imagery them rather then repeating them, I would have to ask each participant to do the task twice, the first condition would involve the participant imaging the word pairs, the second condition would involve participants repeating the word pairs.
The advantages of this design are that individual differences between participants are largely eliminated as you have the same individuals doing both conditions. Another advantage is that you need fewer participants than the independent measures design. The problems associated with this design are chiefly concerned with order effects. Participants may improve on the second condition because they have had practice doing the first condition. Participants may do worse on the second condition because they are bored, or possibly disheartened by feeling they did not do well in the first condition. If both conditions are run close together, participants may become tired and therefore also do badly on the second condition.
One way to avoid order effects is by counterbalancing. This involves having half the group take condition one first, then condition two. The other half of the group take condition two first then condition one. Using this method you can do away with the effects of practice.
My experiment will involve 10 participants
Independent, Dependant and Extraneous variables
The Independent variable for my study is whether participants remember word pairs by imagery or repetition. The Dependant variable is to see the number of word pairs remembered from imagery and repetition. Other variables apart from the independent variable which also might have an effect on the dependant variable are extraneous variables. The Extraneous variable that could occur is noise distraction from the environment; this is an extraneous variable because it is a random error that could occur whilst doing the experiment and could alter the results as the participant isn’t concentrating on the task but in what is going on around them. A control I could take to minimise the error in the experiment is using the library at Northfleet School for Girls for all the participants to ensure distractions and noise are kept to a minimum. Also standardized instructions (see appendix) and a casual seating arrangement were used to minimize the 'experimenter effect'. As the experimenter expectations could have influenced the results through body language or though slight modifications to the instructions. All the word pairs were written in the same font, times new roman, size 14, on Microsoft Word; as this may affect the participants understanding of the words and therefore, their ability to learn the words pairs correctly.
Participants
My target population for my study will be to use 10 students aged between 16-18 years old from Northfleet School for Girls Sixth form as they are easily available to me. The method available to me to get a of people from a to take part in my research is called opportunity sampling. I will be using opportunity sample because I can just go up to people and ask them to take part. This method is quick and easy and allows me to gain sufficient results for my study. This opportunity sample represents the target population of sixth form students from Northfleet School for Girls.
Materials / apparatus
10 concrete and 10 abstract words are collected from a child’s dictionary (‘my first dictionary’). I chose words at random, two words per page. The word pairs will be written in the same font, Times new roman, size 14, on Microsoft Word and the word pairs will not be connecting, meaning not familiar word pairs i.e. sun – sky. A stop clock is needed to see how many word pairs are remembered in one and half minutes.
Ethical issues
Children were not used in the experiment as the issue of ethics would have been raised because they could not give their own consent for participation. Confidentiality is a major issue, as that would be an important factor to my participants, to overcome this I will not take the names of any of the participants. Another issue was the consent of the participants to take part in the experiment, so each participant will give inform consent before starting any task. All participants have the right to leave during the experiment and the right to withdraw their results at anytime during the research which they will be aware of as they will be briefed at the beginning of the experiment and de-briefed at the end of the task.