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Introduction

The Impact Emotion Has On Memory Candidate name: Candidate number: Centre number: Table of contents Abstract Page 3 Introduction Page 4 Aims and Hypotheses Page 6 Method Page 7 Results Page 10 Discussion Page 12 Conclusion Page 15 References and Bibliography Page 16 Appendix Page 17 Method Design A laboratory experiment was used to manipulate the independent variable (which was either the emotional or neutral words that the participants have to recall) to observe the effect on the dependent variable (which was the number of emotional and neutral words participants recalled), under controlled conditions. There were two conditions in the experiment. Condition A involved participants being presented with only emotional words and recalling them. Condition B involved participants being presented with only neutral words and recalling them. The design involved was an independent groups design where there were two groups of participants one for each condition. The study contained one recall list sheet and one maths answer sheet, which were used to collect the results of participants. A pilot study was conducted before carrying out the experiment using only 6 participants both males and females. From the pilot study it was found that participants felt that the retention interval for recalling the words was too short. Also participants were more influenced by other participants and sought for cues on how to behave from other participants as all participants took part in the study at the same time and place. ...read more.

Middle

* An independent groups design was used. The level of significance selected was p<5%. The results show the value of U for this data is set at 22 which is just below the critical value of 27, this shows that the results are significant. This allows the experimental hypothesis to be accepted. The experimental hypothesis is as follows: There will be a difference between recall of emotional and neutral words. (See appendix for workings). Discussion Discussion of findings The experimental hypothesis stated that there will be a difference between the recall of emotional and neutral words which has been clearly shown in the graph. These results suggest that emotion may have an impact on the memory. As the null hypothesis has been rejected in favour of the experimental hypothesis this means that emotional words (as shown by a mean of 6.15) are generally better remembered than neutral words (as shown also by a mean of 5.1). The Mann-Whitney U test shows that the study was significant even though there was not much of a difference between the results. Moreover more emotional words were remembered by participants than neutral words showing that emotional words did have some impact on the memory of the participants. However individual differences did occur as some participants did have a high recall of neutral words in comparison to participants' recall of emotional words showing that emotion is not always the trigger for memory. Emotion does seem to have caused better recall for the participants highlighting that there may be a link between the emotion and higher recall. ...read more.

Conclusion

It would be interesting to see if genders have any difference at all in the recall that could be conducted. Other further research that could be conducted is to see whether different personality types could be better at recalling emotional words or neutral words. Different personality types may be less likely to be affected by emotional words such as hardiness personality rather than type C personalities that would take the emotional words more into account. This could still however suggest individual differences. Further research could also be to test by comparing pleasant emotional words to unpleasant emotional words are remembered. This could give further support to how the human brain works. Also the difference between younger and older people could be tested to see if the emotional words do affect older people as they may have experienced more of the emotional words in depth than younger people who may take less notice of the emotional words. In addition further research could challenge the idea of changing the emotional and neutral words to fit within certain cultures. Different cultures may find different words more emotional to them. The emotional words can link with the individual's culture to see if this would cause better or worse recall. Conclusion From the study it can be concluded that emotional words have more of an impact on memory than neutral words causing them to be recalled better. The findings support this as it shows that participants in condition A had better recall of the emotional words in comparison to the participants in condition B who were recalling neutral words. ?? ?? ?? ?? 1 ...read more.

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