q Subject effect is also one of the extraneous variables. The first one is the demand characteristics. If the subject are informed the purpose of this experiment, they will try to be cooperative and conform the hypothesis by writing down less words in the group that got the unorganized data. Such that we need to disguise what is really studied. They do not know what is the control group or experimental group. They are told that this experiment is just to test which types of words can be easily memorized, so all of them will try their best to write down the words. And the next subject effect is the positive self-presentation. Subjects may wish to make positive image to the experimenter and may think that the more words they wrote, the better they are, and there might be cheating amount the subjects. This would affect the result. Therefore, the experimenters should monitor the subjects well to avoid cheating. The subjects are asked to sit separately so cheating is difficult. Then, there are 2 experimenters, this ensures that there is no cheating among the subjects and the words recalled are solely due to their own memory.
q There are many environmental variations. Noise from the outside and the noises from the air-conditioner are the main source of effect, it will make the subjects can’t concentrate on memorizing the words and so will affect the result. Therefore, we control the environment variation by standardization(to conduct the experiment in the same room) so that all subjects are tested in the same environment. Moreover, we need to use the method of elimination to eliminate the noise. That room has a quiet atmosphere and can make the subjects more concentrated.
q Time control is a very important criteria, if too much time is given to the subjects, they may have enough time to memorize the words even though the words are not organized .If time is too short, the subjects won’t be able to memorize the words even if the words are well organized. Then, the difference between the 2 groups will not be large enough. Therefore, we carefully set the time so that the difference will be large enough. This is achieved by doing a pilot test.
Pilot test
We perform a pilot test before we start the experiment. This helps improving the design of the subject, such as how much time should be given to the subjects to memorize the words and write them down afterwards.
First, we find two students of our age to do the experiment, they are separated, one reads the words that are organized and the other read the unorganized material. 3 minutes are given to read the words and 1.5 minutes are given to write them. However, the test did not success because the results of the two groups are very similar. We fail to draw a correlation that organization helps the recall of material. Therefore, we lengthen the amount of time given.
Process of the experiment
This is a between-subject design in whichdifferent subjects receive different treatments. Subjects are divided into two groups experimental group 1 who read the organized data and experimental group 2 who read the unorganized data), 10 in each group. Experimental group 1 serves as the control group which shows that organization is the major reason leading to the different results. They are given 4 minutes to read and memorize the words. Afterwards, we collect the word lists and the 2 groups were given 3.5 minutes to recall and write the words that they have already seen. From this test, we find that the group with data organized can memorize words more than the group that did not.
Then we found another 2 students to do the test again. This time they were given 4 minutes to read the word list and 3 minutes to write down the words. The results of the two students have a significant difference.
Here is the data collected after our experiment.
To make sure this result is not due to chance but due to treatment condition, we have to do the t-test. The critical value of t is 1.729 while the value of t obtained is 6.913. It shows that the probability of by chance is low enough to reject the null hypothesis. As a result, we can conclude that organized data is easier to recall than unorganized data.
Analysis of results
Why is there such a great difference in subsequent retrieval if organized material and unorganized material? The main reason is that our memory is organized as a network of hierarchy because it provides an economical way to store information.
Whenever men read a piece of information, it is organized in a hierarchical format. However, when subjects are required to memorize large number of unrelated words in such short period, the brain does not have enough time to do so. Subjects fail to find the right retrieval cue of all items. The number of words they can recall is thus less.
On the other hand, subjects that read well-organized information can easily find the retrieval cues and recall the words. Besides, as words are connected with the same cue ( the hierarchical tree ) immediately when the subjects read the material, when the cue is retrieved for one of the items(that subjects find its cues particularly easy due to other reasons, such as more elaboration, emotion) ,the other related items become active and therefore improve the number of words recalled.
Conclusion
As shown by our experiment, organization during encoding greatly improves subsequent retrieval. This is because of how information is organized and managed in are memory.
In fact, this principle can be put to great practical use, especially when one is required to memorize a large piece of information. For example, it is an effective way to help studying. We can sketch a hierarchical tree after capturing a few key points in the textbooks. If you are having difficulty in recalling certain piece of information, the hierarchy guides our memory search whenever we have to retrieve the information as it provides retrieval cues for the information.
Actually, this experiment is a very successful one. The pattern of the result we obtain is near what the theory stated. This is because we have done a pilot test and try to make the words given for the subjects to remember suitable. This means we need to make sure the words neither too easy nor too difficult for them to ensure we can get such result.
Doing this experiment provides us a better understanding of the correlation between organization of material encoded and its retrieval. In this experiment, we choose the subjects and make the list of words ourselves. We also need to control a lot of extraneous variables. Actually, we did face a lot of difficulties like finding a number of subjects that are similar in some sense and gather them in a place we choose at a particular time. Finding suitable words are not easy too. Our group mates had different ideas towards what kind of words we should use and the method of organizing them in the beginning. Luckily, all these problems are solved after a series of discussion.
Here, we would like to thank the group of subjects that were willing to spare their time to help us finish this experiment. Also, we would like to thank our teacher who tried a lot to guide us out of confusion. Although doing experiment is not a easy job and required us to spend a lot of time in it. We must say it did help us to consolidate our memory and understand the whole thing thoroughly.
