A comparison of the ability of males and females to control their attentional processes
A comparison of the ability of males and females to control their attentional processes Table of Contents Abstract 3 Aim 3 Procedure 3 Findings 3 Conclusion 3 Introduction 4 Formulation of Aims 5 Statement of Alternative Hypothesis (Directional) 5 Statement of Null Hypothesis 5 Method 6 Design 6 Participants 6 Materials 7 Procedure 7 Results 8 Inferential Statistics 9 Level of Significance 9 Discussion 10 Explanation of Findings 10 Relationship to Background Research 11 Limitations and Modifications 12 Implications and suggestions for future research 13 References 14 Appendix 1 15 Fig 1.1 15 Fig 1.2 16 Fig 1.3 16 Appendix 2 17 Fig 1.1 18 Fig 1.2 21 Fig 1.3 22 Fig 1.4 23 Appendix 3 24 Figure 1.1 24 Figure 1.2 24 Figure 1.3 25 Figure 1.4 25 Figure 1.5 26 Figure 1.6 26 Figure 1.7 26 Abstract Aim The aim of this study was to discover the difference in the ability of males and females to control their attentional processes. It was expected, due to previous research mentioned above, that females will complete the Stroop Test with quicker times and that they will therefore be better at controlling their attentional processes. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis for this study is that "the time taken to complete the Stroop test by female participants will be quicker than the time taken to complete the Stroop test by male
Retrieval Induced Forgetting in Coherent Narrative Text.
Diane Poulos 3 Retrieval Induced Forgetting in Coherent Narrative Text The definition of forgetting is to lose the memory of something from the mind. Two possible reasons one forgets are either the memory is not in the brain or it is there but just can not be found. Forgetting can be useful for allowing new memories of similar items to be remembered. This would be useful in a situation like trying to remember a new boy/girl friends name and forgetting the old ones. Yet it also works the other way around. Not being able to remember the new boy/girl friends name because the old on is stuck in your head. This would not be useful. Retrieval induced forgetting is a phenomenon which says that in addition to retrieving desired memories, the act of remembering information inhibits related memories. Many studies have been done looking at this phenomenon. Anderson, Bjork, and Bjork (1994) did a study to see if retrieval induced forgetting occurred in groups of categories. In the experiment the researchers gave people lists of categorized words and then asked them to retrieve some of the words from some of the categories. Then during another memory test, hit rates were lower for items that had not previously been retrieved but that came from a category from which other category members had been retrieved than for items that were in category groups from which no items had been
An experiment to investigation the effect of sorting words by their meaning and sorting words by their font style on the number of words correctly recalled.
Title An experiment to investigation the effect of sorting words by their meaning and sorting words by their font style on the number of words correctly recalled. Contents Page Abstract 3 Introduction 3 - 4 Method 4 - 5 Design 4 Participants 4 Materials and Apparatus 4 Task 5 Procedure 5 Ethical Issues 5 Results 6 Summary of data 6 Discussion 6 - 7 Conclusion 7 References 7 Appendices 7 - 11 Appendix 1 8 Appendix 2 9 Appendix 3 10 Appendix 4 10 Appendix 5 11 Abstract This investigation is based on Craik and Tulvig's research (1975) into Craik and Lockhart's (1972) "Levels of Processing" theory. They
Find out if recall of words is better when recalled in the environmental context of which the words were learned
Project brief PB1 Aim: To find out if recall of words is better when recalled in the environmental context of which the words were learned PB2 A directional alternative hypothesis will be used because there is previous research to suggest what the results will be, (higher recall rates when tested in the same context). PB3 An experimental method and independent groups design will be used, as it lowers bias. PB4 The advantage of using an experimental method is that it produces quantitative data making it easier to analyse. It also allows for high levels of control and the ability to establish causal relationship between the independent and the dependant variable. The disadvantages of this method are that the quantitative data produced is limited, as it does not tell you the cause in much detail. High levels of control result in low ecological validity of experiment. PB5 Potential sources of bias and possible confounding variables are ... - Demand characteristics - participants may figure out what is expected of them, so change their behaviour to give the experimenter better data. - Experimenter effects - the behaviour of the experimenter may affect the participants and thus the D.V. for example, the way in which the experimenter behaves may encourage certain responses, such as a subconscious smile from experimenter may suggest the correct answer to participant. -
Investigation into the relationship between an individuals precieved ugliness, harmfullness and an individuals fear of the animal.
Introduction A phobia is a common type of anxiety disorder, a phobia is characterised as a persistent fear, and has to have a rapid anxiety response with the initial stress response occurring immediately. The client must recognise that the fear is irrational and try hard to avoid the stimulus. To be clinically classed as a phobia they must find that this affects their life style. There are three types of phobias, these are, social phobias, agoraphobia, and specific phobias. Social phobias are a fear of social situations due to own self consciousness, and fear of others. Agoraphobia is the fear of open or public places. A specific phobia is the phobia of a specific object, commonly animals, such as arachnophobia which is the fear of spiders. Seligman (1971) introduced his preparedness hypothesis; this proposed that the non-random distribution of fears is caused by an evolutionary predisposition. This evolutionary predisposition means that the modern man has a tendency to react fearfully to stimuli which would have been a threat to prehistoric man (such as snakes, spiders, high places etc); this is not an innate reaction but facilitates acquiring such fears through classical conditioning. Seligman states that it can be merely a mild unconditioned stimulus which can activate this tendency to fear the stimuli of prehistoric mans fears, and that this can result in a highly
Define short-term memory and describe the main factors that influence the number of items recalled from short-term memory. Evaluate Nairne's theory relative to traditional theories, clearly stating your criteria for evaluation.
Define short-term memory and describe the main factors that influence the number of items recalled from short-term memory. Evaluate Nairne's theory relative to traditional theories, clearly stating your criteria for evaluation. Memory has always been an area of psychology to receive a great deal of attention. In 1890, William James [2], stated that there were two components to the human memory. He made the distinction between a 'primary' memory, now termed short-term memory and a secondary memory, now termed long-term memory. Eysenck and Keane (2002 [3]) state that the primary memory relates to information that remains in consciousness after it has been perceived and forms part of the psychological present. They then state that secondary memory contains information about events that have left consciousness and are therefore part of the psychological past (Eysenck and Keane 2002 [3]). In the 1960's a major debate surfaced about whether the short-term memory and long-term memory worked independently of each other or whether they were a part of the same unitary system. Many theories were developed on this basis and there is a great deal of evidence to support the fact that they work independently and have very separate functions. As a result of this debate, many researchers became interested in the concept of short-term memory. Through experimental evidence it became apparent
An investigation to discover the effects of retroactive interference on memory recall.
AS Psychology Coursework Kimberley Webb Abstract This experiment is based on the MacDonald and McGeoch investigation involving retroactive interference. Retroactive interference is where what we have learned is interfered with by subsequent learning. Otherwise explained as when later learning interferes with earlier learning. In my experiment the aim is to investigate whether or not retroactive interference occurs when testing the memory recall of a list of words. The research method used is an experiment and the design is an unrelated measures design. The sampling technique is opportunity sampling. My results show that there is a strong possibility that retroactive interference did occur as all my results agree with my experimental hypothesis and the null hypothesis is rejected. The experimental hypothesis states 'The participants who do not receive an interference list will significantly recall a higher average correct words than the group who received a retroactive interference word list in a free recall memory test.' This is a one-tailed test. It can be concluded that retroactive interference does occur during word recall. Introduction Psychology captivates me due to its inevitable ability to be concealed in everyday life, its limitations are endless and alike the brain; psychologists still has a lot to discover about this remarkable discipline. Memories are a store
Investigation into acoustic and visual encoding in short-term memory
Investigation into acoustic and visual encoding in short-term memory ) Abstract The investigation aims to look into acoustic and visual encoding in short-term memory (STM). The research associated with this experiment is supported by Conrad's (1964) study into acoustic confusion. The experimental hypothesis was tested and led the researcher to accept it, as it stated that acoustic coding in STM would be used even when information is presented visually whereas the Null hypothesis was due to chance alone and predicted that there will be no significance or difference in participants recall when using acoustic or visual coding in STM. Repeated measures was the design used for this investigation, as it involved exposing every participant to each of the experimental conditions, so in effect participants were used as their own controls. Opportunistic sampling was used to select participants to take part in this investigation. The findings of this investigation direct us towards accepting the experimental hypothesis that a vast number of people would use acoustic coding in STM. The statistical test used was the Sign Test as the statistical significance was 0.05% of the results with a critical value of one, which clearly suggested that the experimental hypothesis could be accepted, as the hypothesis was one tailed leading to reject the null hypothesis. The conclusions drawn from
"An experiment to see the effect of chunking on short-term memory recall".
Psychology Coursework Introduction "An experiment to see the effect of chunking on short-term memory recall". Many psychologists studying memory suggest that there are different stages through which information must travel if it is to be remembered. According to Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) there are three kinds of memory storage and these vary according to their function and the length of time information is retained. Sensory memory is the first storage. This refers to the initial momentary storage of information, which lasts only a short time. It is recorded by the persons sensory system as a raw non-meaningful stimulus. Short-term memory is the next storage. This can last from around 5 to 15 seconds. The difference between this stage and the sensory stage is that here the information is stored in terms of its meaning rather than as mere sensory stimulation. Repetitive rehearsal would retain the information in short-term memory for longer. The third type of storage is long-term memory. Here information is relatively permanent although it may be difficult to retrieve. Continual rehearsal would be needed here if the information were to be stored for a long time. However, it is said that sometimes the brain does not forget certain things such as a language; even without rehearsal people seem to remember languages for long periods of time. For this coursework I am going to
This study is based on the theory of cue dependent forgetting - more specifically, context dependent forgetting - a phenomena in cognitive psychology, proposed by Tulving and Pearlstone (1979).
Abstract This study is based on the theory of cue dependent forgetting - more specifically, context dependent forgetting - a phenomena in cognitive psychology, proposed by Tulving and Pearlstone (1979). A study by Abernathy (1940) has been replicated, using an experimental method to test the alternative hypothesis that recall is better in the same environment as information is learnt. With a significant difference of 7% higher recall in the same environment as information was learnt, the alternative hypothesis has been accepted. Introduction Background research This investigation involves research into memory, which is part of cognitive psychological theory. The cognitive approach assumes that the brain is an information processor with inputs, processes and outputs. Memory is one such process, where information is encoded, stored and then recalled. One theory of memory is the multi-store model, proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin, which suggests there are three different memory stores - sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. This study is concerned with long-term memory. Relating to memory is forgetting, or failure to recall information. There are two main theories of forgetting, one of which explains when information is not recalled because it is unavailable, and the other when it is inaccessible. This study focuses on cue-dependent memory. In trace
