Experiment to Test Memory Using Recognition and Free Recall.

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Experiment to Test Memory Using Recognition and Free Recall.

Rita McCauley

AS Psychology, 2002

South Trafford College

ABSTRACT

This experiment aimed to investigate whether cues assist recall.  It was expected that there would be a significant difference in recall between the group given cues and the group without, and that the group with cues will perform better. Subjects were asked to learn nonsense syllables and remember as many as possible, in either a free recall, or recognition condition.  

The subjects using free recall correctly remembered a total of 52 syllables, compared to a total of 87 syllables correctly remembered by the subjects in the recognition condition.

The Mann-Whitney U test was applied to the results and this produced a U1 of 6 and a U2 of 94.  As U1 was lower than the critical value of  27 the H1 was accepted.

These results showed a significant difference, which had not happened by chance, supporting the theory that cues assist recall.

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BACKGROUND

One of the theories of forgetting is failure to retrieve.  According to Tulving, accessibility is governed by retrieval cues.  These can be internal, such as psychological or physiological states, or external such as the environment, context or written cues.  Tulver and Osler 1968 paired specific associated cue words with a list to be learned, (at the time of learning) and found that cued recall produced better results consistently. Brown 1991, after studying 25 years of research, reported that people failing to remember the target name can remember the first letter between 50% and 70% of the time.  This confirms Tulivng theory of forgetting.

An alternative view, held by Craik and Lockheart, is that we forget information we have only processed to a shallow level, such as the shape of a letter and we remember information processed to a deeper level, involving semantic analysis at the time of learning.  If the depth of analysis at the time of learning is the most crucial factor to memory, free recall and recognition conditions should not produce significantly different results.  

Recognition of patterns such as letters or an arrangement of letters is a process of identifying an arrangement of parts as a known item.  All of the pattern recognition theories, whether it be template, prototype, feature detection or recognition by components would all predict that recognising target stimulus would be an effective process for remembering.

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Aims:

Hypothesis:

Null Hypothesis:

METHOD

Design:  

This was an experiment using independent measures, 10 subjects per group/condition, 1 trial per subject.  One condition used recognition and one used free recall.  This design was chosen to eliminate the possibility of re-learning and saving scores polluting the results.

Variables:

Independent variable -  Provision of recall cues.

Dependant variable  -   Amount of syllables correctly recalled.

Controlled variables  -  Number of words to be memorised.

    Time allowed for ...

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