Since the experiment is being conducted in order to measure the amount of interference on recall the following variables were operationalised in order to allow for the collection of quantitative data.
Independent variable: whether the participants will be listening to music or playing a video game or doing nothing.
Dependent variable: the number of words the participant can remember after the allotted time (see procedure).
Sample:
I will be using opportunity sampling in order to select my participants which has a number of advantages, the first is that it eliminates bias from the sample and those within the sampling frame all have an equal chance of selection. It is also ethical as I do not need to access any personal information which is illegal under the 1984 Data Protection Act, the participants will simply be selected from a pre reception for a wedding anniversary which provides plenty of possible participants. This also allows for the experiment to take place at the desired time as I do not have to wait for individuals to find some free time. Participants will be within the fifteen – eighteen years of age bracket so the results can be used to make generalisations about young adults as opposed to comparing results of a young child and a fully grown adult. All participants will be asked for their consent in order to carry out the experiment and will be debriefed at the end of the experiment which will thank them for their participation. During the course of the experiment, the participants will be given the right to withdraw at any time if they wish to in order to make sure that the experiment maintains an ethical stance and does not involve any stress to the participants.
Apparatus:
Ipod nano – this will be the music source and will be listened to by the group who will listen to music after having rehearsed the set of words.
Docking station – the ipod will be plugged into this so the music will be played through loud speakers so all members of the music group can hear the music at the same time.
Playstation 2 – this is the games console and will be used by the video games group after they have rehearsed the set of words.
Controllers – this goes along with the playstation 2 and participants will use this to play the game
Shaolin – this is the game that will be played by the games group, it requires concentration and timing so this is why it was chosen.
Television set – this will simply be used to connect the playstation 2 so participants can see what is happening.
Stopwatch – this will be used to time the period the groups rehearse the set of words and the amount of time they listen to music or play video games.
Results table and pen – this will be used to record the data collected during the experiment so it is not lost or forgotten afterwards.
Procedure:
The experiment was conducted in a living room at my home on Silver Hill road on Sunday the 19th March 2006 between 11.30am – 12.30pm. The room was relatively free from outside noise so participants would not suffer from disturbances which could affect the results.
- Thirty participants were chosen at by means of opportunity sampling and randomly allocated to one of three groups, to avoid bias, which gave ten participants per group (video game group or music group or control group).
- The video game group were taken to the living room and sat down; they were then given a standardised brief to read and then a set of instructions if they agreed to participate in the experiment.
- The group were then each given a list of ten random words and were allowed to memorise them for one minute. They all played the video game at the same time, since the console allows for up to sixteen players, for two minutes.
- The group were then given a piece of paper and a pen each and were asked to write down as many words as they could remember.
- Having done this, the video game participants were de briefed and thanked for participating; they were then allowed to leave and the results were recorded onto a pre-drawn table.
- The music group were called in and were read the same brief sheet and a slightly different instruction sheet which instructed them about listening to music rather than playing video games.
- They were given the same list of words and looked at them for one minute; they then listened to music for two minutes. They then wrote down as many words as they could remember on a piece of paper.
- The music group was then debriefed and thanked like the video game group and were free to leave and the results were recorded onto the pre-drawn table.
- The control group were then called in and given the same brief as the other groups; they were then given instructions that outlined they would be sitting in silence for two minutes after looking at the list of words.
- After looking at the same list of words as the other groups for one minute, the control group then wrote down as many words as they could remember on a piece of paper.
- Having done this they were debriefed and thanked and then freed to leave and the results were recorded onto the table.
Controls:
Many factors in the experiment were controlled in order to get unhindered results. Participants were given the same set of words to remember in order to avoid people getting ‘easier to remember’ words than others. The participants all looked at the words for one minute and then had two minutes to perform the pre set task depending on their group. Participants also were kept separate when in their groups to prevent one group from telling the other groups, who had not participated in the experiment yet, about the words that were on the list. Outside noise was also kept to a minimum to minimise distraction to the participants.
However there were some factors that could not be controlled such as whether the participant liked the music being played as participants who didn’t would be more likely to pay less attention than other, this would apply to the video game group as well. Individual differences couldn’t be controlled as some people may be better at remembering things than others.
Results:
Number of Words remembered
The above table is a summary of the results found for each group after conducting the experiment. Below are the mean, mode and median table for each of the groups and bar charts for each of the groups scores and a average bar graph all three of the groups.
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Commentary on results:
From the results we can see that there is a clear difference in the number of words remembered by the different groups; video game group participant’s remembered the lowest number of words on average and many of them getting four words right. The control group remembered the most amounts of words on average which was 6.7 words and the music group participants came in between with 5.1 words being remembered on average. These results support the experimental hypothesis as the video game group remembered the least amount of words and the control group who could rehearse the words if they wanted to, remembered more. I feel that it is safe to say that the experimental hypothesis was correct and is supported enough by the results which mean that the null hypothesis can be rejected.
Discussion:
Validity – the operationalisation of the variables allowed for the collection of quantitative data; this then showed in the results where the different types of interference had different amounts of effect on recall. Therefore the task can be said to be fairly valid as it measured what it was supposed to. However the task lacked ecological validity as the interference only lasted for two minutes but in reality, people play video games or listen to music for a longer amount of time; it could also be argued that two minutes isn’t a sufficient amount of time to have a significant effect on recall.
To improve validity, another experiment could be conducted which would involve a group trying to learn an address of a house which could then be interfered with by people talking to them or they could recite another address they already know whilst they are trying to remember it. This would improve the validity of the experiment as the situation occurs in everyday life and could test what sort of interferences has the largest effect.
Reliability – the reliability of the experiment could have been affected by a number of factors; the first would be that the experiment was conducted during a wedding party so the participants may not have been concentrating fully on the task at hand as they could have been distracted by what was going on out there; however there was an attempt to minimise outside noise so participants weren’t distracted. Another factor could have been that the music being played may not have suited the taste of some of the participants and they may have ignored it which could have improved their recall. Similarly for the video game group, some of the players may have concentrated on it more than others which could have affected recall. Lastly, individual differences could have meant that people with better memory could recall better which meant that the results could have been affected.
The reliability of the experiment could have been bettered by having a larger sample which would render any anomalies obsolete as they would be made up for by the other results. Also the use of different stimulus such as numbers and pictures could have been remembered by the participants who would then face an interference task. This would then allow for more reliable results to surface as you could see which interference task has the largest effect when participants try to recall the numbers, words etc.
Implications of study - the findings of this study suggest that there is a larger interference on recall when playing video games rather than listening to music. This may be due to the fact that playing video games requires active participation and more concentration than listening to music which is why the results have turned out as they have. These findings do back up Peterson and Peterson’s study as they too found that recall was affected by the interference (counting backwards in threes) and that information is lost easily from short term memory if not rehearsed.
Generalisability – the study does not allow for a full generalisation about the population to be made simply because the sample is too small and since the participants were selected at random, there is no possibility of generalising about a particular section of the population. However it is unlikely that significantly different results would be achieved if the rest of the population was sampled as memory is a feature everyone possess apart from those who have suffered from brain damage; therefore, on average, it would be expected that the results would be similar. The use of stratified sampling would have enabled generalisations to be made about particular sections of the population.
Applications to everyday life – an application of this study could be when someone is trying to memorise a passage of script for a drama performance; whilst trying to rehearse it, he/she could be distracted by other things going on such as noise from other members of the cast or by something else. This would lead to lower recall as he/she had her rehearsal interfered with when trying to memorise the script.
