PARTICIPANTS
The experimental group and control group each consisted of 8 participants. Out of all 16 participants, 5 were male and 11 were female all aged 16 years. Therefore differences in age were not identified as an extraneous variable. An opportunity sample was utilised, since a large number of potential participants would have been difficult to acquire. Participants were chosen from friends; this is the people who were available without any trouble, and who were willing to partake in the experiment.
MATERIALS
The materials for this experiment were simply, 20 pieces of A4 Paper. 8 of these pieces individually consisted of the groups of words (printed) which had been categorised accordingly, and, the other 8 pieces of paper had the words unsystematically in a long list. 16 pieces of blank paper, a stop watch, and 20 pencils were also required.
PROCEDURE
Prior to involving participants, a list of objects were written up in order to use as the first stage in the experiment which was the simple memory test.
This simple memory test was organised so the experimenter could match participants in twos accordingly from the most comparable results obtained by participants. (See Appendix 1)
For the main part of the experiment, 4 groups of 7 words had been printed out
Words were chosen carefully, to ensure participants were likely to know the words. The words were very similar to some extent, for example, one of the
groups of words had words which were just metals. This was designed for the experimental group, (condition 1), so 8 copies of the words were needed to give to each participant in this group for memorizing. For the control group, again words were printed, but copied from condition 1. The difference was that these words were arranged randomly as a long list of 28 words in an uncategorised fashion; in this way this group did not use the method of organisation as an aid to memory and recall. Again 8 copies of the lists
for condition 2 was printed out for each participant from the control group.
(See Appendix 2 for the 2 conditions)
All 16 participants were seated individually so no copying would occur in later stages of the experiment. Initially, participants were thanked for attending and given standardised instructions 1 for the simple memory test. (See Appendix 3). The experimenter then read out each word at 5-second intervals. Participants were not allowed to write anything down yet, and were given a 30 second break. After this participants were then given 5 minutes to write down as much words as they could recall. Participants were thanked at the end of this and asked to come back 15 minutes later to proceed with the main part of the experiment. In this 15 minutes time, the experimenter added up all the scores of the memory test of each individual, and matched participants’ names in pairs of two according to the similarity of the scores. Each name from the pairs was allocated to either a control group or experimental group.
When participants came back, they were told that there were allocated to 1 of 2 groups in which they will sit another memory test. These 2 groups were the control group and experimental group. All participants were seated individually, with no distractions or interruptions. Participants were told that they’ll sit a memory test. (See Standardised instructions 2 in Appendix 3)
Participants who were allocated to the experimental group were given words which had been systematically arranged in groups, so including the technique of organisation (condition 1). Participants who had been allocated to the control group were given the same words which had been randomly de-categorised onto a long list (condition 2). (See Appendix 2 for the two conditions)
The experimenter proceeded with the experiment by handing out one of the two conditions to participants depending on which group they belonged to. Participants were asked to read and learn in the mind the words on front of them, on the paper. For this they were given 8 minutes. At the end of these 8 minutes, papers were collected and participants were given a blank piece of paper. They were told to write down as many words as they could recall in a short time of 5 minutes. At the end of this 5 minutes, sheets were collected in two piles; 1 pile consisting of the experimental group and the other consisting of the control group. This was the end of the experiment, so participants were thanked for partaking and debriefed (See Appendix 4)
(By having all participants in both groups doing one of two conditions was less time-consuming then having the experimental and control group doing their conditions in different times; it shouldn’t have had any effect of the results obtained from the memory tests obtained from the memory tests.)
RESULTS
Here is a table to show the number of words recalled using the method of organisation and not using the method of organisation.
A graphic representation in the form of a bar chart has been interpreted from the central tendency figures in the table above. This should make overall results much easier to understand and analyse.
DISCUSSION
It was evident from the results that higher scores were achieved by all participants in the experimental group (condition 1) of the experiment where they were given words to memorise which had been allocated into meaningful groups. They recalled a total number of 149 words, compared to the control group which achieved a total of 84. The mean, 18.625, in the 1st condition was also higher then 10.5 in the 2nd condition. The same goes for the median which was 18.5 compared to 10. The modal score for condition 1 was also higher then for condition 2; 17 compared to 9. The pattern therefore was identified as all the measures of central tendency and the sum of the raw scores was higher in condition 1 then in condition 2.
According to the results achieved, all results support the hypothesis that people will remember and recall words more easily when the words are organised into meaningful groups then when they are not organised into meaningful groups.
There wasn’t really much variability in the result, except that 2 participants from 2 different groups recalled the same number of words, which was 15. This result suggests that the participant who recalled 15 words from the experimental group may have not used the method of organisation conscientiously. Alternatively it could be that the participant from the control group was simply clever in memorising things as this was the highest score for the control group and the lowest score for the experimental group.
Every effort had been put in to utilise the most practicable and viable method. There may have been some flaws in the experiment. For example matching the participants was difficult; to some degree, participant variable was controlled. Nevertheless, participant variables were likely to have been inevitably present. All participants were first asked to undergo a simple memory test. From these scores participants were matched in pairs according to where scores were similar. Participants may have concentrated more in the simple memory test and concentrated less in the memory test which they undergone later. Or they could have concentrated less in the simple memory test and then concentrated less in the later test. Therefore participant variable was only partly controlled. There wasn’t really a control for this as a repeated measures design was unfeasible and an independent measures design would not have been able to even partly eliminate participant variables.
The sample of participants was selected by opportunity sampling which may not have been representative of a wider population. Hence, there can be no generalisations made from the results. Instead of using opportunity sampling, a more representative sampling method such as a sampling population method and a larger sample should have been used. This larger population and a sampling population method would have been very difficult to acquire, but it would have made it more possible to generalise the results.
The aim of the study was to investigate the variation between memorising words from organised and non-organised lists. The results indicate that memory and recall is facilitated by using the method of organisation where words are grouped meaningfully. Where the method wasn’t used, memory and recall was less of. However generalisations cannot be made since the points made above about the sampling method and the size of the sample should not be disregarded.
Improvements in the experiment could be made by using a larger sample size from a larger a population, which could have made it possible to generalise the results into a large population. Even with these improvements to the study, some basic flaws in the experiment was that it was not possible to guarantee that participants were concentrating to their best in their conditions.
CONCLUSION
The results suggest that memorising a list of words would be aided by organising the words into meaningful group. This supports the hypothesis that people will remember and recall words more easily when the words are organised meaningfully then when the words are unorganised randomly. In conclusion the results obtained indicate that organising words associates and connects the words so that retrieval is facilitated by associating one word with another.
APPENDIX 1
A simple memory test: List of objects to be read out.
1. style 11. car
2. platinum 12. clock
3. polish 13. college
4. bracelet 14. battery
5. mop 15. calculator
6. gym 16. ear ring
7. chrome 17. soap
8. shiny 18. hairdryer
9. shampoo 19. scissors
10. laptop 20. aerial
APPENDIX 2
To be memorised for condition 1...
Please learn the lists. I would like you to associate each list to a category in which they belong.
To be memorised for condition 2...
Pearl Diamond
Iron Radish
Blouse Boots
Bronze Sapphire
Emerald Lead
Carrot Trainers
Jeans Ruby
Garnet Banana
Turnip Zinc
Pineapple T-Shirt
Silver Aluminium
Jacket Skirt
Platinum Topaz
Broccoli Lettuce
APPENDIX 3
Standardised Instructions 1
“Thank you very much for giving up some of your time, to volunteer to help me with this experiment. However, If you wish to withdraw from the experiment at any time, you may do so. I hope that you will consent to proceed with the experiment, but like I said you may leave if you wish. I can also assure you that any results obtained will remain anonymous and confidential”
(Participants are permitted to withdraw from the experiment at any time; this is to ensure that the study is ethically acceptable and valid)
“The first part of the experiment is a simple memory test, which is quite vital in order to continue with the rest of the experiment. I shall read out to you a list of 20 words at 5 second intervals. A 30 second break will be given once all words are read out, and I shall then ask you to write down as much words as you can recall in a period of 5 minutes”
Standardised Instructions 2
“This time I am going to give you all a memory test which will help me with my investigation. As I have allocated you in to 2 conditions, each participant from 1 group will get 1 paper different from the other groups’ paper of words. From this I shall give you 8 minutes to learn in your mind as much words as possible. After 8 minutes is up, I will give you a minute break. Subsequently you will be told to write as many words as you can recall, in only 5 minutes. This experiment will need to be conducted in silence, so recalling of words should be done in the head and not muttered out. Does everybody understand?”
APPENDIX 4
Debriefing
“This was an experiment designed to discover whether it is easier to remember words when the words are organised in to groups that belong to different things. By organising words in such a way, it is one of many ways of facilitating retrieval. All results achieved showed normal memory spans. I would like to reassure you once again that all results will be confidential and anonymous. Then again, if anyone would like to be acknowledgeable and aware of their individual result that they achieved, I will be more then happy to inform anyone. Thank you very much for your help which was entirely voluntary on your behalf.”
(To ensure the study was ethically acceptable and valid, all participants were debriefed)
APPENDIX 5