Core Studies: Grant

• What did Grant study?


  Contemporary study of context dependent memory
• What was Grant’s background part 1?


  1. Context dependent memory is the concept when someone encodes info in the same contextual environment they‘ll recall that same info in, which improves their memory recall. 2. Cdm shown to differ depending on the type of test completing, and c-d effects most impactful for recall test (no prompts) vs recognition test (prompts)
• What was Grant’s background part 2?


  3. Prev research found students typically study in diff environment to one which they’ll be examined in e.g. if study with background noise but tested in silence, study habits may hinder recall. 4. Grant investigates cdm where ps asked to study meaningful material is mis/matching conditions with the absence or presence of noise.
• What was Grant’s aim?


  test for context dependency effects caused by the presence or absence of noise during the learning and retrieval of meaningful material
• What were Grant’s IVs?


  Whether p studied in silent or noisy conditions, whether p was tested in silent or noisy conditions
• What was Grant’s research method?


  Lab experiment with independent measures
• What was Grant’s sample?


  39 ps 17-56 years old, men and women, 8 volunteers from psych lab recruited 5 ps each (1 ps results emitted).
• What were the findings?


  Silent silent: 81% vs silent noisy: 68%. So there is an interaction between study and test conditions for both short answer questions and multiple choice question. Performance is significantly better in matching contextual conditions than mismatching
• What was Grant’s procedure part 1?


  Told about study in psych class as class project, told participate voluntarily and recruit 5 ppl. Ps asked to read and highlight an article on neuro-immunology- told comprehension would be tested. All ps wore headphones while reading, either silent condition (no noise) or noisy condition (tape from uni cafe with general conversational hum and sound of chairs/dishes scraping.
• What was Grant’s procedure part 2?


  Given two minute break between end of study phase and start of test phase to minimise effect of short term memory on performance. Completed short answer test and multiple choice test in either silent or noisy condition with headphones. Debriefed at end, procedure 30 mins total.
• What were Grant’s conclusions?


  There are context-dependent effects for newly learned meaningful material. Students are more likely to perform better in exams if they study for them with minimal background noise, as c.d.m shows this is more effective for recall and recognition.