Grant

• What was the background?

  
  

  The background to this study involves context-dependent memory. This means that we are more likely to remember something in the same environment that we learnt it in. Context dependent memory

  happens because we also take in other things in the environment which are stored at the same time. These extra pieces of information are seen as triggers or cues that help us to remember the

  information stored in our memory
• What was the aim?

  To show that environmental context can have an effect on performance in a memory test when matching and mismatching the conditions 
• What was the method?

  • Lab experiment (partially field) 
  • Independent measures 
  • IVs: Whether ppts read two page article under silent or noisy condition Whether ppts tested under matching (learn article in silence and test in silence (and vice versa) ) or mismatching conditions (learn article in noise and test in silence (and vice versa) )  
  • DV – Ppt's performance on 10 question short answer recall test and 16 question multiple choice recall test 
• What was the sample?

  • 8 members of a psychology laboratory class served as experimenters and recruited 5 acquaintances each to serve as ppts  
  • Snowball sampling 
  • 39 ppts (students) ranging from 17-56 years old (1 removed as skewed results) 
  • Randomly assigned to conditions 
• What was the procedure?

  • Ppts given 2 page article on psychoimmunology to study 
  • All ppts wore headphones while they read  Silent condition – told they would not hear anything over the headphones Noisy condition – moderately loud cassette tape of prerecorded background noise from the university cafeteria at lunchtime played through headphones 
  • Break of 2 mins  
  • Short answer test given followed by multiple choice test 
  • Ppts tested in either silent or noisy conditions and wore headphones regardless of the condition 
  • Debriefed at the end 
• What were the findings?

  • Studying and testing in the same environment produced better results 
  • No overall effect of noise on performance 
• What were the conclusions?

  • There are context-dependency effects for newly learned meaningful material regardless of whether a short answer test or a multiple choice test is used to assess learning 
  • Studying and testing in the same environment leads to enhanced performance  
  • Students are likely to perform better in exams if studied in an environment with minimum background noise because it will not be present during actual testing due to context dependency 
• Background: What was Godden and Baddeley’s experiment?

  • Members of a diving club learned a list of words both on land and underwater
  • They were then asked to recall the words in either the environment they learned the lists or in the alternative environment
  • Lists learnt underwater were recalled significantly better underwater