Cognitive practical

• Background

  • Glanzer (1966) found evidence to show that there are separate STM and LTM stores which supported MSM.
  • Participants who were given a list of words to memorise and recall, remembered more words from the beginning of the list because the words had entered LTM and more words from the end of the list because they were still in the STM.
  • Words from the middle of the list were forgotten.
• Aim

  To partially replicate Glanzer's experiment to find out whether participants recall more words from the start of the list using their LTM (primacy effect) compared with the middle of the list.
• IV

  Whether the words were at the start of the list (primacy effect) or in the middle of the list.
• DV

  Number of words recalled correctly out of 9.
• Null hypothesis

  There will be no significant difference in the no. words recalled correctly out of 9 between the words at the start of the list (primacy effect) and the words in the middle of the list and any difference will be due to chance.
• Two-tailed hypothesis

  There will be a significant difference in the no. words recalled correctly out of 9 between the words at the start of the list (primacy effect) and the words in the middle of the list.
• Sample

  • 10 participants obtained through opportunity sampling (approached first 10 students that were on study periods).
  • Repeated measures design was used because each participant took part in both conditions (learning words at the start of the list and the middle of the list).
• Procedure

  • Wordlist consisting of 27 words that are unrelated and are all 2 syllables long.
  • Words presented at a rate of 1 word every 4 seconds using a power-point slide.
  • Each participant will need to recall the words on a blank piece of paper.
• Statistical test

  A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was carried out on the data because ordinal data was collected, a repeated measures design was used and a difference between the 2 sets of data is being investigated.
• Strengths

  • Opportunity sampling technique- quick convenient, everyone has memory ability
  • Lab experiment- high control- high internal validity
  • Standardised procedure- replicable, high reliability
  • Repeated measures, reduces participant variables e.g. demand characteristics
  • Quantitative data- objective
• Weaknesses

  • Only psych students less representative of other subjects
  • Opportunity sample- low generalisability
  • Confounding variable- meaning of the words in the lists
  • Artificial task- low ecological validity
  • Quantitative data- no insight into why the word was remembered.