cognitive practical investigation

• aim

  to investigate whether acoustically dissimilar words are easier to remember in STM than acoustically similar words
• hypotheses - experimental


  ppts will recall more words in the correct order from a list of 10 acoustically dissimilar words compared to a list of acoustically similar words
• hypotheses - null


  there will be no difference in the number of words recalled between acoustically similar and acoustically dissimilar word lists
• method - what was the IV

  the type of word list - acoustically similar or dissimilar
• method - what was the DV

  the number of words correctly recalled in 1 minute
• what type of participant/experimental design was used, how

  independent groups - one group did acoustically similar condition, the other did acoustically dissimilar condition
• why was an independent groups design used

  to reduce demand characteristics and order/practice effects
• what kind of sample was used

  an opportunity sample - the year 12 students in the class at the time, mainly female, mainly 16 years old
• procedure


  1 - informed consent gained

  2 - class split into two groups (acoustically similar/dissimilar)

  3 - words presented at rate of 1 word every 3 seconds

  4 - ppts given 1 minute to recall as may words as they could in the correct order

  5 - scored out of 10 for how many were correct
• what kind of data was collected

  quantitative
• what was calculated first

  measures of central tendency
• what were the values of mean, median, and mode for condition A ppts

  mean = 8.75, median = 10, mode = 10
• what were the values of mean, median, and mode for condition B ppts

  mean = 8, median = 8, mode = 10
• what was calculated next

  measures of dispersion
• what was the range for condition A

  7
• what was the rang for condition B

  6
• what was the standard deviation for condition A

  2.14
• what was the standard deviation for condition B

  2.13
• what statistical test was used

  Mann Whitney U
• what was the calculated value for Ua (condition A)

  74
• what was the calculated value for Ub (condition B)

  81
• what was the critical value of the experiment

  38
• were the results significant, why

  no, our calculated values were greater then the critical value for a one tailed test at p≤0.05
• what hypothesis do we reject and which do we accept

  we reject the experimental hypothesis and accept the null hypothesis
• weaknesses of the experiment

  . mainly female sample = gender bias, can't generalise to wider population as not representative

  . all 16-17 year olds =can't generalise to wider population (people who are older), as memory may be different for older people

  . small sample = higher chance or errors in data, increases risks of type 1 and type 2 errors

  . lacks mundane realism - not an everyday task so can't be applied to memory in everyday scenarios,
• improvements


  . include equal split in gender

  . wider range of age

  larger sample