Baddeley

• CLASSIC STUDY:Baddeley 1966 aim


  To investigate the influence of semantic and acoustic word similarity on learning and recall in LTM
• Baddeley 1966 sample

  Participants were men and women from Cambridge university that involved independent groups design
• Baddeley 1966 findings:

  • Acoustically similar words were confusing at first but didnt effect LTM recall
  • Participants in list 3- the semantically similar condition, struggled to maintain the list of words in their LTM
• What did class study Baddeley conclude ?

  The learning of word sequences is impaired by semantic similarity, LTM is based on semantic encoding so you therefore need understand information to enter your LTM.

  Semantically similar words are difficult to recall as they mean the same thing
• Baddeley 1966: Genersalisability


  Results from are from laboratory study which makes it difficult to generalise as the number of participants is small and they were an opportunity sample which does not represent target population

  • ethnocentric
• Baddeley 1966: reliability

  The procedure was highly standardised as everyone saw the same words and therefore replicable- scientific
• Baddeley 1966: application

  The study has helped us to understand the kind of encoding used in STM and LTM ( in the working memory model) but it is limited in its usefulness because it lacks ecological and population validity. Also can be applied to revision as it means effective revison can be done when making semantic links
• Baddeley 1966: Validity

  Has high levels of experimental control results in internal validity as he asked participants to recall word order, reducing the risk that some words would be hard to recall because they were unfamiliar

  Does lack mundane realism and therefore the study lacks ecological validity which thus limits the usefulness for application
• Baddeley 1966 procedure:

  • split into 4 groups and a word list presented by slide projector- one every 3 seconds
  • Acoustically similar condition- participants were given a list of words that sound similar such as man, cab,can and CONTROL group were given words with no similar sound
  • Semantically similar condition- words shared similar meaning such as large,big and great and CONTROL group were given words that are unconnected
  • carried this out four times
  • carried out an interference test for 20 minutes
  • given another unrelated task at end - unexpected