2. In a moment, you will be shown a number of word
pairs one at a time e.g.
bear - book
Try to memorise the word pairs by forming
a sentence that contains both words, e.g.
The bear ate the book.
Press the [ENTER] key when you wish to proceed.
3. To test how well you have remembered the words
you will be presented with the first word of a pair
and will have to try and recall the matching word.
For example, if presented with
bear
the correct response would be
book
To record your recall, you will need to write the
word down on a piece of paper - so make sure you
have pen and paper ready now.
Press the [ENTER] key when you wish to proceed.
4. The word pairs follow……...The word pairs follow……...
Hit [ENTER] when you are ready to beginHit [ENTER] when you are ready to begin
The presentation of the word pairs is thenThe presentation of the word pairs is then
automaticautomatic
35. End of word pairs
Now write down the number
4796598
at the top of a piece of paper. Subtract ‘7’ from this
number and write down the answer. Now subtract
‘7’ again and keep doing this for one minute……
Press the [ENTER] key when one minute is up.
36. You will now be shown the first
word of each pair and you
should try and write down the
other word of that pair.
Press the [ENTER] key when you are ready to
proceed
The presentation of the word pairs is then
automatic
General notes on running the presentation:
To move from one slide to the next, press the ‘Return’ key. This applies to all slides, except those used to present the stimulus material. In this case, the slides will automatically advance. Likewise, the interval before recall will be timed, as will the time allowed for recall.
You can step back or forward through the slides using the ‘arrow’ keys on the keyboard.
Background:
The demonstration looks at whether the use of mnemonic strategies (discussed in ‘Mapping Psychology, Ch 8) can affect the recall of simple words. The precise strategies used in this demo are drawn from a study by Park, Smith and Cavanaugh (1990 (PSC). PSC looked at the favoured strategies used by ‘memory psychologists, ‘other psychologists’, and ‘nonpsychologists’. They asked these people to rate how likely they were to use a particular strategy. Formal mnemonic strategies such as peg-words and method-of-loci were very rarely used by any group. Three techniques have been chosen to provide three cnditions in the demonstration and generate data for an ANOVA
Reference
Park, D. C., Smith, A. D., & Cavanaugh, J. C. (1990). Metamemories of memory researchers. Memory and Cognition, 18(3), 321-327.
The words have been drawn from Paivio, Yuille and Madigan (1968) and were selected as being relatively common words (>20 occurrences per million words) and also (given the type of mnemonics used) rated highly for imagery (rated at >6 on a 7-point scale).
No attempt has been made to select for a certain number of syllables or the like, as this will balance out across conditions anyway.
Just hit ‘Return’ and the pesentation will automatically present all the word pairs - each one for 5 seconds. The rationale for the 5 second presentation is that (hopefully!) it will give students just long enough to try out their strategies but not so long that they get bored and spontaneously swithc to a different strategy. It should be just enough time to make up sentences etc. If it’s not for some people then this is another issue for discussion!
There will then be a timed one minute interval, and then the first word of each pair will be presented. Students have to try and write down the corresponding word of that pair.
Reference
Paivio, A., Yuille, J. C., & Madigan, S. A. (1968). Concreteness, imagery, and meaningfulness values for 925 nouns. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monograph Supplement, 76(1), 1-25.
The format of the slide has been changed to simple balck on white. You could discuss with students whether the format is likely to make any difference. For instance, does it make a difference how like ‘standard’ text this presentation is. It probably makes little difference (it will be the same across all three conditions) but is something else to think about when designing an experiment!
Be interesting to see if anybody recalls ‘car’.
Although most of the words were chosen pseudo randomly, there is an interesting string of possibly related words here (university, student, brain) that might give some interesting effects.
Of course, it might be fun to have everybody doing it out loud. That should distract them! But perhaps more peaceful if they keep the numbers to themselves.
This task is designed to load the ‘central executive’ of working memory (maybe!) according to Logie, Gilhooly and Wynn (1994)
Reference
Logie, R. H., Gilhooly, K. J., & Wynn, V. (1994). Counting on working memory in arithmetic problem solving. Memory and Cognition, 22, 395-410.
The timings of the presentations of the words are again automatic (6 seconds per word) once you hit return. This is to ensure that students have the same amount of time to attempt to recall each word pair. Not that it matters too much as it should be the same across conditions anyway. Slightly longer to recall than the participants were given to memorise - this is to give them time to write the stuff down! You can still go back up the presentation using the arrow keys if you need to.
N.B. If you do ‘backspace’ using the arrow keys, you will need to hit ‘return’ (or the down arrow) to get on to the next slide - when the automatic timing will take over again.
Although most of the words were chosen pseudo randomly, there is an interesting string of possibly related words here (university, student, brain) that might give some interesting effects.
All phrases are now presented again for scoring. Manual advance as the precise timing is not important here.
Although most of the words were chosen pseudo randomly, there is an interesting string of possibly related words here (university, student, brain) that might give some interesting effects.
Although most of the words were chosen pseudo randomly, there is an interesting string of possibly related words here (university, student, brain) that might give some interesting effects.
Although the main purpose of this demo is to provide data for the SPSS analysis, it’s worth discussing the results. There is plenty that can be done after the analysis when you know whether there are any significant differences between conditions. You can still do a bit here though looking at more qualitative aspects of the results. Did people make any particular errors? Were the types of errors different across different conditions, or always associated with particular word pairs?
It’s worth emphasising again that none of the techniques used here seem particular popular in ‘real life’ (issues of ecological validity). People seem to prefer to write stuff down. Not surprising. Who wants to spend time and effort memorising ‘Frog - Salad’?!
Now onto SPSS………..