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Does organisation of information affect the amount of the information we can remember and successfully recall?

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Candidate number: XXX

Higher Level Psychology

Words: 1911

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Contents

1. Title Page

2. Contents

3. Abstract

4. Introduction

6. Method – Design

7. Method – Participants

8. Method – Materials

9. Method – Procedure

10. Results – Descriptive

11. Results – Inferential Statistics

12. Discussion

14. References

15. Appendix A – Consent form

16. Appendix B – Standardised Instructions

17. Appendix C – Organised Hierarchy

18. Appendix D – Disorganised Hierarchy

19. Appendix E – Debrief

20. Appendix F – Raw Data

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Abstract

We replicated an experiment conducted by Bower in 1969, to try and find similar results to support his conclusions. We investigated the effect of hierarchical organisation on memory using 16 16-18 year old Bexley Grammar School sixth form students. We proposed, like Bower, that those given the organised structure of words would recall more words correctly than those given an unorganised list of the same words.

We split the participants into two conditions, gave one condition an organised list of words (Appendix C) and gave the participants on the other condition the same words in a disorganised setup (Appendix D), they were given two minutes to remember the words and then instructed to count backwards from fifty out loud as a distracter task, and finally given a further two minutes to write down all the words they could remember.

Our results and statistical tests on our data (Appendix F) suggest to us that hierarchy has a positive effect on memory in that the participants recalled more words when given the hierarchy.

Our conclusion is that when given something in a hierarchy, we will remember more of it correctly than if it is presented to us in a random format.

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Introduction

Craik and Lockhart proposed the levels of processing theory in 1972, this theory suggests that the deeper we process something, the better we remember it, although it’s hard to define deep processing and explain how one type of processing is more deep than another, several studies have tried to demonstrate this theory. We wanted to investigate this theory further and relate it specifically to one thing, so we chose to investigate whether structural organisation, whereby words are organised in a clear and organised way in a hierarchy, has any relation to the effectiveness of memory. We looked at how Mandler (1967) attempted to demonstrate levels of processing using hierarchical organisation; he made the participants create their own categories (between 2 and 7). Those who put the words into 7 categories recalled more words accurately; this is because this relies on two types of memory, recall memory to remember the categories, and then the ability to link other words to the words previously recalled due to the structure. We decided that Bower et al (1969) would be a more appropriate study to replicate due to its consistency between all participants, so we gave them words in a hierarchy rather than asking them to create their own hierarchies. We wanted to investigate the usefulness of memory and how we can manipulate information in order for us to be able to remember more of the information and we wanted to investigate the conclusions made by Bower and Mandler ourselves.

Bower aimed to see how organisation affects memory, by comparing memory of an organised list of words, with the memory of an unorganised, random list of the same words by using 30 participants split randomly into two groups, 15 participants in each condition. Each participant was given a word list and another completely blank sheet. Participants were given standardised instructions from the researcher to ensure some control between the conditions, but they weren’t informed about the true purpose of the experiment to prevent any fixing of results from the participants.

The participants in both conditions did the same thing from this point onwards, they were given 2 minutes to memorise the list of words they had been given, and then they had to count backwards from 50 out loud, before writing the words down on the other sheet of paper.

The participants with the hierarchical structure remembered an average of 15 words, in comparison to the average of 13 remembered by those with the random order of words.

This study shows that how information is presented makes a difference to how memorable it is, and can therefore be used by educational facilities in order to make some things easier to learn.

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Hypotheses

H1 - Participants given the list of words in an organised hierarchical structure will recall more words correctly than the participants given the list of words in a random hierarchical structure.

H0- The change in conditions will have no significant effect on the number of words recalled correctly.

We have a one tailed hypothesis as we are saying that by giving a hierarchical structure there will be more words correctly recalled.

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Method

Design

For this experiment we used independent measures; this was to because we used the same words in each condition so participants would already have seen the words had we used repeated measures. Our independent variable was how the words were arranged, which differed for each condition, whereas the dependent variable is the number of words remembered correctly, for each word correctly remembered, we gave 1 point, and then added points together for each individual. The extraneous variables that we had to control were the ambient sound levels and the number of other people in the room; these were controlled by having both conditions taking part in the experiment in the same room at the same time. Participants in the experimental condition were given some words in an organised hierarchical structure (Appendix C), whereas participants in the control condition were given the same words but in a random hierarchical structure (Appendix D). All participants gave informed consent (Appendix A) beforehand which therefore included their right to withdraw, but they weren’t be told the complete aim of the experiment at that point, in order to make the results as realistic as possible, they were then debriefed afterwards (Appendix E), at that point, all participants were informed of the true aims of the experiment as well as anything we were unable to tell them before the experiment.

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Participants

11 male and 5 female Bexley Grammar school sixth form students were used, (Experimental condition had 6 males and 2 females and control condition had 5 males and 3 females). All participants were within the age range 16-18. Our target population is the sixth form students at Bexley Grammar School. We used a convenience sample; we used this type of sampling as we could only use people available at the time the experiment took place. Participants were randomly allocated into each condition by randomly giving people an envelope with one of the two different conditions therefore avoiding any inbuilt bias by selecting certain people for each condition.

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Materials

Consent form

(Appendix A)

Standardised Instructions

(Appendix B)

Organised Hierarchy of Words

(Appendix C)

Disorganised Hierarchy of Words

(Appendix D)

Debrief

(Appendix E)

Raw Data

(Appendix F)

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Procedure

We used the same stimulus material in the experimental condition (Appendix C) as used by Bower et al in their original experiment (mineral hierarchy), and then to create our control condition stimulus material (Appendix D) we put the same words as from the previous stimulus material into a hat and the order in which we pulled out the words was the order that they were put on the list, in the same structure as the organised stimulus material.

Each participant read and signed an informed consent form so they were aware of the rights they had after deciding to take part in this study.

We gave the participants an envelope each and read out the standardised instructions in stages. Firstly we told them that they had two minutes in which to remember these words, in silence.

We removed the word lists from the participants after the allotted time and asked them to count backwards from fifty out loud.

We then gave the participants another sheet of paper and once they had reached zero, the participants were given a further two minutes to recall as many words as they could, again in silence.

We collected in their answer sheets and gave each of the participants a copy of the debrief (Appendix E) so that we adhered to all ethical considerations.

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Number of

correctly

remembered

words

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Results

Descriptive Results (Raw data and calculations in Appendix F)

Some words could potentially be more memorable than others for each individual in the experiment; therefore we can’t treat it as ratio data, and so must treat it as ordinal. As a result of our data being ordinal, measures of central tendency and dispersion most suitable are median and range respectively.

A table to show: the number of participants; measure of central tendency and measure of dispersion in each condition.

Number of Participants in each condition

Median Range

Organised Hierarchy 8 18.5 6

Random Hierarchy 8 11 5

Units measured are the number of words measured correctly (1 word measured correctly = 1 point)

A graph to show median number of correctly remembered words and the range of these values for each condition.

Organised Hierarchy

In the

organised hierarchy, participants recalled more words correctly (median of 18.5 compared to 11 in control condition or unorganised hierarchy) and the dispersion was fairly similar in each (range of 6 in experimental condition and 5 in control condition).

Inferential Statistics

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Median Range Median Range0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

2018.5

6

11

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Because our data are ordinal and our design is unrelated, the appropriate statistical test to identify significance is the Mann-Whitney U test. In order for our result to be classed as significant, either our UA or UB values must be less than the critical value, which is 13 for two groups of 8 participants. One of our U values was 0, meaning that we can state that the difference is significant and we can reject our null hypothesis and therefore accept our experimental hypothesis.

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Discussion

We were aiming to find a difference between the numbers of words recalled when participants were given an organised hierarchical structure (Appendix C) compared to when participants were given a random hierarchical structure (Appendix D).

Our experimental hypothesis stated that participants given a list of words in a clear organised fashion would recall more words than if participants were given the same words in an unorganised way. This was also concluded by Mandler (1967) who investigated organisation, like Bower et al (1969) but a slightly different aspect of it. This idea is based on the levels of processing theory proposed by Craik and Lockhart in 1972 due to the fact that by placing the words in a structural way, we would have to process them more by linking them and creating mental links between each of them, and thus, by doing this, they become encoded into our memory. Our results show clearly that the median of the experimental condition (18.5) was greater than that of the control condition (11) suggesting validity of our results and also the ranges of both conditions (6 and 5 respectively) are fairly low and also very similar, therefore the comparison of the two samples is fair because the low range is means the median is representative of the sample. The Mann Whitney U test confirmed the significance of our results at greater than 95% therefore we can reject our null hypothesis and hence accept our experimental hypothesis.

The majority of participants in the experimental condition recalled the words in the same format as it was presented to them (i.e. in the hierarchy), whereas no participants from the control condition did this, therefore supporting Bower’s claim that the hierarchy would be used as a cue for retrieval.

We had two main weaknesses, the first being that memory techniques such as those demonstrated in this task, using cues, is common among a highly examined population, such was that from which our sample was taken. This means that we have findings which are only relevant and generalisable to this specific group of people.

The second weakness is that all participants were A level students, which means it wasn’t representative of the entire target population and therefore the results aren’t generalisable to all Bexley Grammar School sixth from students, the next time this experiment is repeated a stratified sample should be taken to ensure people of all types in population are represented.

Another important thing to note is that the success of this experiment depends on how well the participants understand the categories in the hierarchy, because if they don’t understand one of the headings, it won’t act as a cue for other words.

Our results were significant due to the way we controlled our experiment and the fact we made sure the participants were unaware that there were two conditions. In the future, research should be done to investigate whether there is a difference between cultures in terms of utilising the hierarchy, whether students from a different type of school would react differently

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to the hierarchy and more generally, whether some types of people are affected differently by the hierarchy and why.

To conclude, our experiment went particularly well, so our results support previous findings from Bower, therefore we can suggest that Bower’s explanation is acceptable.

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References

Bower, G.H., Clark, M.C., Lesgold, A.M. & Winzenz, D. (1969). Hierarchical Retrieval Schemes in Recall of Categorized Word Lists. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 8, p. 323 - 343.

MANDLER, G. Organization and memory. In K. W. Spence and J. T. Spence (Eds.) The psychology of learning and motivation, Vol. 1. New York: Academic Press, 1967.

CRAIK, F. I. M., & LOCKHART, R. S. Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972, 11, 671-684.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Participant information sheet and consent form

Why do this study?

We are interested in how good the memory is of year 12 students, participation in this study will be helping psychology students from your school conduct an experiment measuring the power of year 12’s memory.

What will participation involve?

The research, as mentioned above, will involve a short memory task.

How long will participation take?

The process will take approximately 20 minutes.

As an informed participant of this experiment, I understand that:

1) My participation is voluntary and I may cease to take part in this experiment at any time without penalty.

2) I am aware of what my participation involves.3) There are no risks involved in the participation of this study. 4) All my questions about the study have been satisfactorily answered.

I have read and understood the above, and give my consent to participate:

Participants Signature: _________________ Date: ___________

I have explained the above and answered all questions asked by the participant:

Researcher’s Signature: ________________ Date: ____________

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Appendix B

Standardised Instructions

1. Today we will be doing an experiment to see how counting can have an effect on our memory.

2. Firstly, in each of these envelopes there are some words that we want you to attempt to remember, and you now have 2 minutes to do so.

3. Now we want you to count backwards slowly from 50 out loud altogether at a steady pace.

4. Now we need you to write as many words as you can recall as possible on the blank pieces of paper provided and you have 5 minutes to do so.

5. That’s the end of the experiment; we would like to thank you for your co-operation during this study.

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Appendix C

Organised Hierarchy

Minerals

Metals Stones

Rare Common Alloys Precious Masonry

Platinum Aluminium Bronze Sapphire Limestone

Silver Copper Steel Emerald Granite

Gold Lead Brass Diamond Marble

Iron Ruby Slate

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Appendix D

Disorganised Hierarchy

Emerald

Precious Sapphire

Aluminium Copper Bronze Common Platinum

Lead Alloys Gold Slate Brass

Minerals Iron Diamond Rare Marble

Limestone Granite Stones Masonry Ruby

Steel Silver Metals

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Appendix E

Debrief

Thank you for participating in our experiment. We were attempting to replicate a study conducted by Gordon Bower, Michal Clark, Alan Lesgold and David Winzenz. This study was done to investigate the effect of organisation, in particular on memory. The participants were split into two groups for the two conditions used. Half of the participants were given a list of words in a random order, the other half were issued with a list of the same words but in a structured way, specifically in a hierarchy. The reason for the counting out loud backwards from 50 was in order to eliminate the possibility of memorising the word list by repeating it in your head. Bower concluded, and therefore, we expected that those remembering the words from the hierarchy will have correctly remembered more of the words than those remembering the words from the randomly ordered list. Thank you again for your participation and your time.

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Appendix F

Raw data

Control Condition

9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 13, 14

Experimental Condition

15, 17, 18, 18, 19, 19, 20, 21

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