CLoA Outcome Link: Discuss how social or cultural factors affect one cognitive process (environment on memory)
The experiment my partner and I will be conducting has a very similar procedure to that of the one conducted in Evergreen Valley College. Here is a link http://evc-cit.info/psych018/imaginary6703.pdf
As mentioned before, the differing environments- one in silence and one with background noise, will be the independent variable. The dependent variable is the amount of words remembered. I believe the method is very valid. However, like all other studies, they are reductionist, and there can be numerous confounding variables that may (and most likely will) affect the results of the experiment. Nevertheless, the change in independent variable directly relates to the outcome of the dependent variable, ceteris paribus. The experiment is also very applicable to everyday life, especially in schools, where memory retention, or in other words- learning, is essential to the upbringing of a student. By understanding what learning environment is most suitable for memory encoding/retention, schools could make use of this information to boost their students' knowledge and grades. Because the experiment was only a very small sample size compared to the world, it could not be generalized, especially when taking into account that different cultures could affect people differently, thus leading to the experiment only generalizable to the small city or country- in this case: California. Anyhow, the experiment did target what it wanted to find out, whether the participants would remember more information in silence, or with background noise. So, perhaps that is all there is, that the specific participants chosen for this experiment supported the idea that encoding in silence/noise is the most effective, but only for those particular participants.
The experiment my partner and I will be conducting has a very similar procedure to that of the one conducted in Evergreen Valley College. Here is a link http://evc-cit.info/psych018/imaginary6703.pdf
As mentioned before, the differing environments- one in silence and one with background noise, will be the independent variable. The dependent variable is the amount of words remembered. I believe the method is very valid. However, like all other studies, they are reductionist, and there can be numerous confounding variables that may (and most likely will) affect the results of the experiment. Nevertheless, the change in independent variable directly relates to the outcome of the dependent variable, ceteris paribus. The experiment is also very applicable to everyday life, especially in schools, where memory retention, or in other words- learning, is essential to the upbringing of a student. By understanding what learning environment is most suitable for memory encoding/retention, schools could make use of this information to boost their students' knowledge and grades. Because the experiment was only a very small sample size compared to the world, it could not be generalized, especially when taking into account that different cultures could affect people differently, thus leading to the experiment only generalizable to the small city or country- in this case: California. Anyhow, the experiment did target what it wanted to find out, whether the participants would remember more information in silence, or with background noise. So, perhaps that is all there is, that the specific participants chosen for this experiment supported the idea that encoding in silence/noise is the most effective, but only for those particular participants.