CLoA Outcome Link: Discuss how social or cultural factors affect one cognitive process (environment on memory)
As I proceed into my Internal Assessment, I have read a variety of articles regarding the effect of music/white noise/ or even the effect of silence- on memory encoding. I believe these studies could bring insights into what type of studying environment best suits people. Perhaps the inconclusiveness of studies may even suggest that there is no specific type of environment for specific people. One particular study I am planning to replicate is the one conducted by the Evergreen Valley College- titled "Effects of Background Noise on Memory Recall". This study although very brief and simple, is highly appropriate for the purpose of the IA.
Basically, 30 males and 30 females were chosen from the campus- aged 20-24. The participants were randomly assigned into 3 conditions- an encoding session filled with cafeteria background noise, classical music, and just silence. These participants were given 30 flashcards with random words to encode in a period of 4 minutes. Afterwards, they were told to write down anything they remembered in 1 minute (free-recall).
This study only explores one dependent variable and is unlike other convoluted ones which involve variables like children with attention deficit disorders, along with multiple independent and dependent variables. As such, I have decided to use this as my replicated study. There is debate over the generalizability of the study, because like most psychology students should know, people from different cultures act a different way, and every individual on earth is unique. However, since the experiment is targeting cognitive processes, it is fair to say that the human race is quite close in terms of evolution. The cognitive processes should be more or less the same. As such, memory retention/encoding is most likely going to run universal. Therefore, even though the sample size is minute compared to the population of the earth, it is generalizable. In terms of applicability, I do not have to tell you that people who remember more are going to succeed compared to those who can't remember anything.
To conclude, believe a silent environment works best for me as it let's me concentrate, without any distractions. However, I also believe that people have different ways of encoding information into their memories and I would like to see how our school's students do in this experiment.
http://evc-cit.info/psych018/imaginary6703.pdf
As I proceed into my Internal Assessment, I have read a variety of articles regarding the effect of music/white noise/ or even the effect of silence- on memory encoding. I believe these studies could bring insights into what type of studying environment best suits people. Perhaps the inconclusiveness of studies may even suggest that there is no specific type of environment for specific people. One particular study I am planning to replicate is the one conducted by the Evergreen Valley College- titled "Effects of Background Noise on Memory Recall". This study although very brief and simple, is highly appropriate for the purpose of the IA.
Basically, 30 males and 30 females were chosen from the campus- aged 20-24. The participants were randomly assigned into 3 conditions- an encoding session filled with cafeteria background noise, classical music, and just silence. These participants were given 30 flashcards with random words to encode in a period of 4 minutes. Afterwards, they were told to write down anything they remembered in 1 minute (free-recall).
This study only explores one dependent variable and is unlike other convoluted ones which involve variables like children with attention deficit disorders, along with multiple independent and dependent variables. As such, I have decided to use this as my replicated study. There is debate over the generalizability of the study, because like most psychology students should know, people from different cultures act a different way, and every individual on earth is unique. However, since the experiment is targeting cognitive processes, it is fair to say that the human race is quite close in terms of evolution. The cognitive processes should be more or less the same. As such, memory retention/encoding is most likely going to run universal. Therefore, even though the sample size is minute compared to the population of the earth, it is generalizable. In terms of applicability, I do not have to tell you that people who remember more are going to succeed compared to those who can't remember anything.
To conclude, believe a silent environment works best for me as it let's me concentrate, without any distractions. However, I also believe that people have different ways of encoding information into their memories and I would like to see how our school's students do in this experiment.
http://evc-cit.info/psych018/imaginary6703.pdf