What is the best environment to study in?

Write down the list of your classmates in year 6 Memory task! Write down the list of your classmates in year 6

Context dependent memory effect occurs when the memory of the to-be remembered information is better when tested in the same context in which the material was learned

Recall and recognition are different things What is the easier question 1. How many people are in the sample for experiment w of Loftus and Palmer? 2. How many people are in the sample for experiment 2 of Loftus and Palmer 50 100 150 Which is testing recall and which is testing recognition? Why is reading the textbook a bad revision strategy?

Context dependent memory The context-dependent memory effect occurs when the memory of the to-be-remembered information is better when tested in the same context in which the material was learned (the matching condition) than when tested in a different context (the mismatching condition) Where would be the best place to revise? However context dependency memory doesn’t always occur…..

“Do you recognise xxx from this list…” “can you remember…?” Context dependency Context cues Recall! “Do you recognise xxx from this list…” Context cues Recognition! Outshining hypothesis

Salience = meaningfulness Context dependency words Recall! Context cues Non words No context dependency No recall! Context cues

Grant et al

Aim To investigate context dependent memory effects on both recall and recognition

Method Controls IV Lab experiment Independent group design

Why were both of these included? Method The independent variables (IVs) were: (i) whether the participant read the two page article under silent or noisy conditions (ii) whether the participant was tested under matching or mismatching conditions Matching Silent study Silent study Noisy study Noisy study Why were both of these included? Non - Matching Silent study Noisy study Noisy study Silent study

Which is measuring recall and which recognition? Dependent variable The dependent variable (DV) was the participants performance on: (a) a short-answer test of 10 Qs (b) a multiple-choice recall test of 16 Qs. Which is measuring recall and which recognition?

Sample 39 participants aged 17 to 56 years (M = 23.4) 17 females 23 males (1 participant’s results were omitted from the analyses.) An opportunity sample recruited by eight psychology students who served as experimenters. Each experimenter recruited five acquaintances who would be participants Randomly allocated to conditions

Procedure Think! Controls? Standardized instructions were given and emphasised that their participation was voluntary Ppts were asked to read the article once, highlighting and underlining if they want. All ppts wore headphones while they read. Silent condition: told they wouldn't hear anything. Noisy condition: told they'd hear moderately loud background noise, but to ignore it. Reading times were recorded by the experimenters. They had a 2 min break The short-answer test was given, followed by the multiple-choice test, (either in silent or noisy conditions depending on which condition ppts were in). Always in this order Participants were debriefed The entire procedure lasted about 30 minutes Think! Controls?

Materials Think! Controls? Cassette player and headphones. Cassettes were of background noise recorded during lunchtime in a university cafeteria. It included general conversational hum, occasional distinct words/phrases movement of chairs and dishes, played at a moderately loud level. The to-be-remembered material: a two-page article on psychoimmunology, unfamiliar to ppts 16 multiple-choice questions (four alternatives) 10 short-answer questions producing single word or phrase answers. Salience?

Controls What were the controls?

1. In your words describe the results Participants in all groups spent roughly equal amounts of time reading the material.

2. What could you conclude? Refer to your aims Results 2. What could you conclude? Refer to your aims

Conclusion There are context-dependency effects for newly learned meaningful material - Studying and testing in the same environment leads to enhanced performance. There was no overall effect of noise on performance.   However students are likely to perform better in exams if they study in a quiet environment because the evidence for context-dependency suggests they are better off studying without background noise as it will not be present during actual testing.

Hummm Why the difference to previous research? There is other research to back this up (Martin and Aggleton see page 60) Dalton: work for unfamiliar faces but not familiar Maybe only works for newly learned material