Lesson 5 Experiment write up

Diemand and yauman (2010) Instructions: Scientists have recently confirmed the existence of three life forms from the planet Blangantz that have actually settled on planet earth. Although the scientists have not yet released actual pictures of these creatures, they have released lists of basic characteristics and behaviors of these creatures to the public. Task: In a moment, you will be given the list of characteristics. You have 90 seconds to learn the information from these lists for later follow-up questions.

Results Lets analyse the results as a class for both conditions Mean Range

Findings Consider the following questions: What conclusions can we draw from the data? Do the results of our replication support Diemand-Yauman’s (2010) results?   why is it that one condition performed better than the other? Were there any problems with our replication (for example, did we control everything (uncontrolled extraneous variables)?

Findings A recent study by Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, and Vaughan (2010) manipulated the typeface of study material. Subjects were presented with a series of imaginary alien species and their various characteristics to memorize. Participants later remembered more information about aliens presented in disfluent typefaces than in fluent (i.e., more common) ones.

Why does this happen? Even though students weren’t aware of any differences, the disfluent font may have triggered additional processing strategies that led to higher performance in those conditions (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007). Think about it—when you read something in really small or difficult to read handwriting, you have to slow down and decipher every word. This type of purposeful, methodical processing could be the mechanism through which disfluency acts to improve memory. Disfluency may be a desirable difficulty if you are trying to learn something.

Research paper What sections do you think go in to a research paper? Select a research paper. List the different sections and what they cover in the research paper.

Introduction (10 mins) Previous research Give detail of previous research. Aim What was the aim of the research? What did you want to investigate? Hypothesis What is your hypothesis? This is a prediction about what results you think will occur. It will also provide details about what was manipulated (IV) and what was measured (DV)

Method (10 mins)   Design- State the experimental design (independent, repeated or matched pairs) State the independent variable (IV) and name the 2 conditions. Name the dependent variable (DV) and how exactly you measured it (operationalised). Identify any controls used, e.g. anything that was kept the same for all participants (standardised).

Results (10 mins) Simply describe the descriptive stats that you have found e.g. mean scores. You could write this in a table and include a graph.

Discussion (30 mins) Support for hypothesis? Do your findings support what you had predicted?   Conclusions What can you conclude about memory from these results? Limitations of study Where there any limitations to your study? Use strength and weaknesses notes. Improvements to study Suggest one way in which this study could be improved?

Next week Lesson 8: Cognitive approach in detail Lesson 9/10: Introduction to Memory