1. The Effects of Ink Color on the Accuracy of Recall Erika Douglas & James Giacomantonio

2. Introduction b Encoding specificity is a cognitive psychology paradigm. That essentially describes the relationship between encoding and retrieval. b It proposes that you are more accurate at recalling things when you are tested in the same environmental conditions in which you encoded the information

3. Introduction b An experiment by Godden and Baddeley (1975) showed encoding specificity when participants in two groups were asked to remember strings of numbers in two conditions in the water and on land. The results for both conditions were improved when the testing conditon matched the encoding condition

4. Introduction b We are trying to extend this paradigm to a reading comprehension task b The color of the text for the task is being manipulated. Control being black and two experimental groups green and red.

5. Introduction b Our hypothesis is that the score on the reading comprehension task will be greater for the control group then the experimental groups b The null hypothesis is that there will be no difference between the groups on the reading comprehension task

6. Method: Participants, Materials & Procedure b People from NS made up the population of study; a sample within this population consisting of friends, family, or others who can be easily contact were included. 16 males and 20 females were used. b This experiment consisted of 2 experimental groups, and one control group. There were 13 participants in the black group; 11 in the green group, and 12 in the red group, giving a total of 36 participants in all.

7. Method cont’d b We used a short narrative of 450 words. It was written in 3 different colors of ink: black, red, and green. The narrative was part of the GRE exam and contained information about zooplankton and phytoplankton, with different theories relating to each. b Participants were given a seried of multiple choice questions, and a few demographic questions. Their answers were compared to a scoring sheet and scored accordingly.

8. Method cont’d b Each participant was required to read the narrative. Participants in the control group read the narrative written in black ink; participants in the experimental groups read the narrative written in either green or red ink (the colors were distributed equally). b We expected that those in the experimental groups would be less accurate than those in the control group because of the effects of ink color on the accuracy of recall.

9. Method cont’d b After having read the narrative and completed the multiple choice task, the participants were fully debriefed and dismissed. b The results of the multiple choice task were then compared with the scoring sheet and the data was scored according to the accuracy of the participants results.

10. Results b Mean Score by Group:(out of 8) Black: 3.2308 Green: 3.3636 Red: 2.9167 b Mean Score by Gender: (out of 8) Male: 3.0000 Female: 3.3000 b F (1,35)=.283, p = >.05 There was no interaction between group and accuracy of recall because.755>.05

11. Results cont’d b F(1,35)=.377, p= >.05 There was no interaction between gender and accuracy of recall because.543>.05 b Although there are marginal differences between the mean scores by group and gender, we did not find significant results.

12. Discussion b Our results did not support our hypothesis that ink color would effect the accuracy of recall and that those in the experimental groups would be less accurate than those in the control group. b We could not reject the null hypothesis because there was insufficient evidence at.05 to conclude that ink color effects the accuracy of recall.

13. Discussion- suggestions for improvement b The mean score was only 3.13 out of 8, our test was probably too hard and hence we experienced floor effects. b There were only 8 questions, more questions could have lead to increased power b More standardized administration procedure would have lead to internal consistency

14. Discussion- suggestions for improvement b A pilot study would have told us these things and we could have made the correct alterations

15. Questions?