Psychology 2020L – Lab 2: Performance in a Recall Task

Due: Mar. 13(A2&B2) & Mar. 15(C2)

University students are constantly faced with the task of writing exams. They have to study material and then recall this information on exams. But does the nature of the information influence how easily it is recalled? In this study, we manipulated the concreteness of the words. More specifically, half of the lists contained words that were very easy to image mentally (e.g., BOAT) and we call such items concrete items or words. The other half of the list contained words that were difficult to image mentally (e.g., REASON) and we call these items abstract items or words. The effect of concreteness on recall has also been of particular interest to researchers and it has been widely demonstrated that the concreteness of a word has an effect on recall. However, the concreteness of the words is not the only factor that can influence recall. Delay between study and test has also been shown to affect recall performance. However, does the effect of concreteness vary depending on whether or not there is a delay between study and test?

In this lab, we are going to determine if the concreteness effect varies depending on whether there is a delay between study and test. Several members from the class participated in this experiment. Equal numbers of participants (or as close as possible) were assigned to each of four conditions. All of this information will now be entered into SPSS and you and your partner will conduct a 2x2 between-subjects ANOVA on the data. Be sure to think about your hypotheses BEFORE you conduct your analyses.

After you have analysed the data, you and your partner must complete a full APA write up of the experiment. You will be required to include a Title Page, Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, and Reference section. You must include the SPSS printouts in an Appendix. Also, please provide a bar graph that illustrates the data for the four conditions. The bar graph should include error bars.

For the introduction you need a minimum of 3 articles to serve as background for your lab. Remember to state your hypotheses. For the method section, remember to note who are participants were and the nature of the sample, how they were assigned to groups, and describe both the materials we used and the procedure that we followed for the experiment. Remember to report important details that other experimenters would need to know to replicate our experiment. For the results, indicate the findings and report the statistics in proper APA format. For the discussion section, do not forget to discuss all five important aspects that should be covered in the discussion. Don’t forget to cite your references in an APA style reference page. Finally, make sure that you include the bar graph as a Figure (i.e., DO NOT put it in the Appendix).