Grant et al (1998) - Study on the Effect of Silent or Noisy and Exam Environments

What is the aim of this study?

To test the effect of noise (context) on the studying and retrieval of material in an academic context

What is the experimental design?

Independent measures

What was the experiment type?

Lab experiment

What was the IV?

Study condition (silent/noisy), test condition (matching/mismatching)

What was the DV?

Performance on test

What was the method?

Participants sorted into 4 groups, each with a different pairs of conditions.

Participants studied material and were later tested, either in a silent or noisy condition for both studying and testing

What was controlled in the experiment?

• background noise recorded in uni cafeteria (no full words or sentences audible)

• noise played at moderately loud level

• participant’s wore their own pair of headphones and tape player

• material learnt was a 2-page article on psycho-immunology

• tested using 16 multiple-choice questions and 10 short-answer questions

• all participants wore headphones

• 2 mins between reading and answering

Who were the participants?

8 experimenters each recruited 5 participants (opportunity sampling)

Final sample of 39, aged 17-56 (17 females, 23 males)

What are some results?

Silent environment for study and short answer test: 6.7/10

Noisy environment for study and silent for short answer test: 5.4/10

What conclusions can we make?

Studying and testing in the same environment leads to enhanced performance

The study shows there are context dependent affacts for newly learned information