Classic Study - Baddeley (1966b)

What was the aim of Baddeley's experiment?

To see if encoding in the long term memory was acoustic or semantic

How many participants were given word lists?

75

What was list A?

Acoustically similar (cat, mat)

What was list B?

Acoustically dissimilar (day, cow)

What was list C?

Semantically similar (big, huge)

What was list D?

Semantically dissimilar (hot, safe)

What were the findings on the learning trials (STM)?

Recall of list A was consistently lower than control list B

What do the learning trials suggest?

The STM is acoustically encoded

What were the findings on the recall test after 20 minutes (LTM)?

No significant forgetting of words in list A bit there was in list B

What were the findings for lists C and D for both trials?

No significant difference between the two with both having significant forgetting

What was the conclusion?

LTM is acoustically encoded

Why did the conclusion not make sense?

Went against previous research so he reasoned that some aspect of the procedure was hiding the semantic nature of LTM encoding

Comment on the internal validity.

Good as word lists were matched against each other for word frequency in the English language

What's the competing argument for internal validity?

Procedure didn't rule out STM as an influence on LTM as participants could rehearse the words between tests

Comment on the external validity.

Poor as experiments were so tightly controlled that there was no resemblance to real life

Comment on the application.

Students studying for exams can be encouraged to revise by reorganising information to help process meaning of material to help match LTM encoding form

What could be an issue with the study?

this lab experiment demonstrates reductionism

What was the sample size?

75, but when split into conditions there were around 15 to 20 in each group

Describe the sample.

service men, e.g., from the army

Does the study have good reliability?

yes, a standardised procedure was used