Studies

Baddeley

• aimed to test the effect of word length on memory span. In the first experiment, researchers created lists of 4-8 words, half with short words and half with long words, presented in ascending order with a 1.5-second delay between words. Participants had 15 seconds to recall the words in order, continuing until they failed all eight sequences, which was thought to indicate working memory capacity. And in the seventh experiment the words were visually presented while participants either stayed silent or counted aloud. Results showed that in the first experiment, participants were able to recall more of both the shorter words and the shorter lists and in the seventh experiment, the silent group recalled more words than the articulation condition.

• Analysis:

  • A strength was there was a clear isolation of working memory components. Limited ecological validity. The experiment design was replicable. Use of a control group.

Bartlet

• aimed to investigate how memory of an unfamiliar story is affected by previous knowledge. Students at a university in Cambridge were told a Native American legend and then asked to rewrite the story from memory several times after a period of days, weeks and in some cases even months and years. Results showed that Participants changed the story in several different ways as they tried to remember it, by shortening it, and reconstructing it using more familiar words, and in a more logical order in an effort to make sense of it.

• Analysis:

  • Limitations were no control group of native americans and results could be more a function of memory processes as a whole than the role of schema in recall in particular.

Tversky and Kahneman

•  aimed to investigate how anchoring bias affects decision-making. Participants were asked to spin a rigged "wheel of fortune" that stopped at either 10 or 65, then estimate the percentage of African countries in the United Nations. Results showed that participants anchored their estimates to the number on the wheel, with those who spun 10 providing much lower estimates than those who spun 65. This demonstrated how irrelevant initial information (the anchor) can influence judgments.

• Analysis:

  • Highly replicable due to its controlled experimental design. ecological validity is low, as the artificial task of estimating African countries in the UN based on a random number does not reflect real-world decision-making contexts.

Loftus and Palmer

• aimed to investigate how the language used in questioning can affect memory recall. In their experiment, participants watched a video of a car accident and were then asked how fast the cars were going when they "smashed," "collided," "bumped," or "contacted" each other, with different verbs used in each condition. The results showed that participants who were asked with the more emotionally intense verb "smashed" reported higher speeds and were more likely to claim they saw broken glass, even though no glass was present in the video. This demonstrated that the wording of questions could influence participants' memories of an event, suggesting that memory is not a perfect recording of events but can be altered by external factors such as emotion and language.

• Analysis:

  • high in replicability due to its controlled experimental design. its ecological validity is limited because watching a video of a car accident in a lab does not replicate the emotional intensity or realism of witnessing an actual crash.