Contextual Encoding Experiment PDF

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Dr. Chun...

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Psychology 100 Dr. Chun December 6th, 2017

Contextual Encoding Experiment Introduction The psychological phenomenon being studied here is memory encoding. Memory encoding is defined as forming associations to be able to use retrieval cues to remember information later. Attention and context affect encoding by changing what someone remembers. I hypothesized that subjects, the dependent variable, will only see objects, the independent variable, related to the condition they were assigned to. Subjects from the Costume Ball and Circus Act Conditions will each see four objects.

Method I had eight subjects. Four were male and four were female. Four were Caucasian, two were Black, one was Hispanic, and one was Asian. The average age of my subject was 51. I randomly assigned my participants to groups by flipping a coin. If it was heads, they were assigned to the Circus Act condition, if it was tails, they were assigned to the Costume Ball condition. Four were assigned to each group, so the eighth participant was assigned to the Circus Act condition, where there was space. To complete this experiment, I showed the participants the same picture for three seconds, but told half of them it was a Circus Act and the other half a Costume Ball. I then asked them if they saw certain objects in the picture.

Results Regardless of which group a subject was assigned to, they saw objects from both the Circus Act and Costume Ball categories. Participants from both groups saw the seal, the ball, the woman, the handkerchief, the sword, the whip, the fish, and the hat. For the Circus Act condition, the average number of circus words seen was 2.5 and the average number of costume words seen was 1.5. For the Costume Ball Condition, the average number of circus words seen was 1.25 and the average number of costume words seen was 2.

Discussion My hypothesis was not supported, subjects saw objects from both conditions, and less than four. Attention and context affected my results by affecting the objects the subjects could see and remember. The subjects used previously stored information to answer the questions. A limitation of this study is that the experiment was performed on only eight people, a relatively small number for a psychological study. If the experiment was performed on more people, the data pool from which to draw would be larger, so the results would be more accurate. Another limitation is that the subjects might not be truthful when stating which objects they saw in the picture. A way to overcome this would be to ask the subjects very quickly so they don’t have much time to think about it....