Word Length Effect - Keisuke Fukuda PDF

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Keisuke Fukuda...

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PSY270 Sabina Iqbal Word Length Effect This experiment observed whether rehearsal time impacts working memory as opposed to set size. To test this, participants were given 27 sets of words to recall in sequence. Each set was represented by words that contained 1-4 syllables. The number of syllables (1-4) per set was the independent variable. The dependent variable was the proportion of correct answers. Answers were deemed incorrect if words were recalled out of order, as well as too many or too few. Moreover, set size and word exposure time was maintained across the entire experiment. If rehearsal time impacts word recall, then one would predict that sets with longer words (more syllables) would result in less correct answers than sets with shorter words (less syllables).

Figure 1: The global results of word length effect experiment. This figure depicts proportion of correct answers given per set worth length (syllables)

Figure 2: My individual result of word length effect experiment. This figure depicts proportion of correct answers given per set worth length (syllables)

PSY270 Sabina Iqbal

The results shown in Figure 1 reflect the predictions for this experiment; the proportion of correct answers decreased as the number of syllables in a word list increased. The overall results support the hypothesis that rehearsal time impacts working memory as opposed to set size. The experiment mentioned that individual results can differ from the global data, as evident in Figure 2. My personal results did not support the hypothesis, nor the aforementioned trend. The proportion of correct answers decreased considerably from 1 syllable words to 2 syllable words, but then continued to increase until 4 syllable words. Jalbert et al (2011) recently found that instead of working memory being dependent on word length, it was more dependent on orthographic neighbourhood size between words in a set. An orthographic neighbourhood size is defined as a set of words that differ from one root word by only one letter while retaining all other letter positions (Coltheart, Davelaar, Jonasson & Besner, 1977). Jalbert and his team found that words from large neighbourhoods (more difference) were recalled better than words from small neighbourhoods. This finding extended towards various word lengths, thus casting doubt upon this experiment’s hypothesis. References Coltheart M, Davelaar E, Jonasson JE, Besner D. Access to the internal lexicon. In: Dornio S, editor. Attention and performance. VI. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1977. pp. 535–555. Jalbert, A., Neath, I., Bireta, T. J., Surprenant, A. M., Jalbert, A., Neath, I., . . . Surprenant, A. M. (2011). When does length cause the word length effect? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(2), 338-353...