Outline and evaluate research into memory improvement strategies (12) Research has been carried out into find out whether context (the environment) can act as a cue for memory. Godden and Baddeley’s (1975) study investigated context of learning and recall. They gave deep sea divers lists of words to remember. Some learned them on the land the others under 15 feet (4. 5 metres) of water. Recall was best when the divers recalled the words in the same environment as they’d learned them. Showing that context (the environment) is acting as the cue.
This study can be criticised for having low population validity. This is because they had small samples who were all deep sea divers. Therefore it would be difficult to generalise the findings to the rest of the population. One strength of this study is that it can be easily replicated. This is because it was a lab experiment and so variables would have been controlled. This makes the study more reliable. Another memory improvement strategy is to recall the information in the same state as you learnt it in.
By state we mean mood or physical state can also act as a trigger for recall. Miles & Hardman (1998) investigated this. Participants had to learn information whilst exercising or resting and then recall that information either doing the same activity or the other activity. They found recall was worse when participants recalled the information in a different state to which they learnt it. This research can be criticised for lacking in ecological validity.
The Essay on Studying Information Systems
Studying Information Systems at undergraduate level involves looking at how information and communications technology can be used to achieve strategic goals. The focus is on the design, development, and implementation of cutting-edge solutions to solve important organizational problems. Information Systems research looks at both the technical and organizational aspects of information ...
This is because it required participants to cycle when learning information and it was in a lab setting and this isn’t very realistic. Therefore it would be difficult to generalise the findings to real life setting such as exam revision. However it is good because it was controlled, this is because in a lab experiment the researcher has control over the variables and so it is easier to see the effect of the IV on the DV. Another strategy is the story Method: this is a very effective form of verbal recall. It is used to remember a series of unrelated words in the correct order.
Bower and Clark (1969) gave Ps 12 lists of 10 nouns to recall and found that those that used the story method recalled 93% of the words (and in the right order) whereas those who simply tried to remember the words recalled only 13%. This shows that the story method improves memory recall. One weakness of this piece of research is it lacks ecological validity. This is because it not realistic to memorise lists of random words. Therefore it would be difficult to generalise the finding to real life settings.
