Classic Study: Baddeley (1966b)

Classic Study: Baddeley (1966b)

1. Generalisability

   • The results lack generalisability as the groups were small and may have contained individual differences due to the independent measures design.
     • 72x participants overall
     • Group A: 15x participants
     • Group B: 20x participants
     • Group C: 16x participants
     • Group D: 21x participants

2. Reliability

   • As the experiment was a lab study, it was well controlled. This makes it replicable and therefore increases the reliability of the results.
     • Each group was asked to listen to the word list allocated to their group which was read out at a rate of 1 word per 3 seconds. They then recalled the list, in order, and read out a string of numbers 6 times. This process was then repeated 4 times. Participants then wrote out numbers as a distraction task, and were then surprised with another recall.

3. Application

   • Can help with real life situations such as revision, as it suggests the best techniques to encode information would be by using semantics - colour, images - so revision could be based around these techniques.
     • Found that in the semantic lists, there was a higher percentage of correct recall in the semantically dissimilar group, suggesting that the LTM encodes semantically (there was also a higher difference between the semantic list results than the acoustic list results which backs up this conclusion further).

4. Validity

   • Objective measures were taken which makes the results more valid (quantitative data)
   • The results may have low ecological validity as the study took place in a lab and therefore results may not reflect real life behaviours.

5. Ethics

   • There were not many ethical implications for this study, as the task that participants were carrying was relatively low stress.