Organized and Unorganized Lists - Research Proposal Example

HOW ORGANIZED LISTS ARE MORE READILY MEMORIZED COMPARED WITH UNORGANIZED LISTS. Abstract This study looks at how memory works concerning word lists and whether or not the organization of words has any effect on the cognitive process. Bousfield et al (1958) set the foundation for much of the study of how people memorize things such as word lists. For this experiment, a t-test was used consisting of two sets of lists. An ordered list served as the independent variable and the dependant variable was the number of words successfully memorized. A group of college level students (N=20) from ages 17- 48 was chosen at random. Those chosen were each given a list of unorganized words to remember and one week later, the same group received a list of organized words to memorize. The hypothesis was that the participants would recall more of the words from the organized list than from the unorganized list. The t-test was carried out and shown to be significant at p Read More

The study may seem simple and clear cut at this point, but there are people who have made claims that there are more factors that are being ignored in these studies. One such claim for example, is that by grouping words together in categories can lead to false recognition. (Dewhurst & Robinson, 2004) In their study, children were given lists of words and were asked to memorized them. Often the children would remember a word that was actually not on the list which shows how sometimes results can be skewed.

Most critical to this report are the studies of Bower et al. (1969). Bower found that by grouping the words on the list into predetermined categories that recollection of these words would increase 2 or 3 times over. Categories, for example could be colours such as red, green, and blue, or writing tools such as pen, paper, pencil. Bousfield et al (1958) conducted a similar study more than ten years previously. Bousfiled too studied the associative clustering of words and saw that more words could be memorized when they were grouped together.

The study used word groups such as animals for example, which contains words like dog, cat, and horse. Similar results were discovered by Broadbent, Cooper and Broadbent (1978) when they used organized and unorganized word lists in a similar experiment, and found better performance when information was organized and given order as opposed to information that is simply presented with no scheme in mind. It was suggested in the results of their findings that the improved recall of those with the ordered lists comes from a control of memory retrieval as opposed to the first perception and understanding of the meaning of the words, and the process of changing this understanding into meaning.

This experiment sought to discover firsthand whether or not subjects chosen at random do indeed memorize words more readily when they are first categorized into groups, or simply chosen at random by comparing the memorization of words in a pre-organized list with the same words in a randomized list. The controls used for both the variable group and the control group were exactly the same so as to provide consistent and accurate results. The use of the organized word-list was predicted to have an effect on recall accuracy compared with that achieved using randomized word lists.

The hypothesis is that the participants will indeed retain more of the words in their memory from the organized groups of words than in the unorganized lists. Method Design The study used a t-test which was a test of differences within participants. The independent variable (IV) of interest was a list of 20 words with two conditions: The control group was presented with an unstructured, non-categorized, random word listing, while the variable group was presented with a list of words organized into categories of like meaning.

The accuracy of the participants ability to recall the words was the dependant variable. (DV). Participants Data was collected from 20 participants who were chosen to take part in this test using the simple random sampling technique. The participants were aged from 17-48 years old, mean age being 27, and were equally male and female (M=10, F=10). The chosen participants were students at various points in their education from Liverpool Hope University. In conducting this experiment there were certain controls in place.

Participants were asked not to speak to one another and to refrain from making noise or otherwise distracting others. The only thing they had on the table was pen and paper. Materials In this study, subjects were presented with only a pen, a blank sheet of paper, and a paper with a list of 20 words. Two different sets of words were used: One list presented words categorized in a group, the other presented the same words in a randomized single list, both of which can be found in Appendix 1.

The subjects used this sheet to write down all the words that they could remember. The results were measured using a ratio scale (correctly recalled word = 1, incorrect or no-recalled word = 0).

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