Craik and Lockhart (1972) Evaluation

Craik and Tulving(1975) 

Aim: To test whether words that are processed semantically are remembered better than words processed structurally or phonetically. 

Procedure: students were given words lists and asked to analyse the words for thier appearence, sound or meaning. The study was a repaeated measures design and the conditions were randomised. 

The students were not aware that it was a memory test and that they would be tested later. They were tolds it was a test on reaction times. 

Results:  When given a reaction test later the results showed that the recognised 70% of the semantically processed words, 35% of the phonetically processed words, and 15% of the structurally processed words. They concluded that the extent to which are remembered depends on how deeply they are processed. 

Evaluation 

 - Criak and Tulving's study was low in ecological validity as it was conducted in an artificial environment. we wouldn't normally be expected to recall a list of words in real life under controlled conditions. 

- Participants may work out the aim or behave unnaturally as they knew they were part of an experiment. They may suffer from demand characteristics. 

+ However, they presented teh words in diffrent orders so practice effects couldnt affect the findings. the structural, semantic and phonetic words were randomly presented. 

+ As it was a repeated measures design, individual difference such as intelligence would not affect the results as all particiapnts were in all conditions. 

+ The study was high in reliability as it was a laboratory experiment and extraneous vaiables were controlled such as teh same instructions given to everybody. This means that if teh study was to be repeated there is more chance of similar results. 

+ We are more likely to establish cause and effect between the IV and DV as variables are controlled in the study.