Grant et al.'s study of context dependent memory

Aims:

• To test whether the effect of noise as a source of context affects studying and recall of meaningful material.

Participants:

• 39 participants aged 17-56
• Recruited by opportuinity sampling.
• 8 psychology students acting as experimenters.
• Each found 5 acquaintainces, one result was excluded.

Design:

• This was a lab experiment using independent measures design.

Procedure:

• The IV was whether the study and test conditions were matching or mismatching.
• The DV was the participants retrieval of information.
• The background noise for the noisy condition was a tape made in the university cafeteria.
• The meaningful material was a two page article on psychoimmunology.
• Each participant read the article, the reading time was recorded but not controlled.
• Whilst reading, all participants wore their own headphones.
• After a 2 minute break, participants were asked to aswer 2 tests.
• The first test was a short answer test. 
• The second test was a multiple choice test.

Results:

• There were individual differences in reading time, but no consistent differences between noisy or silent conditions. 
• There was no significant patterns for individual variables, i.e. whether material was learned or retrieved in each environment made no difference to test results. 
• There was an interaction between study and test conditions:
• For both tests performance was significantly better in matching conditions.

Conclusions:

• As there was no independent effect of noise on performance, the claim made by students that noise does not affect their capacity to study, is suported. 
• As context-dependce affects retrieval in both tests, students should study in silent conditions as exams are typically held in silence.