Heavy Drinkers And The Number Of Words example essay topic

Can You Hear What Was Not Said? Target Article: Roediger, H.L. & McDermott, K. B (1995). Creating False Memories: Remembering Words Not Presented in Lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21,803-814.

Rational and variables: The experiment that was done was to find out the frequency at which people had false recall of information. The experiment also tested the rates at which people remembered false information that was related to the information that was discuses. The information in the case of the class experiment pertained to alcohol. Through the use of a list of word and a free recall, words related to but not on the list were tested. The rational of the experiment was, the more people who were heavy drinkers would have more target instructions because the are exposed to alcohol and things related to alcohol. However the people that are light drink have less target instructions, because they are not exposed to alcohol related things.

The independent variables were the high and low drinkers, and the dependent variables were the target intrusions. Method: In a PSYC 165 Lab, 48 students participated in an experiment. Of the 48 students 57% of them were woman, and 43% were men. The group's age ranged from 18 to 22 and consisted of students with African, European, Asian, and Latino background. The Instructor read a list of 9 words that were to be memorized by the group of students, which related to alcohol. When he finished reading them out, there was a 90-second period were the group of student had time to talk with other students around them.

The Group of word includes toast, bar, mixer, shot, proof, malt, draft, and spirits. After the 90 seconds was over the participants were asked to recall as many words as they can and were asked to write them down on a piece of paper. Next the patricians were asked to write down their gender, age, ethnicity, and year in school. Then the percipience were also asked their drinking behavior.

The instructor explained what was considered a drink, such as 12-ounce beer, 5 ounces of wine, and so on. First question asked by the instructor was how many days per week the patricians drink. The next question was how many days per month they drink, then the average drinks per occasion. The final question asked was the most number of drinks per occasion that the participant had at one time. Next, the instructor collected all of the papers and then re-distributed them so each person could have another person's papers. Then the students were asked to write down the number of correct words when instructor read the words.

A check was to be placed next to the words that were on the list. Then they were asked to write the number of words that were not included in the original list but were on the paper and the number of intrusion words that related to wine, beer, and alcohol. Results: the study produced a result that did not line up with our rational, the study states that there is no relationship between the amount of drink that a person drinks and the number of targeted intrusions that they had. The numbers that were produced from the class experiment were very random and show no relationship. However the data that we received shows that the students that are involved in the study are not heavy drinkers and the number of words recalled averaged 7.7 which is high out of 9. Which many say something about alcohol and short or long term memory.

Discussion: The result that we received and the Roediger and Mcdermott received is different for because of many reasons, one reason could have been because of the way that the groups were created. In our experiment it was very difficult to find out who the real heavy drinkers and who the real light drinkers are because the question that were asked to determine the drinking behavior, did not tell us a significant fact regarding, if a person is a heavy or low drinker. The other issue was in the Roediger and McDermott study, there were two experiments that were conducted: experiment 1, which examined false recall and false recognition of the list of words and confident's the subjects, had that these words on the different lists. Experiment 2 tested for the rate of intrusions on another larger set of lists in a single trial free recall.

The experiment also tested false recognition of the same items. In the class study the experiment was only done once to test the number of target intrusion. However both the study conducted are similar in that two groups of students are being tested yet the way it is done is different. In their study, two groups of students from Rich University are being tested randomly. In the class study, high and low drinker groups are compared. However the reason for the differences between the results could be because the class study was not random groups but fixed group that had to be a high or low drinker, yet for Ronediger and Mcdermott's study there were no criteria for being in a group.

In addition, the number of word that are stated in the experiment also makes a big difference, in the class study it was only 9, yet in the Ronediger and Mcdermott's study the number of word's were changing which would make it a lot difficult to remember and a lot easier to recall targeted words. Critique: looking at the experiment this study was effective in find out if people experience have something to due with recalling words when they are not stated. However there were problems with the study. I believe that the questions that were asked in the study should have been more to the point to find out if a person is a heavy drinker or a light drinker. This problem affects the result of the study because we are unable to find out who really is a heavy drinker and a low drinker, which then would mix up our data when we are trying to compare the two with number of target intrusions. I would suggest that we develop new question that is more to the point of finding out the drinking behavior of a person.

I believe if we receive information about the heavy and low drinkers then our data may tell us a lot more by comparing the two to see, the number of target intrusions and we also could compare the number of word recalled if you are a heavy or light drinker. The other problem with the experiment was that I don't believe that the groups of students in the two classes were very diverse. The problem can affect our result because we are unable to see the affect of a result based on a variety of races and religions. To solve the problem the study should be done in a more diverse population.

The results would change I believe because of the different trends that different group of communities drink and the kind of memory they have..