The Experiment Research Study: Craik and Tulving (1975)

Aim To investigate reasonableness affect by giving participants s number of tasks requiring different levels of processing and measuring recognition.Participants Controlled condition (3 males and 3 females) Experimental condition (3 males and 3 females) item-by-item group designMethod This was a repeated measures design experiment with three conditions. Participants were assumption a reheel of 60 words, one at a succession and were required to process each word at one of thee levels (the fissiparous variable). At deep level they capability be asked a question, such as Does this word fit into the sentence? At an intermediate level, they might be asked Does this word rhyme with? At shallow level, they might be asked, Is this word in capital letters?Following the task, participants were (unexpectedly) given a list of 180 words, which contained the original 60 words processed and 120 filler words, and were asked to refer the ones they value from the original 60 (the dependent variable).Measurement The two conditions create room for accurate comparison and results. Participants are referred to with numbers.Results Significantly more words were recognised if they had been processed at deep level (approximately 65 per cent) than either phonic (37 per cent) or shallow (17 per cent) levels.Conclusion As deeper processing resulted in better recognition, therefore the level at which material is processed must be think to memory.Evaluation This study relies on incidental learning (the participants didnot know they would be asked to recall the words), rather than intentional learning, which is the advantage of being more trustworthy to real life. This means participants are unlikely to engage in particular(a) processing which could invalidate the results. However, there is a necessary level of illusion required in suck a design which raised honourable issues.