Our results are similar to the original study in which there is insignificant difference in number of words recalled for both no rehearsal and highlighting group. However, small differences that I found from my results are that the mean number of words recalled is higher in the highlighting group and the mean differences between two groups are greater than the original study. This may be because there was distractions going on in the middle of the original study’s experiment so this may affect the original results. For the procedure, there is a bit of changes in which we did not include a distractor task that supposed to be given before they were asked to recall the words so it would be difficult to suggest which method is more effective for recalling more words as it is unclear whether those words would stay in our memory after a while.Moreover, my research supports the Atkinson ; Shiffrin’s theory in which the highlighting method’s participants got to repeat and pronounce the words subvocally more times that the non-rehearsal group’s participants therefore the number of words recalled in highlighting group is higher than the non-rehearsal group but the differences would not be significant because few amount of repetitions are not enough to transfer those words to LTM so those words would still be stored in the STM that may only hold 7+2 amount of information and no longer than 30 seconds or even there is possibility for the words to only enter the sensory memory then decay as paying equal attention to every word shown for 3 seconds is very difficult to do.
This experiment has its strengths such as during the standardized direction, the researchers did not told the experiment’s aim to the participants so they won’t establish demand characteristics and affect the results but after the experiment, they were debriefed for a while so they did not leave the laboratory with curiosity. Besides, they were also asked ‘Are there any questions?’ as the experimenter want to ensure that everyone are clear with the procedures so they won’t be confused on what they should do. In both groups, the slides were shown exactly for 3 seconds and was prepared few days before, therefore it makes the results comparable and reduce the possible human error that may happen on that day. Additionally, the experiment has high construct validity because in this case, memory was being measured by the number of words recalled from the list of 20 words. Lastly, since the experiment is conducted in highly controlled environment therefore it has high internal validity in which the procedures would tend to be replicated by other researchers, so the results’ reliability could be verified.
Whereas, its limitations are since it was conducted in laboratory so its artificial situation causes it to has low ecological validity in which the results may not be generalized to natural settings. For the sample, since there were 22 participants of unequal males and females of 14-18 year-old from Stella Maris school so it means it has low population validity in which the results may not represent the wider population of high school as the age, culture and sample size used were limited. Since it was conducted during lunch time right after the lesson period so their concentration may be lost and distracted from factors such as tiring and hungry therefore this may lead them not to participate seriously. Besides, the participants were seated next to each other in U shaped classroom so it may be difficult for some to see the slides and stop talking after the experimenter asked them to be silence, so this may disturb others and affect the results. The confounding variables that may exist and are not well-controlled are their intelligence on how fast they could memorize the words and the ignorance on still writing down words after they were asked to stop so those could affect the number of words recalled.For future experiment, I would suggest to provide same seated arrangement for them to make it fair and use another measurement of memory such as recalling songs’ lyrics or slang words instead of just recalling from a list of words as different outcome may be obtained. Also, the time of each word being projected may extent it longer so they won’t feel panic or useless during and after the experiment and have more time to rehearse or subvocally pronounce it.
avoid useless?Overall, it can be concluded that the null hypothesis was supported in which there is no significant difference in the number of words recalled between participants who had rehearsal method of highlighting and no rehearsal method.
