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Compilation for PSY 222

by
Moyosolaoluwa Olowokure

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT an official UNILAG FSS material. This compilation was
curated by Moyosolaoluwa for her personal revision; please use with caution
and discretion.

WORD ASSOCIATION TEST

1st invented by Francis Galton in 1879 and then adopted by Carl Jung in 1910 for
psychoanalysis. It is used by psychoanalysts to analyse a person’s subconscious
thoughts about a theme. In Jung’s original experiment, he had 100 (German) words
and took note of where patients paused/refused to answer/asked for a break and
what they said at certain “triggering” or “critical” words. When participants showed
long reaction times or gave multiple responses to a single word, these were seen to
indicate some sort of psychological disturbance or complex..
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**Short video clip: Skyfall Word Association Test Scene **

Methodology
Participants were asked to say/write the first word that came to mind after
hearing/seeing a word. The word (stimulus) was displayed for a few seconds and
participants were asked to be honest and to not hesitate before responding. Their
responses were considered and then psychoanalysed.

Instruments:
Timer, Power-point Display, Writing Materials

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1-Men will have (significantly) higher reaction times than women.

2-Men will have a (significantly) higher number of blank responses than women.

3- Men will have (significantly) more frequent instances of giving multiple responses
than women.

4-Words “bread” and “water” will have (significantly) longer reaction times than “lie”
and “angry” among participants.

5- Participants will have a mean reaction time that is greater than 7 seconds
(One sample t-test)
**NOTE that all these hypotheses are directional.

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender, Nature of Word
DVs – Reaction time, Number of blank responses, Frequency of multiple responses
EVs – Closeness to the board, Tone of the observer, Lighting/Temperature of the
environment, etc.

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Independent T-test, Mann Whitney U, Descriptive Statistics, Sign test, One-sample T-
test
(This depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions).

EMOTION AND MEMORY EXPERIMENT

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The limbic system and papez circuit are important for emotion and memory.
It is believed that emotionally charged words or pictures are more easily
remembered than neutral words or pictures (stimuli).

Methodology
Participants were exposed to emotional and neutral stimuli in two sessions:
emotional words versus neutral words and emotional pictures versus neutral
pictures.
Each group of words was displayed for 15 seconds, participants were then
given another 15 seconds to write the words they could recall (regardless of word
order). The same was done for emotional and neutral pictures.
Instruments:
Timer, Power-point Display, Writing Materials

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1- Participants will recall (significantly) more emotional stimuli than neutral stimuli

2- Participants will recall (significantly) more emotional words than neutral words.

3- Male participants will recall (significantly) more neutral pictures than female
participants.

4- Male participants will have (significantly) higher recall than female participants.
**NOTE that all these hypotheses are directional.

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender, Nature of Stimuli (whether neutral or emotional))
DV – Recall
EVs – Closeness of participant to the board, Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of
the environment, Evaluation apprehension, etc.
**this depends on your hypothesis

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Paired Samples T-test, Wilcoxon, Independent T-test, Mann Whitney-U
(this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions).
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MEMORIZATION TECHNIQUES
It is believed that chunking and organization makes for better recall of
organized information. Chunking was proposed as a memorization technique by
George Miller in 1956. He believed human short-term memory (STM) could process
7 +/- 2 units of information at a point in time.

Methodology
Participants were exposed to unorganised and organised stimuli in two
sessions: 1- unorganised words and unorganised digits and 2- organised words and
organised digits.
Each group of data was displayed for 30 seconds, participants were then
given another 30 seconds to write the words and digits they could recall in the right
order.

Instruments:
Timer, Power-point Display, Writing Materials

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1- Participants will recall (significantly) more organised words than unorganised
words.

2- Participants will recall (significantly) more organised digits than unorganised

digits.

3- Male participants will have (significantly) higher recall of organised stimuli than
female participants.

4- Participants will have (significantly) higher recall of unorganised words than

unorganised digits.
**NOTE that all these hypotheses are directional.

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender, Nature of Data (whether organised or unorganised), Form of data
(whether digits or words)
DV – Recall
EVs – Closeness of participant to the board, Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of
the environment, Evaluation apprehension, etc.
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**this depends on your hypothesis

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Paired Samples T-test, Wilcoxon, Independent T-test, Mann Whitney-U,
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions.

INTERFERENCE EXPERIMENT
Discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885, Memory is stored information
that goes through encoding, storage and retrieval. Encoding could be semantic or
elaborative; Storage could be short-term memory or long-term memory and only
information that has been encoded or stored can be retrieved.
Forgetting is the inability to retrieve stored info due to trace decay, cue-
dependent forgetting or interference from another memory.
This interference could be proactive (old affects new) or retroactive (new
affects old) and is especially high when these memories are similar. Inhibition is a
kind of goal-oriented/intentional forgetting (suppression).
The interference experiment seeks to demonstrate and assess this
phenomenon and another early study that aimed to investigate the effect of
retroactive interference was conducted by McGeoch & McDonald (1931).

Methodology
Participants were exposed to two lists/sets of nonsense syllables on a screen
for 2 minutes each. They were then given 45 seconds to recall and write all the
nonsense syllables they could for each list (A and B) on a sheet of paper. After this
sheet was collected, participants went on a short break and watched a short video.
Participants were asked to not discuss with one another during the experiment. On
return from the short break, they were asked to recall and write list B and then
asked to recall and write list A.
The participants’ proactive and retroactive interference scores were then calculated
using a stipulated formula and analysed using SPSS.

Instruments:
Timer, Projector/Power-point Display, Nonsense syllables, Writing Materials.

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1-Female Participants will have lower proactive interference scores than male
participants
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(I AM NOT SO SURE ABOUT THIS; IF YOU KNOW OF MORE SUITABLE HYPOTHESES

FOR THIS EXPERIMENT KINDLY LET US KNOW)

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender,
DV – Proactive interference scores, Retroactive interference scores
EVs – Closeness of participant to the board, Age of participant, Intelligence level of
participants, Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of the environment, Participant
activity during the break, Noise, Evaluation apprehension, etc.

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Independent T-test, Mann Whitney-U
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions

References

Kensinger, E.A., Corkin, S. Memory enhancement for emotional words: Are emotional
words more vividly remembered than neutral words?. Memory &
Cognition 31, 1169–1180 (2003). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195800

Studies on Interference. (n.d.). StudySmarter UK.

https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/psychology/basic-psychology/
studies-on-interference/

The Association Method By Carl Jung. (n.d.). Psychology. https://www.all-about-

psychology.com/association-method.html

TheICONTheMICKing. (2022, February 12). Skyfall (2012) - Word Association Test

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZXXluOPr3o