submit your experimental paper here. The following instructions were provided in week one, use these as a guide for what you are submitting: Part IV

submit your experimental paper here. The following instructions were provided in week one, use these as a guide for what you are submitting:

Part IV – Paper format

Your paper must be in APA format and needs to include the following elements:

Title Page – Follow APA instructions

Abstract – Follow APA instructions

Introduction – In this paper your introduction should only be a couple of paragraphs describing the theory you’re exploring, what past research has demonstrated and what element of the theory or idea you are trying to demonstrate. You can also state your hypothesis here as well.

Method – This section describes the purpose of your experiment (ex. “This experiment is intended to test whether or not nonsense words are more easy to remember than actual words….”, the method you will use to run your experiment (ex. “In this experiment this research solicited 14 male and female students to memorize 13 words from a list…….) and basically how you will collect the data. It’s a description of what you intend to do to test your hypothesis.

Results – In this section you basically just provide your results. You’re answering the question, “What did I find out?” Tell your readers what the end result of your experiment is without any type of interpretation.

Discussion – In this section you tell your reader what the previous section means. This isn’t just a section telling your readers what you found (that’s the results section), in this section you tell them based on the theory being tested and whatever other resources you have reviewed, this is why we got these results and this is what the results mean.

References – Try and use at least 2 references.

The following is an example of the content that should be in each section. Note, the format is not APA, and no references are used, but the content is what I am looking for in your experimental paper:

Experiment 1: How Meaning Impacts Memory

Introduction:

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether or not recall was affected when two different lists of letters were offered to subjects for memorization and recall. There were two lists of three letter syllables. Each list contained a total of thirteen of these syllables, with one list comprised of nonsensical or non-meaning syllables. The second list of thirteen syllables resembled words or abbreviations that are more commonly used or referenced. This list would most likely be easier to make connections with during short term memory encoding. The researcher observed whether or not the seemingly randomly put together letter list was easier or more difficult to recall than the more meaningful list. The main construct that this experiment seeks to explore is the way in which meaning influences memory. The independent variable in this experiment was the list of syllables given to each subject (two lists of thirteen, one nonsensical and one “meaningful”). The dependent variable deals with recall, specifically how many correct syllables were recalled from each of the two lists.

Method

Subjects.- Five subjects from Pediatrics of XXX, PC participated in the experiment. One female age 24, one female age 27, one female age 54, one female age 60, and one male age 60.

Materials.- The experimenter used one Hoyle deck of Cards (Standard, 52 cards, 13 cards per suit Ace through King), one Olympus WS-110 digital recorder, and two pieces of 81/2” x 11” paper with one of the syllable lists on each. An additional piece of paper and a pen was offered to each participant so that they could write down as many of the syllables from each list as possible when asked to do so. A Fitbit Surge health tracker was used in order to keep time (stopwatch function).

Procedure.-Each subject was approached during their lunch break and asked if they would participate in an experiment. Upon agreeing, the researcher and the subject moved to an area of the office that was quiet and did not have many distractions so that the subject could focus. This also kept other potential subjects from knowing what to expect if they agreed to participate in the experiment. A pre-recorded script was played for each subject so that the message was consistently delivered across all subjects who participated. The message played was as follows: “In a moment, you will be given a list of thirteen capitalized three-letter syllables. Look them over and memorize them. After four minutes, I will call time and hand you a shuffled deck of cards. You will have four minutes to arrange the cards in ascending order, by suit (any order) and place them on the desk upon completion. At the end of four minutes, place the cards on the desk, pick up the pen, and write down as many of the syllables as you can. You will have four minutes to recall as many as you can, with the timer beginning as soon as you pick up the pen. We will then repeat this process with a second list.” Subjects were offered the meaningful list first, and the nonsensical syllable list second. Once each subject completed the recall of the second list, I tallied the total number of correctly recalled syllables for each list and recorded the data using Microsoft OneNote 2013.

Results

Most participants fared well on the first list (meaningful syllables).

Participant
List 1 (Meaningful) Recalled
List 2 (Non meaning) Recalled
Jocelyn
8
3
Cheryl
7
2
Dianah
7
4
Mrs. Smith
8
5
Dr. Smith
9
6
AVG
7.8
4.0

Recalled meaningful syllables ranged from 7 to 9 correctly recalled syllables (avg. 7.8). Recalled non-meaningful syllables were much lower, ranging from 3 to 6 correctly recalled syllables (avg. 4.0).

Discussion

While this experiment’s design was not very complicated in method or implementation, the results were in line with what the experimented initially expected. The meaningful list of thirteen syllables was recalled more easily and with a higher frequency of correct syllable recall than the nonsensical list of syllables. Interestingly, Dr. and Mrs. Smith had the highest number of syllables recalled. When queried after all subjects had completed the experiment, both Dr. and Mrs. Smith noted that their recall of the non-meaning list may have been impacted by the fact that they were able to make additional connections between the seemingly nonsensical syllables and medical/vaccine/drug terms that others were not as familiar with after their 29 years of practice. Jocelyn, a 24-year-old female medical assistant, also fared well on the meaningful list, but did not do as well on non-meaning list as Dr. and Mrs. Smith did. This researcher finds this interesting because Jocelyn works with the same medical terms and drug names as Mrs. and Dr. Smith do. One would expect her to have been able to make the same connections, but it is possible that Dr. and Mrs. Smith have had many more years to encode those terms (short term vs their long term memory), resulting in connections being made more readily, even when put “on the spot” as subjects were in this experiment.

You can see this is a simple format following the same flow as an academic journal. The details for the paper are below, ask your professor for any clarifying instructions you may need.

Prompt:

You will create an experiment that investigates the Serial Effect in regards to memory studies (This effect is outlined on page 100 of your text book). According to this effect, words at the beginning or end of a list are recalled more easily. An interesting phenomenon with the serial effect is if the researcher reads the words to the subject rapidly the words at the beginning of the list are forgotten just as easily as those in the middle of the list. The question is, at what speed does that happen? So, here is your experiment:

Create a list of 20 words replicating the one found on page 100.
Recruit people to be part of your experiment.
Design an experiment in which you vary the speed of conveying the words to your subject.
Record at what speed the recency effect (the word at the beginning of the list) is no longer able to be recalled well.

1. Title Page – 1 page

2. Abstract – 1 page (a brief paragraph at the top – see below website)

3. Introduction – between 1-2 pages

4. Method – between 0.5 – 1 page

5. Procedure – between 0.5 – 1 page

6. Results – between 1-2 pages (you may use a table as an appendix page – see below website)

7. Discussion – between 2-3 pages

8. References – 1 page

Total Page Count – Between 8 and 12 pages

use the below website for APA formatting questions:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/