IB Psychology IA

Psychology IA: The effect of context on recall of

information

Word count: 2116

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Contents

I. Introduction 3

II. Exploration 4
a. Procedures
b. Research design
c. Sampling method
d. Participants
e. Controlled variables
f. Materials

III. Analysis 5
a. Results
b. Inferential statistics

IV. Evaluation 6
a. Discussion
b. Strengths
c. Limitations and modifications

V. References 8

VI. Appendices 9

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Introduction

The schema theory states that schemata are types of understandings that one has about the
world that could be metaphorically presented as files in filing cabinets in the brain. They are
there to help individuals save time and function more effectively. There are many types of
known schemata such as role schemata that helps us take on different roles of e.g., an
employee but at the same time a parent or object schemata which helps us associate certain
ideas with objects. Overall, schemata help organize and memorize information that one
acquires through personal experience and provide a way to recall and related information
from memory (Pankin, 2013).

One of the studies that researched the schema theory was conducted by researchers
Bransford and Johnson (Bransford & Johnson, 1972). Its aim was to investigate the effect of
prior knowledge of context on the comprehension and recall of information from a presented
passage. Participants were asked to hear a passage and write down as much information as
they can remember. The passage was about doing laundry, but it was made in such a way
that without context its meaning would be very ambiguous to someone who would hear it.
There were two groups of participants in the study. Before reading the passage, the first
group was presented with a title for it (in this study it was washing clothes), whereas the
other group was not given a title. The results of the study showed that the participants that
were presented with the title were able to recall more information from the passage than the
ones that were not presented with the title. This was because the title group was able to rely
on the already created schema of doing laundry so because they were given the title the
passage was more understandable and more easily remembered. Therefore, the results of
this study show that schemata allow for a better recall of information because it gives the
ability to make references to prior knowledge (Bransford & Johnson,1972). These effects can
be explained by the schema theory which describes how the brain structures knowledge
based on past experiences.
The experiment performed for the purpose of this Internal Assessment is a replication of the
Bransford and Johnson study. Its aim was to investigate the effect of knowledge of the
context of a passage (where the context allows to rely on some schema) on recalling
information from it, by reading a passage to two groups of participants from which one was
not given a title and the other did.
This is a relevant topic because students rely heavily of the ability to memorize and recall. If
the way humans remember things is known, it will help people achieve the most efficient
ways of learning.

Independent variable: Being given the title that provides the context of the passage read or
not being given said title.
Dependent variable: The number of elements that were recalled from the passage read.

Null hypothesis: There will be no significant difference between the number of key words
recalled from the passage read by the group given the title providing the context of the
passage and the group that was give no title providing the context of the passage.

Research hypothesis: There will be significantly more words recalled from the passage
read by the group that was given the title providing the context of the passage than the group
that was given no title.

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Exploration

Procedures

1. We conducted our experiment on a classroom of students from which half were given
the title (context) of the passage (see Appendix #3) read aloud and the other half
were not (independent sample).
2. We gave out informed consent forms (see Appendix #4) and collected them when
they were signed by the students and next, we read the instructions for the
experiment and gave out the questionnaires (see Appendix #6) with the task with
either no title or a title was given out according to the groups.
3. We read the passage aloud and played the distraction video (see Appendix #7).
4. After the participants completed writing the task, we collected the questionnaires and
gave out the debriefing forms (see Appendix #5).

Research design

The research design used was an independent sample where we had two distinct groups of
participants do each condition. It was chosen to eliminate the possibility of an order effect,
because through repeating the task the participants could have learned how to perform it
better. It was also chosen to control the participant expectancy effect because the students
that engaged in the study could possibly figure out the aim of the experiment. In order to omit
these problems, we could have used the repeated measures design; however, not only
would this have been very time consuming there could also be additional factors that would
have disrupted the results such as different times of day and levels of cognitive fatigue due to
e.g. exams.

Sampling method

The sampling method chosen was opportunity sampling. We chose a class of students in our
school that was having lessons at the moment we needed. This method was chosen due to
practicality so that finding participants would not be time consuming.

Participants

A class of students enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program was asked to

participate in the experiment that do not study psychology in order to eliminate any people
who would be familiar with the procedure, because they could skew the results of our
experiment by remembering more elements than others. The participants were between the
ages of 15 and 16, had similar origins and an advanced level of the English language to be
able to fully comprehend the task.

Controlled variables

Variable examples How it was controlled Why was it controlled

Type of participants
The instructions
Students were chosen
because the subject of the
topic was related to
education
The instructions were the
same for every participant in
the groups and were read
aloud
All participants had to be on
the same academic level, so
that none of them would
have an advantage
The instructions had to be
the same so that there
would be no chance for an
advantage of e.g. some of
them were phrased in a

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Time of day Every participant was tested
at the same time and in the
same place
vaguer way
If the participants were to be
tested at different times in
different places factors such
as fatigue and noise could
have influenced how many
elements they recalled

Materials

 Passage
 Informed consent forms
 Paper with written task
 Debriefing forms

The passage was created specifically for this experiment and was based on the original
Bransford and Johnson passage. It was created in such a way that it would be vague enough
so the participants with the no title group would not figure out the context but specific enough
so that it would fit the title of baking cookies. There was also a paper given to the participants
with either the title or no title task.

Informed consent and debriefing forms were used in order to appropriately follow ethical
guidelines. The consent forms contained the names of participants, their ages and
information regarding anonymity and their right to withdraw at any time, while the debriefing
forms contained the true aim of the study and an email if any further contact with the
researchers was needed.

Analysis

Results

We counted participants memory scores (see Appendix #1) and calculated the mean and
standard deviation for the title group and the no title group.

The chosen measure of central tendency was the mean and the chosen measure of
dispersion chosen was standard deviation.

Table 1. Mean and standard deviation of key words recalled in group with and without
given context.

Mean Standard deviation

With given context 2.63 1.77
Without given context 2.78 0.972

The mean in the no context given group (2.78) is higher than the mean in the context given
group (2.63). However, the standard deviation in the context given group is higher than in the
no context given group, which means it is more spread out there.

Inferential statistics

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Graph 1. Graph of mean number of key words recalled in group with and without given
context.

In order to check the significance of the acquired data a Mann Whitney U test was
used because the data is ordinal and not related. The U value was 36 which is more than the
critical value of 15 at p < 0.05. This means that the results are not significantly different and
the probability that the results were acquired due to chance is higher than 95% therefore the
null hypothesis is accepted. The results indicate that the presence of context during listening
to a passage does not have a significant affect of the number of key words remembered by
participants.

Evaluation

Discussion

Providing the context to participants allows them to create a schema for this context
(the passage) and then relate their newly learned knowledge to this schema, which is
supposed to make them recall the information better. Contrarily, without prior context
provided participants would not be able to form a schema and revert to it in order to recall the
new knowledge better.

In this study we tested the hypothesis that context allows for better recall with an experiment
similar to Bransford and Johnson (1972), but we used a different passage than they have. In
this study the presence of a title (context) for the passage increased the amount of
information recalled. However, in our recreation of the study we found no significant
difference between the title and no title group. This means that our results do not support the
theory that provision of context, which allows for the formation of schema, can lead to a
better recall of information, for example of a passage.

Strengths

The first strength of our study was using the independent measures design, because
repeated measures would most likely lead to an increase in the number of words recalled
because the participants would learn the task. Additionally, it also saved us and the
participants time as the task could have gotten dull after a certain amount of time and that
could also influence the results.

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Another strength was choosing students from one school for our participants. Students from
the same school would generally have a similar skill when it comes to memorization than
students from different schools, therefore there would be less room for an advantage.

The next strength was that the experiment was done during the same time of day, in the
same place for all the participants what meant that the level of fatigue and the surrounding
environmental conditions were practically the same.

Limitations and modifications

One limitation of our study design was that due to using the independent measures design
we most likely would encounter the problem of participant variability. We chose our
participants to be a class of students from which some might have already been better at
memorization than others, which would automatically make the score of one group higher
than the other. A modification we could apply would be to change the design to matched
pairs which would depend on memorization skills.

The next limitation of our study was in the sample we had chosen which consisted of
students from a private IB high school. Since in order to attend the school you need to pay
tuition, only students from a family with a high economical status can attend. This means that
because of the status of the participants they could have already had an advantage when it
comes to memory, which could lead to higher scores. This advantage is because “the brains
of children in families that earned less (..) had surface areas 6 percent smaller” compared to
the richer families (Layton, 2023). In order to fix this limitation of our study we would have
had to used participants from public schools from less wealthy areas.

Another limitation of our study can be found in the procedure because the key we used for
the scores could have been subjective and not specific. Different words and phrases could
have been counted as correct and it was not always clear which elements were fitting to the
key. In order to fix this limitation, we could have changed the whole step of the procedure
and instead of the participants writing down anything they remember they would be given a
multiple-choice test, what would firstly eliminate any chance of subjectivity from the
researchers’ side and also make the answers unequivocal.

In conclusion, our experimental study’s results do not provide significant evidence that would
support the theory which states that providing context to a person will increase the number of
words they recall from a piece of information given. However, due to limitations that can be
seen in our research study no final conclusions can be made about the relationship of
memorization and prior context.

References

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IB Psychology IA

Bransford, J. D., & Johnson, M. K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some
investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior, 11(6), 717–726. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-5371(72)80006-9

Layton, L. (2023, April 9). New brain science shows poor kids have smaller brains than
affluent kids. The Washington Post. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/new-brain-science-shows-poor-kids-
have-smaller-brains-than-affluent-kids/2015/04/15/3b679858-e2bc-11e4-b510-
962fcfabc310_story.html

Pankin, J. (2013). Schema theory - MIT. Schema Theory and Concept Formation. Retrieved
April 13, 2023, from
http://web.mit.edu/pankin/www/Schema_Theory_and_Concept_Formation.pdf

Appendices

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Appendix #1 Raw data

Age Gender Title group points No title group points
16 Female 0 -
15 Male 4 -
16 Female 3 -
15 Female 5 -
15 Female 4 -
15 Female 1 -
16 Male 3 -
16 Female 1 -
15 Female - 2
15 Female - 3
16 Male - 3
16 Male - 1
16 Female - 3
16 Female - 4
16 Female - 4
16 Male - 3
16 Male - 2
Mean score 2.63 2.78
SD 1.77 0.972
Appendix #2 Inferential Statistics –Mann-Whitney U Calculations

Appendix #3 Passage

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Passage:
The procedure is fairly simple, and can be done by anyone with enough time and the
sufficient facilities. At first you need to know what you are doing. If you don’t, find out.
You have to gather all the needed supplies for the first step of the process. The lack
of facilities makes the task impossible. Be careful not to injure yourself. Some
mistakes can impose serious consequences. However, if you're skilled enough then it
should do no harm. In order to be more efficient, think about what has to be ready in
the future and prepare the required facilities and devices. If you do it uncarefully, you
might lose all your progress. If at any point you lack any supplies, find substitutes or
acquire them as quickly as possible as time is of the essence. Act accordingly to the
knowledge you had gathered before starting the process. At the end, you will find out
whether your process was successful.

Appendix #4 Informed consent form

Dear participant,

We’re DP1 sl psychology students working on our mock internal assessment and we’d like
for you to participate in our study on memory.

In a second you will hear a passage and we ask you to try and remember as much as you
can from it. Then you’ll be asked to fill out the answer sheets you were given.

It is your choice if you want to be in the study or not and you can withdraw your answers at
any time. Your personal information will only be used for educational purposes and will be
fully confidential. After the experiment we will explain what the study is about.

If you agree to participate, please complete the form below and give it back to us
I .......................................... (name) have read the explanation of this study and agree to
participate .....................................(sign here).

Appendix #5 Debriefing form

Dear participant,

Thank you for your participation in our study.

You were given an answer sheet with or without the title of the passage. The aim of the study
was to check whether the knowledge of the context of the passage influences our recall of it.
The theory is that the knowledge of the context allows us to better comprehend and
memorize information.

Our hypothesis was that the group which received the answer sheet with the title will have a
higher score on the memory test than the group that did not have the title on their answer
sheet.

If you at any point have any questions or concerns, please contact us at

dp1standardlevelpsychology@gmail.com

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Thank you again

DP1 SL psychology class

Appendix #6 Questionnaire
Title group
You are about to hear a passage titled “baking cookies”. At the beginning please fill in the
information:
Gender:
Age:
In the space below, please write down as many details you can remember from the passage.

No title group
You are about to hear a passage. At the beginning please fill in the information:
Gender:
Age:
In the space below, please write down as many details you can remember from the passage.

Appendix #7 Distraction video

https://youtu.be/ERwHvwsGFoE

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