Whether the Amount of Noise in an Environment Affects an Individual's Ability to Memorize Words in a Limited Amount of Time
Hypothesis
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In a noisy environment, fewer words will be memorised, as it will be
harder to concentrate and memorise words.
Method
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Design
The type of experiment we did was a lab experiment as it was
controlled, as the participants knew they were taking part and also we
controlled the locations in which the experiment took place. This was
a good thing, as we wanted fair and accurate results, which came from
an experiment in which we controlled the conditions. The locations we
used were the cafeteria for the noisy environment as it is constantly
filled with noise and people and the learning centre for the quiet
environment where there is absolute silence and no noise whatsoever.
We used an independent measures design. We used different participants
for the two environments as we wanted to avoid any order effects i.e.
participant won’t get better through practice and participant is less
likely to get bored.
The independent variable in this experiment was the noise in the
location and the dependent variable was the amount of words
remembered.
Participants
I used 12 participants for this experiment. 6 for the noisy
environment and 6 for the quiet environment. The sampling technique I
used to select the participants used in this experiment was an
opportunity sample as data is unlikely to be representative, as sample
will probably not include all subgroups. The participants will be put
into two groups and taken to their location where they’ll do the
experiment.
Materials
The materials used were a list of words, a pen and a piece of paper
the participants will write the words they remember.
Procedure
The participant will be asked for their consent for taking part and
assured that if they don’t want to complete the experiment, then they
are free to leave at any time. They are asked to write their sex,