TMA04 : A Proposal on finding out whether working memory is affected by articulatory suppressions and gender

TMA04 : A Proposal on finding out whether working memory is affected by articulatory suppressions and gender

Working memory is regarded as a critical mental faculty, which aids in cognition abilities of things like reasoning, planning and problem solving. The main objective of this paper is to find out whether working memory is affected by various articulatory suppressions, and an individual’s gender.

 

Literature Review

Piccardi, et al. (2014). Development of navigational working memory: Evidence from 6- to 10-year-old children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 32, 205-217.

The objective of this research was to ascertain whether navigational working memory developed at the same rate compared to other working memories (verbal and reaching working memories), and whether gender differences have any inhibition with the development process. This means that the researchers had the desire of attaining two objectives with a single study. On the methodology section, the participants included a sample of 129 children. From the sample, 66 were male while 63 were female. All the participants did not have any reported difficulties with their studies at school. The age was between 6 years and 11 years. This gave a standard deviation of 1.36 and a mean of 8.4 years. The pupils were from a primary school in Pescara, and all were native Italian speakers. To investigate the reaching working memory, the experiment used the ‘Corsi Block-Tapping Test’. The examiner tapped the blocks in a sequence at a rate of 1 block for every 2 seconds. The participants were expected to reproduce the same sequence. The process followed an increasing spatial sequence. For the navigational working memory, the ‘Walking Corsi Test’ was used. The participants were expected to walk and reach different positions of the room that comprised nine red squares on the floor. The examiner illustrated the sequence to be used. For the verbal working memory, the study used the ‘Digit Span’. This assesses the verbal component involved with working memory. Two test items were presented and the number of correct items recorded. For results purposes, SPSS was used for statistical analysis, and t-test was performed to identify the differences between both genders. From the findings, sex seemed to have an influence on the working memory. However, it was more significant when using the ‘Walking Corsi Test’. On this test males had a significantly lower span compared to females. There was also a significant main effect for the ages in all the three tests that were conducted.

 

Schendel, Z., & Palmer, C. (2007). Suppression effects on musical and verbal memory. Memory & Cognition, 35(4), 640-650.

The objective of this study was to identify the suppression effect that would be caused to both the verbal and the musical memory. The literature review on this section has concentrated on the first experiment of the study. The experiment employed a standard procedure that entailed self-produced intermittent suppression. The sequences entailed four musical notes or digits that were presented either auditorily or visually.  48 English-speaking adults were involved in the experiment as the participants. Their age ranged between 16 and 23 years. They needed to have at least 6 years private lessons with regard to musical instruments.  For the materials used, 53 melodic sequences were generated randomly from the C Major diatomic scale, which had 9 pitches. There were no successive pitches that were repeated. The visually presented notes were presented as stem less quarter notes while the auditory tones were sampled at 44 KHz using a piano timbre. A 2×3×2 mixed factorial design was used for the experiment. That is; (presentation modality: visual or auditory) × (suppression type: verbal, musical or none) × (stimulus type: digits or notes). The presentation modality was a between-subjects factor while the other factors were within-subjects. Every participant received 16 verbal suppression trials, 12 non-suppression trials and 16 musical suppression trials. They were first expected to complete a music notation task. With the beginning of each suppression trial, participants would hear a male voice say “the” or signing “la”. This coincided with the onset of all stimuli. They were required to tell whether the suppression was different or similar all through by pressing a certain key on the keyboard. For the results, the ANOVA analysis was used to show the suppression effects of the stimuli involved. Among the findings from the study is that musical suppression had an impairment effect on recognition accuracy, which was a similar case for the verbal suppression. This was for both notes and digits. Another finding was that verbal suppression impaired the participant’s digits recognition more during visual presentation compared to auditory presentation.

 

Conlin, J., Gathercole, S., & Adams, J. (2005). Children’s working memory: Investigating performance limitations in complex span tasks. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 90, 303-317.

The aim of the study was to ascertain what inhibits performance when it comes to complex span tasks with regards to children’s working memory. The review has concentrated with the first experiment entailed in this study. For the methodology section, the study involved 64 children as the participants. Their ages were between 7 years 9 months and 8 years 3 months. They were all from a primary school in United Kingdom. The participants were perceived as having normal arithmetic skills. For the design, the experiment used a two-way mixed design whereby the age was the between-subjects factor and operations conducted were a within-subjects factor (carry or simple sums). For the carry condition, problems included addition of two-digit numbers involving a carry operation (for example, 36+16). Simple condition was all about adding a series of five single digit numbers (for example, 3+1+2+2+1). All the participants were tested individually within the school premises. The sums were displayed on a computer screen, and after providing an answer, they moved to the next sum. The answers were recorded manually and the time taken to answer. The participants were then asked to recall successive totals (answers) in order, and this was also recorded. From the results, the memory span from the 9 year olds was higher compared to the 7 year olds. This means that there was a significant main effect of age. There were also more errors done while computing carrying sums compared to simple sums, but the span did not differ between the two conditions. These findings contradict simple resource-sharing working memory account, which postulates that operation span should decrease in carry condition due to increased demand of processing task.

Hypotheses

1.Working memory is affected by various articulatory suppressions.

2.Gender has a main effect on the working memory.

Variables

The independent variables in the experiment include the task of recalling the letters presented in the grid and the gender of the participants.

Dependent variables on the other hand entail the total letters recalled accurately.

 

 

Methodology

Design

The design for this experiment will involve a modification of the “Corsi Block”. It will involve the usage of 4×4 squares grid. Each grid will contain 9 random letters of the alphabet. When presented with a different grid that will be blank, the participants are expected to recall the letters that were included in the previous grid. There will also be an expectation that the participants will get the positioning of the letters right, as they appeared previously. The participants will be tested under two conditions.  The first condition will ensure that there are no concurrent tasks taking place. With the second condition, participants will be expected to remember the letters under articulatory suppression.

 

Participants

The experiment will include 24 participants. Off this number, 12 will be females and the other 12 will be males. The participants involved should be over 18 years of age. They should not be suffering from severe dyslexia, and should have normal or corrected eyesight.

Materials

Among the materials required for the study is a computer. It is through the computer that the grids will be presented to the participants. As a substitute, a paper and pencil can also be used. Here, the pencil will be used to draw the letters in the designated areas of the grid. There will be no need of using the E-prime since the response time of the participants is not deemed relevant. The experiment will also use the SPSS to conduct t-tests for the male and female variations involved.

Procedure

All the participants will be presented with a 4×4 grid containing 9 random alphabetical letters. The letters will be positioned at different areas across the grid. An interval of 2 seconds will be given to each participant for them to study the grid. Participants will then be presented with a blank grid that does not contain any letters. Here, they will be expected to recall the letters that they saw in the previous grid. This will be followed by positioning the letters as they were positioned in the previous grid. The participants will repeat the same procedure, but this time there will be an articulatory suppression involved. They will be required to count 1 up to 10 loudly as they try to recall the letters that were contained in the previous grid.

Ethical Issues

Among the ethical issues involved with this study is ensuring that consent has been granted by the participants to carry out the experiment. This will involve disclosing the objectives of the experiment while asking for consent. The study aims at using participants with over 18 years. This means that they will be consenting adults.

Another ethical issue is that the research will not use participants with severe dyslexia. This will ensure that the participants used are fit for the study.

 

References

Piccardi, L., Leonzi, M., D’amico, S., Marano, A., & Guariglia, C. (2014). Development of navigational working memory: Evidence from 6- to 10-year-old children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 32, 205-217.

Schendel, Z., & Palmer, C. (2007). Suppression effects on musical and verbal memory. Memory & Cognition, 35(4), 640-650.

Conlin, J., Gathercole, S., & Adams, J. (2005). Children’s working memory: Investigating performance limitations in complex span tasks. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 90, 303-317.

 

 

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