Hypotheses and Capacity

Today we spent some time consolidating our knowledge of hypotheses. All the relevant info is in your textbook and the RM booklet. You need to be able to confidently use the following terms:

- null hypothesis
- alternative hypothesis
- research hypothesis
- experimental hypothesis
- two-tailed hypothesis (non-directional)
- one-tailed hypothesis (directional)

We also traced the history of research into the capacity of our short-term memory. The powerpoint is here and we ended up concluding that it is all probably a bit more complicated than Jacobs thought in 1887. 

Duration of LTM

Today we started discussing LTM and the difference between recognition and recall. It is likely that most long-term memories need some sort of cue or trigger to be recalled. Bahrick et al used memories from high school to test the visual and verbal LTM of 400 participants, and found good evidence for the life-time duration of these memories, thought there was some decline. Interestingly, names were recalled better than faces, and recognition was always better than free recall.

Today's ppt is here. After every lesson (I won't always remind you) you need to find the relevant section in your textbook and the memory booklet and use these resources to annotate your class notes.

We then went on the discuss the nitty gritty of how psychologist 'do' research, ie research methods. This will be a familiar strand throughout your two years of studying Psychology. I handed out booklets (electronic version here) which need to be brought to every lesson. I will source some floppy folders to keep them safe. We discussed aims, hypotheses and variables. The mini-sheet on hypotheses is here.

PLEASE let me know if any of the links don't work, or if you are struggling with the blog in any way. 

The man who keeps falling in love with his wife

Today we began our study of memory by briefly discussing the fascinating case of Clive Wearing, who has lost most of his long-term memories, and cannot create new ones either. There's lots of information out there (too much? is his privacy being respected?) - but here is an interesting article to start with.

We then got a big technical and tested the duration of our short-term memories, with varying levels of success. The class results were not quite as expected but we had a good discussions as to why this might be.

Today's powerpoint is here.

We also discussed some fairly dry research methods - independent variables and dependent variables. The worksheet is here.