IB Psychology IA HL Exemplar: Discussion

Below is an example of a Discussion section for an exemplar IB Psychology Internal Assessment (Higher Level).

Discussion

The experiment failed to demonstrate that words written in a disfluent font are significantly easier to recall. Although there was a difference between the means of the two groups, with the mean number of words recalled by Group A (disfluent, mean 19.6) being 2.1 higher than the mean number of words recalled by Group B (fluent, mean 17.5), this was shown to be not significant when the Mann-Whitney U test was applied. Both SDs are high enough to suggest a spread of data. The SD of 2.76 for the disfluent group showed a greater data spread around the mean than did the SD for the fluent group (2.17). The highest number of words recalled in Group A was 24 (5.4 above the mean) and the lowest was 16 (3.6 below the mean). This suggests that for some the disfluent font strongly aided recall.

Diemand-Yauman et al.’s (2011) findings were that the differences were significant at the p< 0.001 level, using an independent samples t-test. (Diemand-Yauman et al., 2011). Because we could not be sure of a normal data distribution and of similar variances in both groups, we did not use the t-test, but used the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. Nonetheless, like Diemand-Yauman et al.’s experiment, this experiment demonstrated that the disfluent font resulted in improved memory. (Diemand-Yauman et al., 2011)

Rummer et al. (2016) argued that Diemand-Yauman’s results were because of the distinctiveness of the font, which was unexpected, rather than the disfluency of it. Our experiment controlled for distinctiveness of font by using Calibri 12pt in both cases, with italicizing being the only change, and for distinctiveness of content by using two-syllable English nouns from a list of the most common words. (Rummer et al., 2016)

Craik and Tulving (1975) suggested that semantically-processed material was better remembered because of deeper processing (Craik & Tulving, 1975). This is a hypothesis that fits with the findings of our experiment, as the extra difficulty added by the italic font may have resulted in deeper processing of the words.

Limitations are that independent samples design with random allocation to groups can still result in differences between the groups. Our participants all had English as their second language, and the stronger language speakers may have accidentally been in one group. A modification would be to allocate participants to groups as matched pairs by language ability.

Our random allocation to groups also resulted in Group A (disfluent) containing 8 boys and 2 girls and Group B containing 4 boys and 6 girls. If there is an unknown gender preference for a disfluent font amongst females then that could explain the non-significance of our findings, as most of the girls were in the group with the fluent font. A modification would be to conduct two experiments, one with all males and the other with all females and then compare the results.

Moreover, although we asked for silence during the memorizing and recall, some participants were muttering the words to themselves both as they learnt them and as they recalled them. A desirable modification would be noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs for all participants, to prevent interference with other participants.

Further research could investigate: The role of age in the ability to remember material in a disfluent font; different types of disfluency (colour, faintness, bold vs. italics); the effect of disfluent fonts on people with dyslexia; and degrees of disfluency - at what point does a disfluent font become more difficult to process than a fluent font?

In conclusion, the disfluent font did not significantly improve recall of a 25-word list, though there was enough improvement in memory to warrant further research.

References

Brown, R. (2016). Linguasorb. Retrieved August 29, 2016, from www.linguasorb.com: http://www.linguasorb.com/english/most-common-noun...

Craik, F., & Lockhart, R. (1972). Levels of Processing: A Framework for Memory Research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior (11), 671-684.

Craik, F., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General , 104 (3), 268-294.

Diemand-Yauman et al. (2011). Fortune favors the bold (and the italicized ): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition (118), 114-118.

HIOX Softwares Pvt Ltd. (n.d.). Easy Calculation. Retrieved August 30, 2016, from www.easycalculation.com: https://www.easycalculation.com/statistics/standar...

Holah, M. (n.d.). Holah.co.uk. Retrieved August 30, 2016, from www.holah.co.uk: http://www.holah.karoo.net/stats.htm

Rummer et al. (2016). Fortune is fickle: null-effects of disfluency on learning outcomes. Metacognition Learning (11), 57-70.