IB Psychology IA HL Exemplar: Introduction

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

Introduction

Learning relies to a large extent on memory, and therefore cognitive research into memory-improving techniques is relevant in education. Recent research has suggested that there are many instances in which perceptual disfluency leads to improved memory performance, a phenomenon referred to as the “perceptual-interference effect”.

The original experiment on which this one was based was conducted by Diemand-Yauman et al. (2011) investigating the effect of a disfluent font (bold or italicized) on learning. Their first experiment used 28 adult participants recruited through Princeton University; the second used 222 high school students. The latter is the experiment that was partially replicated (Diemand-Yauman et al., 2011).

Diemand-Yauman et al. left one set of class materials in their original format, as a control, but changed the other identical set into several different disfluent formats. This was a single-blind experiment as the teachers did not know the hypothesis, just that the study was to determine the effects of different fonts on learning. They may well have expected students receiving material in the disfluent fonts to have more difficulty learning it. Disfluency was achieved either by a hard-to-read font or the study materials were copied disfluently (by moving the paper during copying).

The experiment ran for between 1.5 and 4 weeks, depending on teachers’ class plans. Students’ mean Z-scores were calculated and those in the disfluent condition scored higher on classroom assessments (M = .164, SD = 1.03) than those in the control (M = -.295, SD = 1.03). This means that students in the disfluent condition scored above the mean for all participants, while students in the fluent condition scored below the mean. The researchers found that significantly more material was retained when it was in a disfluent font, compared with when it was presented in a fluent font. (Diemand-Yauman et al., 2011).

This builds on Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) levels of processing theory, that deeper processing leads to an improvement in memory, which was further developed by Craik and Tulving (1975). They conducted several experiments and one tested the effects on recall of three different levels of processing: structural (whether a word was written in CAPITALS, for example); phonemic (whether the word rhymed with SKY, etc.); semantic (whether the word would fit in a particular sentence). Those processing semantically recalled the most words (Craik & Tulving, 1975). Diemand-Yauman et al. draw a parallel between semantic processing and the processing generated by disfluency: both are more difficult and both result in better recall.

However, recently Rummer at al. (2016) failed to replicate these findings. They suggested it was the distinctiveness of the font, in that it was different from what would be expected, which gave the positive effects. They tested this by using similar material to that in Diemand-Yauman et al.’s first experiment: descriptions of fictional aliens, but distinctiveness of the hard-to-read or easy-to-read material was controlled differently. Half of the participants received most of the descriptions in a fluent font and only one was disfluent; the other half received most of the descriptions in a disfluent font and only one was fluent. No evidence that font affected learning was found under either condition (Rummer et al., 2016).

Diemand-Yauman et al.’s second experiment has been modified, with an identical list of 25 two-syllable words being used for both disfluent font and fluent font conditions.

Aim: To determine whether hard-to-read (disfluent) font results, through deeper processing, in more words being recalled from a 25-word list.

Research Hypothesis (one-tailed): Significantly more words will be remembered from a 25-word list written in a disfluent font (Calibri italicized 12 pt) than are recalled from the same word list written in a fluent font (Calibri 12 pt).

Null Hypothesis: Any increase in recalled words from the 25-word list written in a disfluent (italicized) font will not be significant. Any observed increase will be due to chance.