IB Psychology IA SL Exemplar: Discussion

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

Discussion

Like Diemand-Yauman et al.’s experiment, this experiment demonstrated that the disfluent font resulted in improved recall. (Diemand-Yauman et al., 2011). These researchers used the mean of the z-scores and did not report their data set mean and SD, but they did find a difference, with the disfluent group remember more than those under the fluent condition. Similarly, we found 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). 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.

Limitations are that an 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; whether the length of the words has an effect; 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 improved recall of a 25-word list of two syllable words.

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...