Andrade 2009 Flashcards
(18 cards)
Andrade Aims
- To explore the cognitive effects of doodling.
- To find out if doodling assists information processing, perhaps by enabling people to attend more effectively or by enhancing their memory.
To test whether doodling improves concentration and recall.
What type of sampling technique did Andrade use.
Opportunity sampling. Paid participants from another study to participate in her study. Participants had just come out of another study.
What experimental design was used
Indepednant measures design
What experiment type was it
Lab study
Sample size. Age range. gender balance.
Experimental group: 20 people: 17 female 3 male.
Control group: 20 people, 18 female 2 male
All 40 volunteers aged from 18-55
What could have affected experiment because of participants: demand characteristics
All participants were from Medical research council.
Some participants openly admitted they thought experiment was about memory recall
What is the IV and the DV
IV: whether or not they doodled
DV: Memory Recall
Procedure phone call
All participants listened to a 2.5 minute dull( fake) phone call which deliberately sounded boring.
What was the monitoring task
Participants were told they would be tested on the names of the people who attended the party and not the ones who weren’t going to be there.
What was the recall test
Names of the places mentioned. Unexpected had not been explained before.
Which test was not known for the participants
Recall test
Procedure results. How did they measure the memory recall with the monitoring and recall tasks
Fake phone call details
2.5 minutes long. Made to be deliberately boring. Spoken in a monotonous tone and at a speed of 227 words per minute( faster than normal speech)
There were 8 names of people attending the party, 3 who did not attend and the name of a cat.
As well as 8 place names.
What were the participants in the experimental group given and told to do.
An A4 Sheet of paper was given to the experimental group. with alternating squares and circles 10 per row.
Experimental participants were given a pencil and asked to shade in squares and circles while listened to the tape.
( neatness and speed they were told was irrelevant. )
What was the filler question or filler brief
After 2.5 minute tape was finished the experimenter came into the room collected the response sheets and talked to the participants for one minute including an apology for misleading them about the memory test.
After one minute the participants completed the surprise test of recalling the names of places than party goer attendee’s or vise versa
Weakness of Andrade
Active memory is around 7-10 words or prompts so needed a bigger range of places or people to note significant change in concentration or memory recall.
Imbalanced gender - Generalization
Key results
Overall doodling participants recalled an average of 7.5 names of people and places
Overall control participants recalled an average of 5.8 names of people and places
Doodling participants recalled on average 29% more than non-doodlers
The mean number of shaded shapes was 36.3, with a range of 3 - 110
Participants in the control group recalled a mean of 7.1 of the 8 party goers, and 5 had a false alarm
Participants in the experimental group recalled a mean of 7.8 party goers, and had 1 false alarm
Conclusions
Doodling helps concentration on a primary task
two possible explanations
One: The doodlers noticed more of the target words, due to an effect on attention
Two: Doodling improved memory directly (possibly by encouraging deeper information processing)
