Thompson et al. (2001)

Question 1

Abstract?

Answer 1

• Similar structure to G+B study but used skydiving instead
• Experiment looking at the different levels of emotional arousal on memory of words in matching and mismatching contexts
• Under extremely emotionally arousing circumstances environmental/mood cues can’t be used as cues to retrieval

Question 2

Introduction?

Answer 2

• Purpose = investigate how learning + remembering are affected by high levels of emotional arousal
  -> + compare performance under naturally stressful conditions (exp 1) with performance under conditions that mimic the source of arousal (exp 2)
• Hypothesis A: stress experienced during skydiving would disrupt the encoding of words learned in both land + air contexts
• Hypothesis B: milder levels of stress in the video should allow p’s to encode more enviro/mood context cues to assist recall
• Hypothesis C: level of recall should be lower in the actual skydiving context than in the video context

Question 3

Method - exp 1?

Answer 3

• 5, 20 item word lists were created
• 4 conditions: LL, LA, AA, AL
• LL condition done in a quiet place, p’s alone
• LA condition: p’s listened to the word lists then entered the plane jumped out + performed the recall task
• AL condition: p’s jumped out the plane + performed the learning task, went to the landing zone to record their responses
• AA condition: higher altitude so enough time for the learning + recall phase before landing

Question 4

Results exp 1?

Answer 4

• Recall was higher when words were learned on the ground compared to when they were learned in the air
• No difference in recall for AA or AL conditions
• Recall was significantly higher in the LL than the LA condition
• Also higher recall in the LA condition than the AL condition

Question 5

Method - exp 2?

Answer 5

• same word lists used
• design was replicated but the skydivers were shown a video instead
• shown a 15 min video of skydivers falling out of a plane
• in the ‘air conditions’ the chair faced towards the tv, in the ‘land’ conditions it faced away from the tv

Question 6

Results - exp 2?

Answer 6

• Recall was significantly greater when words were learned in the land context than in the air context
• Recall was higher in matching learn-recall contexts regardless of the situation in which learning occurred
• greater recall in the AA condition compared with the AL condition
• recall was also higher in the LL condition than the LA condition
• significantly greater recall across all conditions in experiment 2 compared to experiment 1

Question 7

Discussion?

Answer 7

• Extreme arousal significantly weakened p’s ability to learn and remember new material
• Cue utilization hypothesis - low recall in air-learning conditions indicates that the words were not receiving large amounts of conscious processing

Question 8

What was different about their results compared to G+B and what explanation did they give for this?

Answer 8

• Participants who learned and recalled on land both times managed to recall more than those who learned and recalled in the air both times despite the context staying the same
• The reason for this is due to the extreme arousal caused when sky diving which meant participants learnt and recalled less when skydiving

Question 9

Advantages of this study?

Answer 9

• They replicated the effect in different settings = tells us that the effect wasn’t specific to G+B study but instead also occurs in other natural environments
• Began to understand how other factors e.g stress influence the CDM effect
• More control exercised over natural environment since all participants tested under same natural conditions
  -> some people in the G+B paper dived in open water and others in fresh water sites