Most of what I would like to discuss doesn't center on anything specifically in the readings, more just some basic ideas that were throughout and on what has been happening with the research we've been doing outside of class (the story project).
While all of these studies—release-from-proactive-interference, cue-dependent-forgetting, etc.—posit interesting and seemingly accurate theories onto how our memory seems to work, what if they are all missing something. Collecting the research for the story project made me wonder, what if every one of these tests is suffering from the same bias? Doesn't the knowledge that you are participating in a psychological study on memory, particularly in the case of the story, make you approach the whole situation differently? Even without the understanding that it is a study on memory you are still stuck into a position that is testing you in some way.
It is ridiculous for me to claim that all experimental psychology is biased and unreliable by virtue of the fact that it is a psychological experiment. That is in no way what I am claiming here; I think it's obvious that these structured experiments have plenty to offer to the understanding of memory as well as many other aspects of psychology. What I find interesting is the idea that perhaps we will never get to the truth of how our minds really work by putting them in these artificial and structured situations. Rubin is very interested in getting to the root of how memory functions in oral histories and how the findings from the lab experiments reveal things (or don't) about this process. Perhaps the problem with all of it is that we cannot get to a more complete understanding of this process with the experiments structured the way they are.
What prompted me into this line of thinking was when I gave the story experiment to one of my friends. I told her (probably mistakenly) that it was for my Memory Research Seminar class. It completely changed the way she had been reading the story. At first she was reading normally and as soon as she had the knowledge that it was for a psychology course—much less one on memory—she began asking for quiet and seemed much more focused (without actually breaking any of the rules of the experiment). I would be curious to see what would happen if the experiment was done without the absolute knowledge of the participant, and what everyone thinks the result—whatever it might be—signifies.
I don't have an answer to any of these questions, nor do I have a purported alternative. I think it is something, though, that would be interesting to explore further and I'm curious to see what everyone thinks of the idea. Would it be a problem? Does it even matter? Would we gain any new knowledge from conducting these experiments in a different manner?
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3 comments:
This interests me because the same thoughts occurred to me while I was doing the first data collection assignment.
The example you give of your friend demanding quite upon realizing what the experiment is actually testing is a good articulation of the issue at hand. As soon as your friend realized what was being tested her approach to the test changed, and the results to the test were probably altered.
I think that it is important to realize, however, that if you decide to test the effects of the subjects based on whether or not they realize it is a memory test, you are actually not testing memory. Perhaps you will be testing if their memory is better once they realize that is what you're testing. But ultimately I think you'd be testing a social reaction to information: how someone reacts to the fact that their memory is being tested. That would be an interesting test, but I don't think it actually would help, in the end, to control variables in the memory research process.
I, too, was concerned about how people's perceptions of the experiment would affect their performance. All my subjects knew that they were going to be tested on memory and most of them were nervous about "failing" it. While I agree with Catie that looking at the differences in subjects' performance when they know they're being tested for memory and when they don't would be a different type of test, I think it would still be very useful for our knowledge about memory. If they perform better in one situation, then we can assume that they have a better short term memory than the other test indicates. If their performance is the same, than maybe "test anxiety" affected their short term memory. Yes, we would also be looking at social reactions, but there could also potentially be a lot of very valuable information in those experiments.
I feel that you are right to be concerned on how the situation [an experiment] will alter the results. In terms of how to get around this, any good experiment will in fact spend much of its time figuring out how to test people not only for results, but also for good results. That is, there is an assumption that things like self report are inherently flawed, so as a researcher you must find a way to take the experimental aspect away as much as possible. This typically involves asking the right question. Also, in terms of memory, and the pressure to do well, if you establish a setting where people do not feel that they are being judged [don't have them write their name on the paper] it sets a different mood. For instance, when i did the survey, i completely missed the part that said i was supposed to take peoples initials, sex and concentration. In practice then, i told people not to worry about it, and that i did not care about how accurate the recording was and no one in my class would ever find you who they were. I am sure that will affect my data in some way [and may mean my data is bad for the study .. argh].
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