Experiment 3: Meaning Enhances Recalling

In today's experiment, Dr. Anthony raised up a set of flashcards with a certain word written on it and a letter written ont he top left or right corner of the paper. Given that the letter was A, one had to count the number of syllables in the word. If the letter was B, one had to evaluate the word as "pleasant" or "unpleasant". After twenty letters, students wrote down the words and the letter associated to the words.

Results revealed that the majority of the students remembered words they had to rate "pleasant" or "unpleasant". Dr. Anthony commented that this revealed how humans tend to remember things that are more meaningful, which in this case are feelings. For most people numbers did not mean as much as feelings did and therefore, the "A" words were not memorized as easily as the "B" words.

Many other factors may affect this experiment though, one of them being the amount of sleep an individual had. I for one did badly in the experiment, which may be (as an excuse) a result of having four hours of sleep due to IB homework and stress.

This experiment could also reflect how individuals attempt effortful processing. A student in our class managed to remember 19/20 words. His tactic of remember the words was creating a story using the words themselves.