The Effect of Imagined versus Real Context and Color Congruency on Word Recognition

1
The Effect of Imagined versus Real Context and
Color Congruency on Word Recognition

• Brittany Bramwell and
• Emma Whitmore
• The University of Dayton

2
Background

• Encoding Specificity Principle
• Tulving Thomson, 1973
• Imagined Context
• Geiselman and Glenny, 1977

3
Present Focus

• Can the context that is needed to produce
  encoding specificity have the same effect if the
  context is imagined?
• Much of the research concerning this question
  deals with verbal stimuli where as the current
  study focuses on visual stimuli.

4
Hypothesis

• There will be no significant difference between
  the words recognized in both the imagined context
  and real context.
• There will be a significant difference between
  the words recognized in both the incongruent and
  congruent contexts.

5
Method

• Participants
• 16 undergraduate students
• Materials
• Answer sheet
• Headphones and writing material
• Computer with Windows 2000
• Microsoft Powerpoint

6
Design and Procedure

• Repeated Measures Within-Subject Design
• First Independent Variable Type of context at
  study
• Imagined versus Real
• Second Independent Variable Type of context at
  test
• Congruent or Incongruent Color
• Dependent Variable Amount of words recognized

7
2 x 2 Factorial Design

• 
  Retrieval
• Congruent
  Incongruent
• Imagined
  -
• Encoding
• -
• Real

8
Condition 1

• Study Test
• 
  cat

9
Condition 2

• Study Test
• 
  cat

10
Condition 3

• Study Test
• cat cat

11
Condition 4

• Study Test
• cat cat

12
Participants Task

• To focus on each word presented at study by
  either
• Imagining the word written in the color presented
  
• Looking at the word on the screen
• At test
• Place a check mark on answer sheet if word is
  recognized from study

13
Results

• There was no significant difference between the
  words recalled in both the imagined and real
  context conditions.
• There was also no significant difference between
  words recalled in both the incongruent and
  congruent color conditions.

14
Average Words Recalled in Each of the Four
Conditions
15
Discussion

• The results failed to confirm one of our
  hypotheses here there was no significant
  difference between the congruent and incongruent
  conditions.
• However the results supported our other
  hypothesis there was no significant difference
  between the imagined and real context conditions.

16
Problems with Study

• Design
• Between-subjects design may have been more
  effective
• Participants
• May need larger sample size
• Difficulty of Task
• More words at study or different type of test
  (i.e. recall test)

17
Implications and Future Studies

• Implications
• Students
• Teachers
• Power of the Imagination
• Future Studies
• To what extent can the imagination produce
  contexts that aid in encoding specificity?
• The strength of the imagination on performing
  other cognitive tasks such as memorization.