A-Level AQA Psychology Working Memory Model: 1
Working memory training

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Question

1
Working memory training

Working memory training is where people repeatedly practise increasingly difficult working memory tasks to attempt to improve their cognitive performance.

Researchers wanted to see how working memory training affected recognition performance of a list of words. They recruited 100 participants who were allocated to either the working memory training group (Condition 1) or the control group (Condition 2).

At the beginning of the study, all participants in Condition 1 and Condition 2 were read 20 target words. The participants then had to try and recognise the 20 target words from a list of 60 words, where 40 were new words. All participants were given two minutes to recognise as many of the target words as they could.

During the next three weeks:

- Condition 1 (working memory training group) completed a session of working memory training for 90 minutes, once a week.

- Condition 2 (control group) did no working memory training.

After the three-week period, the participants then performed another memory recognition task. As before, they had to learn a list of 20 words from a list of 60 words, where 40 were new words.

(Source: adapted from Matzen et al. (2016))

(a) State a fully operationalised directional (one-tailed) experimental hypothesis for the working memory training study.

(b) The number of words correctly recognised (out of 20) by participants was recorded as a measure of memory performance by the researchers.

State which level of measurement the number of words correctly recognised (out of 20) for each participant would be in the working memory training study.

(c) The working memory training study used a laboratory experiment to assess the memory of the participants.

Explain two strengths of using a laboratory experiment for the working memory training study.

(d) The mean results of the working memory training study are shown in Table 1.

| Group | Performance on memory recognition task (out of 20) at the beginning of the study | Performance on memory recognition task (out of 20) at the end of the study |
|-------|----------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------|
| Condition 1 (working memory training group) | 13.3 | 10.7 |
| Condition 2 (control group) | 11.9 | 12.1 |

Table 1

Explain two conclusions that could be made using the data in Table 1.

The results of the working memory training group at the end of the study are shown in Table 2.

| Number of words recognised correctly (out of 20) | Frequency |
|--------------------------------|----------|
| 0 – 5 words | 10 |
| 6 – 10 words | 40 |
| 11 – 15 words | 20 |
| 16 – 20 words | 20 |

Table 2

(e) (i) Draw a histogram to display the data in Table 2.

(e) (ii) Interpret the histogram you have drawn for (e)(i).

1 Working memory training Working memory training is where people repeatedly practise increasingly difficult working memory tasks to attempt to improve their cognitive performance - AQA - A-Level Psychology - Question 1 - 2019 - Paper 3

Worked Solution & Example Answer:1 Working memory training Working memory training is where people repeatedly practise increasingly difficult working memory tasks to attempt to improve their cognitive performance - AQA - A-Level Psychology - Question 1 - 2019 - Paper 3

State a fully operationalised directional (one-tailed) experimental hypothesis for the working memory training study.

State which level of measurement the number of words correctly recognised (out of 20) for each participant would be in the working memory training study.

Explain two strengths of using a laboratory experiment for the working memory training study.

Explain two conclusions that could be made using the data in Table 1.

Draw a histogram to display the data in Table 2.

Interpret the histogram you have drawn for (e)(i).

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