1. The Effects of Type of Stimulus and Time of Day on Memory Accuracy Rebecca Bartlett, Heather Ferguson, Laura Frasco, Abigail Poole, & Emily Sylvester Mount Holyoke College

2. Variables Independent Variables— Type of stimuli: –Video –Text Time of day: - Morning (10am-11am) - Afternoon (3pm-4pm) - Evening (8pm-9pm) Dependent Variable--Memory accuracy. Dependent Measure--Score on a memory test.

3. *~Introduction~* Hypothesis: Participants exposed to audiovisual stimulus in the afternoon will have more accurate recall than participants exposed to textual stimulus or participants tested during the morning and evening.

4. Viewing the video will stimulate more of the participants’ senses than reading the text, and participants will be more alert in the afternoon than in the morning or evening. Rationale

5. Previous Research TYPE OF STIMULUS: - Children’s memory for news: A comparison of three presentation media (Gunter, Furnham & Griffiths, 2000). - Memory for material presented in the media: The superiority of written communication (Furnham, Proctor, & Gunter, 1988).

6. More Previous Research TIME OF DAY AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS: –Modulating effects of time of day on age difference in memory performance: Attention versus inhibition. (Chelminski, 2000) –Self-report of arousal as an indicant of activation level. (Dermer & Berscheid, 1972)

7. Method Participants (P’s) –60 MHC Students –10 P’s in each condition –Random assignment & recruitment

8. Materials Background paper 2 Clips from the film 12 Angry Men TV VCR Transcript (on a computer) Questionnaire Consent form/Debriefing Statement

9. Procedure Step 1: Have P’s read and sign consent form. Step 2: Distribute and collect background paper. Step 3: Expose P’s to stimuli. Step 4: Distribute and then collect questionnaire. Step 5: Debrief P’s.

10. Results Measure of memory accuracy = score on questionnaire. Remember… –Better recall with audiovisual in the afternoon. We used a 2 (type of stimulus: audiovisual and textual) X 3 (time of day: morning, afternoon, evening) independent groups ANOVA.

11. Afternoon

12. Morning Evening

13. In Other Words… We had NO significant main effects and NO interaction.

14. Discussion We failed to reject the null hypothesis: - There was no significant difference between either the stimulus groups or the time of day groups. Therefore, our study was inconsistent with previous research: -- (Furnham, Proctor, & Gunter, 1988) -- (Dermer & Berscheid, 1972)

15. What went wrong??? Minimum number of participants. Straying from random assignment. P’s inaccuracy due to rushing through. Some P’s had previously seen 12 Angry Men. Inconsistencies among experimenters. Further research must be done...

16. Questions, Comments, Suggestions?