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Experiment 3

The experiment compared the speed of learning for meaningful and meaningless materials. Two lists were created, one with meaningful words and one with meaningless syllables. Subjects were asked to memorize the lists and recall them within a time limit. The results showed that both subjects took fewer trials to learn the meaningful words compared to the meaningless syllables. This suggests that meaningful materials are easier to learn than meaningless materials.

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100% found this document useful (5 votes)
12K views9 pages

Experiment 3

The experiment compared the speed of learning for meaningful and meaningless materials. Two lists were created, one with meaningful words and one with meaningless syllables. Subjects were asked to memorize the lists and recall them within a time limit. The results showed that both subjects took fewer trials to learn the meaningful words compared to the meaningless syllables. This suggests that meaningful materials are easier to learn than meaningless materials.

Uploaded by

Kenny Gurumayun
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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EXPERIMENT No.

" Meaningful and Meaningless Materials"

ABSTRACT

The experiment was comparing the speed of learning for Meaningful and Meaningless
materials. For this purpose, subject had performed an experiment with two list of learning
material of same length, one list of Meaningful words and another one of MEaningless
syllables are persented. Each letter consists of 5 alphabets.The experiment was conducted
using AB BA design and so the lists were divided accordingly. The counter balance design
was used to control practice effects and to control the transfer of training. Also the method
of complete presentation was used. The subject was presented with the List B (Meaningful
Words) first followed by List A (MEaningless Syllables). He was given 1 minute to recall. It
continued till one errorless trial. The datas were collected and analysed for both the lists
following the same instructions which was he was given 1 minute to recall. It can be clearly
seen in the results that the Meaningless Materials are easy than the Meaningless Syllables
and there is individual difference in speed of learning.

Keywords : Meaningful Words, Nonsense Syllables , Speed of learning.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Compairing the speed of learning for meaningful and meaningless materials.

PURPOSE OF THE EXPERIMENT

To understand how performance is a function of what is :-

i) To measure the speed of learning of meaningful and meaningless materials.

ii) To compare the performance of the object on both the materials.

iii) To gain an insight on whether transfer of training occurs in either of the two practice.

INTRODUCTION
Psychologist refer to learning as measurable change in behaviour as a result of
practice and the condition that a company practice.

Verbal Learning - Man is primarily a verbal learner. Every subject has unique own
sets of verbal response. Each subject has his own complex association, meanings and
preference in relation to that material. For this response nonsense syllables are employed.
The nonsense syllables consists of a vowel letter between two consonants and has no
dictionary meaning.

The method of complete persentation - The total series is presented to the subject,
and he is allowed to read it and explore it at his own spped. A time limit is usually set, but
within the alloted time the learner behaviour is not controlled and he is free to linger over
some parts, skip lightly over others nor the experimenter can be sure at what point the
subject begin to rehearse the material and to react to himself. When the experimenter
finally lists the subject's retention , he may find it difficult to interpret the results for he has
no information about the ways in which the subject attached his task or about the temporal
course of his task or about the temporal course of his learning.

In learning three main variables play an important role :

i) The nature of the materials or activities learned.

ii) Condition of practice under which lerning takes place,

iii) The personal characteristics of subject.

MATERIALS

List of 15 meaningful words (each words has 5 letters), List of 15 meaningless


syllables ( each syllables has 5 letters), Stopwatch, Pencil, Record Sheet, Introspection Sheet.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The aim of the experiment was to understand gow performance is a function of what
is learnt. Subject I will be given list A (meaningless) to learn followed by List B (meaningful)
and Subject II will be first administered List B followed by List A. The subjects were asks to
memorize the lists that were given to them and they were given 30 seconds to memorize it
and 1 minute for recalling and trials were noted down. The same will be done by another
experimenter and their datas will be shared for later analysis.
Variable :

Independent Variable: Nature of material ( list of meaningful words and list of meaningless
syllables)

Dependent Variable : 1) Numbers of trials taken to reach one errorless trial.2) Number of
correct words recall per trial .

Controls:

1) No feedback should be given to the subject .2) Environmental factors are to be


controlled.3) AB-BA counterbalancing design is used to control order effect .4) Both list A
and B should contain equal numbers of words / syllables ( 15 items in each list).5) Both the
list have equal difficulty level in terms of number of letter in each words / syllables ( 5 letter
each)6) Presentation of both the material should be shown for duration of exposure. ( 30
seconds ) and method of complete presentation .

7) Recall of both the materials should have the same time duration ( 1 minutes ) and same
method ( Free Recall Method ).

Sample :

Subject Gender Age Qualification

A Male 24 MA II (English)

B Female 17 FYBA (English)

Hypothesis: Meaningful material will be easier to learn than meaningless material.

Scoring Method :1) Total numbers of trials to be calculated .2) Average of both the subject
to be calculated .3) To find out transfer of effect by seeing the differences.

PROCEDURE

Rapport Formation :

Subject A : There we're no difficulties in forming up the report as the subject was from
MA II. Yet precaution was taken that the subject feel comfortable and relaxed during the
conduction of the experiment.
Subject B : The subject was made comfortable and well settled in the laboratory
setting and since the subject was already acquainted with the experimenter so rapport
formation was not difficult and the subject was asked whether the subject is ready to begin
the experiment .

Instruction :

The following instruction was given to the subject “ The experiment will be conducted
in two sessions instruction for session 1 is you will be given a list of string of letters ,your
task is to read the stings of letters carefully and try to memorize them . For this you will be
given 30 seconds and after that you have to try and recall as many strings of letters as you
can by spelling them out for this you will be given 1 minute , we will start when you are
ready. Instruction for session 2 is you will be given a list of words , your task is to read the
words carefully and try to memorise them . For this you will be given 30 seconds and after
that you have to try and recall as many words as you can by spelling out them for this you
will be given 1 minutes , we will start when you are ready .

Actual procedure :

The experiment was conducted in the department laboratory , the aim of the
experiment is to understand how performance is a function of what is learnt . For this
purpose two list one containing 15 strings of letters and another one containing 15 series of
words and AB- BA counterbalancing design was used for this experiment for subject A (AB
design ) was used and for subject B (BA design was used and they were instructed to
memorize the string of letters and stings of words given to them and they were noted down
on the record sheet . Data was collected and analyzed.

RESULT

Qualitative Result :

Subject A : The subject's mental and physical state was not really ready for the
experiment as per the introspective report. For him the List B (meaningful words) was more
easier than the List A (nonsense syllables) as found the words more easier to remember and
nonsense syllabus were hard to memorize as they has no meanings. He associates East of
the syllables from the the List A to Islamic names and he used that as a strategy to
remember the nonsense syllables. He experienced some noises in during the conduction
which can be count as an extra extraneous variable.

Subject B : The subject was mentally and physically fit during the conduction of the
experiment . The subject find meaningful words more easier to learn than meaningless
syllables the subject said it was hard to learn meaningless syllables because they don’t hold
any meaning so the subject said it was hard to learn and for remembering the words she use
to remember those word that are more easier to remember and for the meaningless
syllables the subject tried to learn those letters which have some kind of same
pronunciation .

Quantitative Report :

Table 2. Correct response per trial


Trails Meaningful Meaningless Meaningful Meaningless
words ( Subject syllables words (Subject syllables
A) (Subject A) B) (Subject B )

1 5 1 14 5

2 6 3 15 5

3 1 5 6

4 9 4 9

5 13 5 15

6 11 7

7 14 1

8 13 6

9 13 7

10 11 8

11 14 10

12 14 7

13 15 11

14 10

15 13

16 13

17 13

18 12

19 11

20 12

21 11

22 15
In Table 2 we can see that both subject A and B took less number of trials in
meaningful words than meaningless syllables and for meaningless syllables. Subject A took
22 trials and for Subject B it took 5 trials and for meaningful words for subject A it took 13
trials and for subject B it took 2 trials

Table 3. Total number of trials for both the meaningful words and meaningless syllables.

Types of Material Subject A Subject B Average

Meaningful Words 13 2 7.53

Nonsense Syllables 22 5 13.5

Table 3 shows the total number of trials taken for subject A meaningful words is 13
and for meaningless syllables is 22 which the average is 7.53 and for subject B it took 5 trials
for meaningless syllables and 2 trials for meaningful words and the average is 13.5

Table 4. Transfer effects in AB-BA counterbalancing design ( Total number trial for each list ).

Practice Condition Subject A (BA Design) Subject B (AB Design)

Meaningful Words 13 2

Meaningless Syllables 22 5

Difference 9 3

In table 4 we can see the transfer effect in AB- BA counterbalancing design by finding
differences between meaningful words and meaningless syllables for subject( A ) is 9 and for
subject (B) is 3. There is positive transfer of effects in both subjects.

Discussion :

The objective of the experiment was to compare the speed of learning of meaningful
and meaningless materials . Learning can be defined as relatively permanent change in
thebehaviour or attitude of a person over time. Two list were used learning of meaningful
words and meaningless syllable and AB-BA design was used and two experimenter shared
each other result for this experiment . There were 15 words and 15 syllables and the subject
were given 30 seconds to learn the list and 1 minute to free-recall it and spell the words .
The experiment was conducted in such a way where the data for subject B was taken from
another experimenter and then analysed together with Data of Subject A. For this
experiment two subjects were used one male from MA II (English) and one female from
FYBA(English ) . The subject ‘A’ did meaningful words in 13 trials and for meaningless
syllables it took 22 trials and for subject ‘B’ it took 2 trials for meaningful words and it took 5
trials for meaningless trials and the average of both the subject is for meaningful it is 9 and
for meaningless it is 12 and the transfer effects in AB-BA counterbalancing design were
calculated and the differences between the meaningful and meaningless material for both
the subject is 9 and 3 . Meaningful material is found to be easier to learn than meaningless
material and there will be point of subjectivity equality . The hypothesis is accepted since
both of the subject took less trials in learning meaningful words than meaningless syllables
and there is the differences in result since two subjects were used so point of subjective
equality can be seen . The method of free recall and complete presentation was used .

Limitation :

1) The experiment was conducted on two subjects .2) Sample size is small.

3) Noise was not fully control .4) Two experimenter .5) There were gender differences.6)
Age differences .7) Since sample size is small result can’t be generalized .

Use of the experiment :

1) Improving the retrieval of information from external sources.

2) Short- term memory for complex meaningful visual configurations : A demonstration of


capacity

3) cognitive Structure and the facilitation of meaningful verbal learning.

Conclusion

In the experiment of meaningful words and meaningless syllables the hypothesis is


accepted since their is less trials taken for the meaningful words than meaningless syllables
which clearly means that the meaningful words are easier to learn than the meaningless
syllables..
References

Postman and Egan (2016), page -312, Measurement of Learning.

Dorothy VM Bishop , Hsinjen Julie Hsu BMC Psychology 3(1),3,2015, The system
in children with the specific language impairment : A comparison of meaningful and
meaningless auditory – visual pair associate learning.

Frank Smith Harvard Educational Review 47(3), 386-395, 1977, Making sense of reading
– and of reading instruction.

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