Question

11) Imagine that you have conducted a study to evaluate how learning information in different environments using different strategies impacts older adults’ ability to remember a list of words. You ask one group of older adults to learn a list of words while seated in their kitchen at home and a second set of older adults to learn a list of words while seated at a table at the public library. For the first half of the learning list in both groups you ask the older adult participants to learn the words while they simultaneously say “1, 2, 3” over and over again. For the second half of the learning list in both groups you ask the older adults to study the words while listening to classical music. Thus, even though the locations in which the two groups of older adults studied the words were different, both groups of older adults experienced the two encoding conditions (repeating numbers and listening to music). When conducting the ANOVA you find the following values when evaluating the interaction between encoding condition and learning location: F = 2.42, effect degrees of freedom = 1, error degrees of freedom = 24, p-value = .337. When evaluating the main effect of learning location, you find the following values: F = 15.03, effect degrees of freedom = 1, error degrees of freedom = 24, p-value = .001. When evaluating the main effect of encoding condition, you find the following values: F = 4.56, effect degrees of freedom = 1, error degrees of freedom = 24, p-value = .038. Using the values that you have been given, report the results of the F-tests for each main effect and interaction as you would in a research paper and discuss the significance of each test.

General Experimental Psychology

Answer 1

The main effect of Factor learning location

From the ANOVA table,

F-statistic=15.03

P-value = 0.001

Conclusion: The p-value is less than 0.05 at a 5% significance level hence there is a significant main effect of learning location on the older adults’ ability to remember a list of words.

The main effect of Factor encoding condition

From the ANOVA table,

F-statistic=4.56

P-value = 0.038

Conclusion: The p-value is less than 0.05 at a 5% significance level hence there is a significant main effect of encoding condition on the older adults’ ability to remember a list of words.

The interaction between encoding condition and learning location,

From the ANOVA table,

F-statistic=2.42

P-value = 0.337

Conclusion: The p-value is greater than 0.05 at a 5% significance level hence there is no interaction between encoding condition and learning location.