Semantic Encoding vs. Acoustic Encoding

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of the experiment was to see whether the usage of acoustic or semantic encoding would be best in memorizing a number of unrelated items in a short amount of time. Methods/Materials I had 110 students, ranging from 7th-8th grade, and randomly splitted them into two groups, Group A and Group B. I tested Group A using acoustic encoding. First, I gave Group A the 1st board with 20 unrelated items and asked them to remeber as many items as possible in a time intervel of 20 seconds. That was the pretest. Then I gave them a tape recorder with numerous random items repeated out-loud over and over. The point of this was to prime up Group A to use this acoustic encoding method in their second board. Then the 2nd board was brought out and Group A was asked to do the same thing in 20 seconds, except this time Group A was remembering the items by saying them out-loud. That was the posttest. For Group B, the group using semantic encoding, I gave them the same tests. The only thing was that between the pretest and the posttest I taught Group B a memory technique using semantic encoding. The memory technique envolved linking all the different items into one story. So in their posttest board, Group B subjects were remebering the items by linking the 20 different items into one story. Results For Group A, using acoustic encoding, there was really no difference between the numbers of items remembered between the pretest and the posttest, 0.09. However, Group B had an average of 4 items remembered more in the posttest then in the pretest, which is quite significant. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion is that semantic encoding allows one to remember more in a longer amount of time then acoustic encoding does. That's because semantic encoding allows information to slid into the long-term memory from the short-term memory.

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Behavioral Sciences · Entry J0310

Resources

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