Color and Cued Face-Name Pairing: The Usefulness of The Addition of Visual Stimuli in Testing Conditions

COLOR AND CUED FACE-NAME PAIRING: The Usefulness of the Addition of Visual Stimuli in Testing Conditions

Psychology Experimental Methods (PSY 393)

May 18, 2007

Abstract

Being exposed to all color or color cued images should generate a higher recall rate for names in testing phases over black and white conditions. To test this hypothesis, we exposed participants to a presentation that included face-name pairing in three-color conditions (1) All black and white images; (2) All color images, and (3) Black and white faces with different colored backgrounds. All participants completed four phases (1) study, (2) review, (3) filler task, and (4) final test. They studied and reviewed face-name pairs to stimulate their level of recall for each condition during a final test. In between review and study phases, participants completed a filler task. Study Phase: Participants were given verbal instructions to write down the name associated to the face shown on the slide presented during study. Review Phase: All participants were presented with the same order of face-name pairs for a shorter period. Filler task: was the presentation of a word search puzzle that is completed between review and final testing phase. Final Test Phase: All participants were presented faces in the same condition as study without names in a new random order. Study is defined as a period where each subject is allowed to view all face-name pairings. Review is defined as a period were participants can manually scribe, correct or attempt to relearn names associated to image for recall during final testing phase. Final test is a period where each subject is required to recall and associate as many names as possible to presented images. Our purpose was to answer the following questions: Did the addition of a visual stimulus, such as color or a visual cue enhance the level of retention of face-name pairs when attempting to associate names to the images presented during testing. If so, was it a significant increase over the black and white photos? Was there a higher recall of names associated with all color versus a color cue? Which visual condition produced the strongest association for face-name pairing? In the experiment, one of the three-color conditions exposed subjects to a study/review period for face-name stimuli via a PowerPoint presentation followed by a short filler task and a final test that presented the same condition as in study to ascertain the percentage of correctly recalled names associated with images. Our result findings did not support our hypothesis there was no enhanced levels of recall generated by the addition of all color or color cued images. Results pointed out that black and white image were recalled at a higher rate than all color or color cued images. All color also had a higher recall rate over colored cue. The strongest association for all visual conditions was found with black and white images. Internal validity may be an issue to due problems with our design, i.e., stimuli, filler task, sample size. Stimuli were too include black and white faces overlaid on different colored-cue backgrounds in one of the three-color conditions and not full colored faces on cue backgrounds. This error was discovered after the testing begun resulting in the color cue not being tested as originally intended. The design should have considered that the cued color backgrounds might be a distracter for some subjects and affect the level of recall (correctly associated names to images). The filler task should have been longer to assess the effect on the level of recall. A nonsignificant trend was identified which led us to surmise that if the sample size where larger we might have found a significance. Due to the flaws with the design, i.e., stimuli, length of filler task, sample size, the findings were not generalizable to the sample population or beyond. We found no statistically significant results for the addition of visual stimuli, i.e., color, color cues; however, we did find a trend, which could give room to the finding of statistical significance if we had a larger sample population.

Introduction

Throughout history, students, teachers, and those in the field of academia have wondered what enhances the memory performance of there students? Especially since we are a result-oriented society that offers letter grades, e.g., “A”, for excellent performance on testing, which is counteracted by a student only learned the material temporarily for testing purposes.

Historically and today students lives are very complex and they find themselves burning the candle from both ends and being torn between school life, family life, working and some form of a personal life. It is not that their studying for soon to be tested material is not important; they simply cannot find the time to get the appropriate amount of studying in during the course of their day. This leads to studying often being put off until the last minute. When this occurs the student finds themselves burning the midnight oil and attempting to stay up late the night before an exam cramming to get that “A”; only to find that the information which was ingested only hours ago; while downing unlimited cups of coffee are irretrievably lost in most cases. What happened to their level of recall? Should they have used a different method to retain and recall the information for more than that testing moment? This series of questions and a literature review led our class to execute an experiment on the testing effect.

According to Roediger and Karpicke (2006) “if students are tested on material and successfully recall or recognize it, they will remember it better in the future than if they had not been tested” (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). This phenomenon is called the testing effect and led our research team to investigate how the testing effect would fair in a single study vs. repeated study design.

Brancazio and Cooper (2007) stated in their research they had “four conditions: single study, single test, repeated study, and repeated test.” Study was a period where a subject was exposed to face-name pairings and had an opportunity to retain the data for recall during testing that presented the same images without names. They attempted to see how many names could be correctly recalled after each condition was implemented (Brancazio & Cooper, 2007).

Brancazio and Cooper (2007) wrote that “the researchers predicted repeated testing would be more effective