by The Open University
Available in 36 free installments
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The independent variable is the variable that the experimenter manipulates so this is the instruction to use the key word technique.
The dependent variable is the variable that alters as a result of the manipulation of the independent variable. The experimenter measures this variable and it is the number of Spanish words recalled.
One variable that the experimenter might need to control is to make sure that none of the participants had learnt any Spanish before the experiment as this could affect their score on the memory test.
A number of mnemonics or memory strategies are based on using mental images. A mnemonic is a strategy for improving memory and you are probably familiar with several mnemonics such as the rhyme ?30 days hath September, April, June and November, all the rest have 31 except February which has 28?? or ?Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain? to remember that the rainbow is made up of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.
An ancient mnemonic device called the ?method of loci? was developed by the poet Simonides who lived in Ancient Greece in the year 500 bc. This technique works by the learner linking mental images of the items they are trying to remember with a sequence of locations that they already know.
Let's take a simple example. Suppose you wanted to remember a list of ten items that you need to shop for.
Figure 5: A shopping list
You would imagine each of these items at various locations around your home or placed at different points down a street that you know well. Remember this technique works best if the images are outstanding and silly rather than sensible. I have suggested some images for our list in the passage below. Please read through the passage and take a moment to make the mental pictures but don't worry too much about trying to remember the items. However it is very important that you do make the picture in your mind.
Try to imagine your front door but with a huge banana instead of the usual handle. When you open the door and walk into the entrance the floor is covered in eggs and you have to walk over the eggs to get to the living room. Imagine the eggs cracking under your feet and the mess! Anyway it gets much messier because when you open the living room door you are almost knocked off your feet by the river of milk that comes gushing out. You stagger over to the window to pull the curtains which have turned into two giant slices of bread. You try to turn on the TV but fail because that has been replaced by a very large packet of cereal. Time to have a sit down, but when you collapse on the sofa you sink down into a sofa sized ginger cake. Go to the kitchen for a drink. Walking across the kitchen floor is a bit difficult as it is knee deep in sugar and when you have reached the kettle you find it has turned into a bottle of wine. I prefer white but you can visualise red if you want. Give up and go for a mug of water. Unfortunately when you reach down a mug from the cupboard it is filled with a bouquet of flowers and when you turn the tap on it is chocolate not water that comes out.
Figure 6: Your shopping
Leave the shopping list now at least for an hour and in the meantime try not to keep checking whether you have remembered the items. You will probably find that an hour or so later you will be able to remember most of the items on the list. You will even find that a few days later you will still be able to recite most of the list.
