Draft 3: Effect of Various Distractions on Memory

This topic submitted by Bryan Arntz, Taylor Stevenson, Ashley Bourn ( ArntzBJ@muohio.edu, BournAA@muohio.edu, StevenTJ@muohio.edu ) on 10/25/05. [Section: McCollum]

Natural Systems 1 Syllabus---Western Program---Miami University

What Effects Do the Five Senses Pose On Your Memory?
Introduction
Our goal for this study was to see which sense poses the biggest distraction. We think this is a very important and relevant study that can relate to everyone. Everyday people are bombarded with thousands of distractions that affect their memory. Our goal was to find, if any, which of the five senses posed the biggest distraction. When we discovered this, people would know which one had the biggest effect and then be able to eliminate it from the situation so that they would be able to remember better. We chose this topic because it does relate to everyone but it especially relates to students. When trying to study there are many distractions, from the television, to roommates, to even dinner. We wanted to find out which one had the greatest effect so that we could eliminate it and find the most favorable environment to study. This has relevance because all college kids strive for the best place to study and get work done and we will be able to tell them where that is. The larger question in this study is how distractions affect a personÕs memory. Many people do not realize just how much a little tapping or a burning candle can affect their memory. From this study, they will now know the effects of the everyday distractions they encounter.
In the past, there have been many studies that test to see how distractions affect concentration but never any studies that tested all of the five senses. In a study done by Justin Mardex from Cornell University (2004), he found that acoustical distractions are the most troublesome for distractions. He went on to say that visual distractions might be more difficult to recover from than auditory distraction. This study is important to our group because it shows us that auditory and visual distractions do cause problems for memory. Even though there are studies saying that both auditory and visual distractions cause problems for memory, we hypothesize that touch will pose as the greatest distraction. We think this because we find it hard to think that someone could concentrate while another person is tapping them on the shoulder.
In a study by Peter Walker (11/03), we found that if font and size of font affects memory. Because of this study, we decided to keep the font and the size the same size so that it would not pose an unwanted distraction. This would keep our data from being skewed.

II. Methods and Materials
Materials:
90 Notecards Cinnamon Candle
Green Sharpie Marker Chewing Gum
iPod Pencil (for tapping on shoulder)

To test memory with the different distractions, we decided to test fifty respondents. We chose this many because we wanted a large sample size so that our data would be more accurate. We also decided to keep track of the respondentÕs gender so that we would have twenty-five women and men. We did not want gender to affect our results so this is why we chose to keep it even. Also, we decided to test our fellow students because this is whom we feel the data will help and affect the most. In order to make sure that the respondents did not have anything distracting them before we administered the test, we decided to give them a preliminary survey that asked them a few questions. They included: how many hours of sleep they got the night before, when the last time they had any caffeine, when the last time they ate, and if they had anything in their life that was causing them stress. We decided to administer this because we found in a study by Harrison and Horne that Òsleep deprivation impairs memory.Ó We also wanted to make sure that they had gotten at least six hours of sleep the night before. We also didnÕt want to test anyone who was stressed at this time because this could affect our results. Eating was another important thing we wanted to check because if they hadnÕt eaten all day, they could be starving and this would affect their concentration. Lastly, we didnÕt want test any people who had had caffeine in the past two hours. We felt that this could cause them to be hyper or have any other effects that could cause them distractions. After we found twenty-five girls and twenty-five guys who successfully completed our questionnaire correctly, we were ready to test. The first round of students to test was done during our class period on November 1st, 2005. We tested twenty-five students during our two-hour class.
Our study was set up so that we could test the five senses and see which posed the biggest distraction on memory. We decided to have a certain distraction for each of the senses while the respondents were trying to memorize the notecards. These distractions were: tapping on the respondents should for the touch sense; burning a cinnamon candle for the olfactory sense, chewing a piece of bubblegum for the taste sense, and making the respondents listen to an iPod for the sound sense. When researching, we found that memory is least affected by familiar smells (Hertz, 1997) so we decided to use cinnamon which is a very familiar smell for everyone. Before we could test though, we needed to get all of our materials and set up our experiment. We first needed six sets of fifteen notecardsÑso ninety notecards total. Then we wrote 2 digit numbers on each of the notecards, ranging from 10 to 99. We decided not to use words on the notecards because it was harder to keep the difficulty of words on the same level. Also, in a study we found that words are harder to memorize than words. We thought this could pose as a distraction so we decided not to use words, but instead use numbers. We then shuffled all of the ninety notecards to ensure that each of the six sets of fifteen notecards were random. Once we had our notecards, we were ready to set up our stations. We set up six different stations, each representing a different sense and one without a sense. At the station for auditory sense, we had the iPod and set of notecards. For the olfactory sense, we had a cinnamon candle burning. For the sight sense, we had the notecards written in a different color. For the taste sense, we had the respondents chewing a piece of bubblegum. Lastly, for the touch sense, we had the group member tapping the respondentÕs shoulder while they tried to memorize the cards. All the stations, except for the scent sense (candle burning) were in the classroom. The other station was set up in Dr. McCollumÕs office. Once we were all set up, we were ready to begin our testing.
Now that we were ready to test, we put one student at each of the stations with a group member sitting with them. They would be given a set of fifteen notecards, each with a different 2-digit number on them. Once we started our stopwatch, they were given exactly three minutes to try top memorize as many notecards as they could. Once the three minutes was up, we asked them to write down as many numbers on the notecards as the remembered. Once this was done, they moved on to the next station where they were tested again the same way, only this time they encountered a different distraction. Once they went through the six stations and recorded how many numbers they remembered, they were done. We did this for twenty-five people on November 1st and finished the other twenty-five on November 3rd. Once we collected all of our data in the computer, we found the lowest mean of correct answers for a distraction. This is the sense that posed the biggest distraction. The test where the majority of the participants remembered the most numbers is the sense that posed as the sense that caused the least distraction. We would also like to perform a t-test to see if there is a significant difference in the means between the different sensory distractions.
We feel like our results are unbiased because we did all that we could to not have any error in our data. First, we had a large sample of fifty people and in this sample we had an equal number for each gender. Second, we gave a preliminary questionnaire that ensured that our respondents were not tired, hungry, stressed, or hyper due to caffeine. Lastly, we collected and processed our data carefully so there were no mistakes. We tried to take everything into account so that our data would be as precise and correct as possible.

III. Literature Cited
Journals

Beaman, Philip: ÒIrrelevant sound effects amongst younger and older adults: Objective findings and subjective insightsÓ The European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, Volume 17, Number 2, March 2005, pp. 241-265(25). Psychology Press, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

This journal entry reported on an experiment done on memorization when irrelevant sounds were introduced. This study showed that the ability to memorize data was greatly reduced when the irrelevant sounds were introduced. This is relevant to our study, because for one of our distractions, we are introducing noise in the form of music.

Elliott, Emily M.; Cowan, Nelson. Coherence of the Irrelevant-Sound Effect: Individual Profiles of Short-Term Memory and Susceptibility to Task-Irrelevant Materials: Memory & Cognition, Volume 33, Number 4, June 2005, pp. 664-675(12). Psychonomic Society Publications

Journal of Experimental Psychology / Learning, Memory & Cognition; Jul2004, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p778-786, 9p

This journal entry was reporting on experiments extremely similar to the one that we are doing. The documented experiments however went into much more depth. The authors used 262 words and gave the participants 1 hour, 2 hours, and a half hour to study a set of words. Following this time period each of the 77 participants was put through a memory test to recognize which words were in the previous set of words. It was found that more participants could more easily recall the low frequency words than the high frequency words. We used these methods as sort of a guideline to ours, only ours is on a much smaller scale, and we will be using numbers.

Journal of Experimental Psychology / Learning, Memory & Cognition; Jul2004, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p838-855, 18p

The scientists writing this journal entry did experiments with colors, which we are also experimenting with. They found that the color of the word and the color of the cue card had an effect on context memory but not for the colors themselves. We have decided to use green ink rather than the standard black ink.

Journal of Experimental Psychology / Learning, Memory & Cognition; May2004, Vol. 30 Issue 3, p605-614, 10p

The scientists found that prospective memory is more than just one step, but rather takes multiple steps to recall. We will be able to see if the allotted time is enough time to complete these steps and recall correctly.

Journal of Experimental Psychology / Learning, Memory & Cognition; May2004, Vol. 30 Issue 3, p656-674, 19p

Here scientists found that outside sounds do have adverse effects on itemized lists. It was stated that generally a list to be memorized is done so through hearing the word in their head rather than seeing it visually. Therefore distracting the participant and not allowing them to hear the number clearly in their head should pose a distraction.

Journal of Experimental Psychology / Learning, Memory & Cognition; Mar2004, Vol. 30 Issue 2, p370-381, 12p

This experiment used music as an outside distraction to the memorization process. It was found that music increased the memorization when the participant enjoyed the music, and vice versa. The favored music helped the participant to focus easier and correlate the music to the memory. Unfortunately our group does not have the resources or time to find each participantÕs favorite and least favorite music.

Harrison, Yvonne; Horne, James A.. Sleep Loss and Temporal Memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Section A; February 2000, Vol. 53 Issue 1, p271-2

Herz, R.S. (1997). The effects of cue distinctiveness on odor-based context dependent memory. Memory and Cognition, 25, 375-380.

Oswald, Catherine J.P.; Tremblay, SÚbastien; Jones, Dylan M.. Disruption of comprehension by the meaning of irrelevant sound. Memory, Sep2000, Vol. 8 Issue 5, p345-350, 6p; DOI: 10.1080/09658210050117762; (AN4438353)

Walker, Peter; Hinkley, Lisa. Visual memory for shape-colour conjunctions utilizes structural descriptions of letter shape. Visual Cognition; November 2003, Vol. 10 Issue 8, p987, 14p.

Wolach I, Pratt H. The mode of short-term memory encoding as indicated by event-related potentials in a memory scanning task with distractions. Clinical Neurophysiology, Volume 112, Issue 1, Pages 186-197

This experiment studied memorization with and without distractions. The distracter used in this study was noise. The study found that memorization was decreased when the noise distraction was introduced. This study is very similar to the portion of our study that deals with noise distraction.

Websites

Mardex, Justin. Auditory, Visual, and Physical Distractions in the workplace. Cornell University, Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, 2004. http://www.justinmardex.com/media/jrmhumanfactors.pdf

This website provides a study on the affects of distractions in the work place. This study shows that distractions in the workplace reduce the productivity of the workers. Although our study is not about distractions in the workplace, this study helps us because it shows that distractions reduce productivity, or in our case, memorization ability.

http://homeworktips.about.com/library/weekly/aa110697.htm

This website provides tips on improving oneÕs study habits. One of the tips this website provides is to not do other things while you are studying such as: preparing snacks, watching television, or listening to music. This website claims these things reduce your ability to memorize and absorb the material. This theory coincides perfectly with what our group is trying to prove.

http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~engasc/concentration.htm

This website talks about external and internal distractions that affect peopleÕs study habits. It also talks about where you should and should not study, and effective ways to study. This is relevant to our study, because we are implementing distractions on our subjects that are talked about in this website.

http://www.smu.ca/administration/studentservices/peers_remember.html

http://www.swic.edu/successcenter/handouts/Memorizing.pdf

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