Document Type

Paper

Publication Date

4-25-2019

Advisor

Michael Livingston, Psychology

Abstract

People who had a distraction, listening to the podcast, while looking through the basic pictures will remember less images than those who did not listen to anything or have any distractions. There are many distractions that happen in our daily lives, throwing us off course or making us forget what we were doing completely. Even though we feel as if we are paying attention to the subject at hand, distractions can cause us to forget about it. According to a study conducted by McNab, Zeidman, Rutledge, Smittenaar, Brown, Adams, and Dolan (2015), when people are distracted while completing a task they are less likely to remember what they were doing. Technology has become an increasing part of our lives every day. For a majority of people it seems like they have at least one technological device with them anywhere they go. Not only are people tempted to look at them whenever they have a free minute, but they get notified whenever they have a new message so that they are able to instantly respond. This study was completed using random assignment and was a convenience sample for a class assignment. The study had 20 participants, 10 in the control group and 10 in the experimental group. The study looked at the difference between memory recall of 20 images when participants were listening to nothing and when they were listening to a podcast. This study was close to significance and had a high effect size and lower power, showing that my hypothesis was supported. When people are listening to something while trying to remember images, they are more likely to remember fewer images than those who were listening to nothing.

Share

COinS