Hyde and Jenkins (1973) experiment on the effect of the way in which words are processed on recall

1. Hyde and Jenkins (1973) experiment on the effect of the way in which words are processed on recall AIM: To investigate the effects of shallow & deep processing on recall. PROCEDURE: Hyde and Jenkins (1973) presented auditorily lists of 24 words and asked different groups of participants to perform one of the following so-called orienting tasks: ♦ rating the words for pleasantness ♦estimating the frequency with which each word is used in the English language ♦detecting the occurrence of the letters ‘e' and 'g' in any of the words ♦deciding the part of speech appropriate to each word (e.g. noun, adjective) ♦deciding whether the words fitted into a particular sentence frame.

2. Rating the words for pleasantness (e.g. is “donkey” a pleasant word?) (semantic) • Estimating the frequency with which each word is used in the English language (e.g. how often does “donkey” appear in the English language?) (semantic) • Detecting the occurrence of the letters “e” & “g” in the list words (e.g. is there an “e” or a “g” in the word “donkey”?) (structural) • Deciding the part of speech appropriate to each word (e.g. is “donkey” a verb, noun or an adjective?) (structural) • Deciding whether the words fitted into particular sentences (e.g. does the word “donkey” fit into the following sentence > “I went to the doctor and showed him my ............”) (semantic)

3. Five groups of participants performed one of these tasks, without knowing that they were going to be asked to recall the words (incidental learning group).. • An additional five groups of participants performed the tasks but they were told that they should learn the words. (intentional learning group) • Finally, there was a control group of participants who were instructed to learn the words but did not do the tasks)

4. FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS After testing all the participants for recall of the original word list Hyde and Jenkins found that there were minimal differences in the number of items correctly recalled between the intentional learning groups and the incidental learning groups. • This finding is predicted by Craik and Lockhart and supports LOP because they believe that retention is simply a byproduct of processing and so intention to learn is unnecessary for learning to occur.

5. In addition, Hyde & Jenkins found that the pleasantness rating and rating frequency of usage tasks produced the best recall. • it was found that recall was significantly better for words which had been analysed semantically (deep) (i.e. rated for pleasantness or for frequency) than words which had been rated more superficially (shallow - structural) (i.e. detecting 'e' and 'g'). • This is also in line with the LOP model because semantic analysis is assumed to be a deeper level of processing than structural (shallow) analysis. • They claimed that this was because these tasks involved semantic processing whereas the other tasks did not.

6. one interesting finding was that incidental learners performed just as well as intentional learners in all tasks – this suggests that it is the nature of the processing that determines how much you will remember rather than intention to learn. • Bear this in mind when you are revising – the more processing you perform on the information (e.g. quizzes, essays, spider diagrams etc.) the more likely you are to remember it . EVALUATION: • Not totally clear what level of processing is used for the different tasks. • Is it really the depth of processing or is it the amount of effort that people put into processing that determines recall • Ecological validity, experimental method/ applicability?