psy 385 sample powerpoint summer ii 08

7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08

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The Effect of Mood and Reading

Habits on Short Term Memory



Introduction

The purpose of this experiment was to determine if being in a positive or negative mood influences how much a person can store in short term memory as a function of reading habits.

Previous studies have shown that what a personremembers is effected by their emotions. The person willremember more negative things if they are in a negativemood and more positive things is they are in a positive

mood.One study showed that subjects were less able to recognizenegative facial expressions and better able to recognizepositive facial expressions after a course of antidepressants( Goodwin, 2004)



Introduction

More studies have looked at what a person remembers

when the are in a specific mood, not how much they

remember which this study looked at.

Literature has show that reading has many benefitsincluding helping cognitive developments. One particular

study looked the benefits of reading for children with

Down Syndrome and the effects it had on their cognitive

development. It was mostly found to increaseperformance (Cuskelly, 2002)

There has been little research done on specifically what

good and bad reading habits do to short term memory



Introduction

In the experiment it was hypothesized that people in a

positive mood will be able to perform better than a

person in a negative mood on a recall test

It was also hypothesized that people with good reading habits will perform better on recall test than a person

with poor reading habits

Subjects that have both a positive mood and good

reading habits should also be able to perform better

than those that have negative mood and poor reading

habits



Method

The experiment involved 15 subjects (4 male

and 11 female) who were students and Central

Michigan University

The only requirements were that the subjects be

18 years of age or older



Method

The experiment packet included a consent

forms, experiment instructions, a demographic

questionnaire, a survey about the subjects

current mood, a survey about the subjects

reading habits, a list of 24 study words for the

recall test, and the actual recall test



Method

Subjects were asked to fill out the demographic

questionnaire and the mood and reading surveys

They were then asked to study the list of 24 words

included in the experiment packet for four minutes with the help of cue words

The subjects then wrote down as many of the words

that they could recall on a separate piece of paper that

was also included in the packet. The results were then

calculated



Positive mood had greater mean recall scores than

negative mood, regardless of their reading history

60

65

70

75

80

Positive Negative

MOOD

M e

a n R e c a l l

S c o r e



Reading frequently resulted in greater mean recall

scores than reading less frequently, regardless of

their mood state

60

65

70

75

80

85

High Low

READING HISTORY

M

e a n R e c a l l S c

o r e



Effect of reading history on mean recall scores was

greater in negative mood than in positive mood

50

60

70

80

90

High Low

READING HISTORY

M e a n R e c a l l S

c o r e

PositiveNegative



Results

In the experiment it was found that positive mood had

greater mean recall scores than negative mood,

regardless of what the subjects reading history was

Having good reading habits resulted in greater meanrecall scores than having poor reading habits,

regardless of their state of mood

It was also found that effect of reading history on mean

recall scores was greater in negative mood than in

positive mood



Discussion

The most important findings of the experiment were that

reading history had a greater impact on recall scores when the

subject was in a negative mood rather than a positive mood,

however these results were not found to be significant, but it

showed strong trends

The fact that subjects with a positive mood had greater mean

recall scores than subjects in a negative mood, and that good

reading habits also resulted in a greater mean recall score than

poor reading habits also showed strong trends



Discussion

To find significant results the experiment could have used a

larger number of subjects, 15 subjects is a very small sample

size

Using all Central Michigan students is also not representative of

the population, all the subjects were of 18-23 years of age, and

had similar demographic backgrounds

It is difficult to assume that all the subjects were completely

truthful in describing their current mood, and determining their

past and present reading habits

Different questions could have also been asked in determining

if the subjects had good or bad reading habits



Discussion

The results of this experiment shows the importance of being in

a positive mood for short term memory performance and the

importance of being in a positive mood for many other things

Also the fact that reading habits had a stronger effect on recall

scores in negative mood than in a positive mood further shows

the importance of being in a positive mood

These findings help show the importance in emphasizing mood

in school programs to help increase performance, possibly even

to increase job performance, and maybe even to help people with learning disabilities increase their cognitive abilities



Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the subjects that participated in my

experiment and helped me achieve my results

I would also like to thank Dr. Justin Oh-Lee for all his

assistance with the idea of my experiment, helping setting up

the experiment, and interpreting the results

psy 385 sample powerpoint summer ii 08

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