Institute for Student Research and Creative Activity
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Browsing Institute for Student Research and Creative Activity by Subject "Learning ability"
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Item Cognitive performance and sounds: the effects of lyrical music and pink noise on performance(Northern Kentucky University) Chitwood, Marissa R.Given that a large percentage of students listen to music while studying, we investigated whether external noise could impair learning. In the current experiment, participants were tested on their performance in reading comprehension while listening to different types of sound. Undergraduate students (N = 70) were asked to read a passage while listening to either pink noise (equivalent to the spectrum of natural sound), pop music (genre of popular music), or read in silence. After reading an informative passage and completing a brief distractor task, participants completed a final test to assess their performance. Afterwards, participants answered questions on their personal study habits. We hypothesized that listening to pink noise while studying would improve cognitive performance compared to listening to pop music or studying in silence. In addition, we predicted that listening to pop music while studying would impair performance relative to pink noise and studying in silence. Results indicated no difference for the different types of sound on performance, suggesting that studying with sound has a minimal impact on learning.Item Mnemonics, testing, and creativity : creative thinking and effectiveness of learning method(Northern Kentucky University) Krull, Sarah R. A.Much research has been done on various techniques for increasing learning, and both testing and mnemonics such as the keyword method have been proven effective. We addressed whether people high and low in creativity benefit more or less from test practice as compared to a mnemonic strategy. We had participants study twenty Lithuanian-English word pairs. Then participants either restudied the words, received test practice by being given the cue and attempting to recall the target, generated a mnemonic linking the cue to the target, or received no extra practice with the words. After a final test over all twenty words, participants completed Remote Association Triad (RAT) problems (Bowden and Jung-Beeman, 2003) which required participants to find the relationship between three words (e.g., “Cold” is related to “Sore, Shoulder, Sweat”), and yields an index of creativity. Our hypothesis that the effectiveness of different study methods would differ across groups failed to achieve significance, and, surprisingly, so did the expected testing effect. One interesting finding did emerge: higher creativity, as measured by RAT performance, benefited participants regardless of the method employed in studying.