Does Lower Accessibility Cause More Learning? (pal) experiment 2
Creators: name: Kornell, Nate
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: Method Participants I did a power calculation assuming a within-participant t-test with alpha = .05, two tails, and a power of .90. I initially assumed an effect size of d = .20 because priming seemed like it might produce a relatively small effect. However, in a similar previous study, I found that the correlation between percent correct in the two conditions was .88. This high correlation suggested that the effect size should be adjusted upward in a within-participants design. Thus, I assumed d = .30. The recommended number of participants was 119. I planned to recruit 100 participants. After collecting the data and excluding participants as described below, I analyzed the data using a Bayes Factor analysis to compare the primed condition to the non-primed condition. There were two key analyses, one using phase two percent correct on test trials as the dependent variable, the other using final test percent correct as the dependent variable. I used the following stopping rule: Stop data collection If BF10 was less than 0.33 or greater than 3.00 for both of the key analyses. If either BF10 fell between these values, I would recruit another 50 participants, and repeat this process until I had recruited a maximum of 200 participants. (Note that after exclusions, the final number of participants was sure to be less than the number that were recruited. Also note that If one BF10 was greater than 3 and the other was less than .33, I would stop.) I recruited participants using Prolific and paid them $3.00. Procedure In Pal 4 the method was the same as Pal 3 with these exceptions: Instead of restudying via pleasantness trials, participants were given two letter stems during the restudy trial (the same as they would be seeing during the final test). I gave 2 seconds of feedback after test trials during the restudy phase. There was no need for feedback in prior experiments because they were doing pleasantness trials. I added a question at the end that asked whether they noticed that the sentences were sometimes related to the word that came after them. Analysis plan Participants will be excluded from the analyses for the following reasons: They indicate on the post-experiment questionnaire that we should not use their data or that they have done this experiment before. Their median response time on pleasantness trials is under 1.5 seconds. Their median response time on test trials is under 3.5 seconds. Their overall accuracy when judging whether or not sentences make sense is below .75. There were two key analyses. Both compared performance in the primed condition to performance in the unprimed condition. The first examined test accuracy during the second phase (on tests that happened immediately after the prime had been presented). The second examined final test accuracy. A bayes factor analysis will be used for both analyses. If BF10 &lt; .33 or BF10 &gt; 3 it will be considered as support for the alternative hypothesis. Other analyses will examine whether there is an effect of sentence type (makes sense or does not make sense) on phase 2 and final test accuracy, and also reaction time during phase 2. Prediction Based on previous research, I predict that there would be a priming effect, that is, that percent correct in phase 2 would be higher on primed trials than unprimed trials. I also predicted no priming effect on the final test.