Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

After the complete series of sentences had been shown and rated, the participants were prompted
to complete a marble activity in which they were asked to list possible uses for a “bag of marbles.” The
purpose of this activity was to function as a distractor task in order to assure that the participants would not
be vulnerable to the recency effect, meaning they would be better able to remember the components of the
final sentences simply due to them having been finished shortly before the recall task. Once the marble
activity was completed, the computer instructed the participants that they were finished and ready to move
on to the recall task.
Participants were given blank recall grid sheets and instructed to recall as many caps locked words
as possible within five minutes. The recall grid sheet given to them was a sample sheet with instructions and
examples. They were then informed that blank recall grid sheets were available for them to use and they
were stacked to the left of the computer monitor. The participants were told to read the instructions and
inform the experimenter when they were finished. After they had finished reading the instructions, the fiveminute
recall period began. After five minutes had elapsed, the participants were told to stop writing and
that their five minutes had expired. They were then thanked for their participation and given a
summary/feedback form, which summarized what they had just done to aid with any extra credit papers
they may have to write, along with an extra credit slip for proof of their participation.
RESULTS
The recall grid sheets were scored by hand directly on the sheet. The completed recall grid sheets
were labeled by condition and a non-identifiable subject number, then organized by condition type. A key
was made for each condition type and the scores were tallied by hand, highlighting each correct response
with a different color to organize response types. The individual responses were assigned a score giving two
points for correct responses, one point for reconstructions of a correct response, and zero points for
incorrect responses. Three scores were collected for each participant: total, horizontal and vertical. The
total score represents the sum of points for all responses per participant. The vertical score represents the
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