A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

3.3 PRELIMINARY STUDY TWO
This study addressed the questions raised from the findings in preliminary study
one as discussed in 3.2.4. Firstly, the possibility of the use of particular learning
strategies to enhance the learning of all participants which could identify optimal
learning techniques for the main investigation participants. Secondly, to evaluate
characteristics of the stimuli to be learnt and thirdly, to demonstrate the reliability
of preliminary study one results.
3.3.1 Procedure
Nine participants from study one participated in this study. One of the female
participants was unable to be involved due to a change of location. The
participants were divided into Group A (those with the high five scores) and
Group B (those with the low four scores).
3.3.1.1 Stimuli
An additional ten new word forms were created by the researcher and matched
with black and white line drawings of another ten unusual creature type images.
Each alien was assigned a special skill and one of five possible eye colours.
Although study one considered that eye colour was learned differently than the
names or skills of the aliens they were included for replication purposes. The
stimuli for participants in Group B used the stimuli as originally designed by the
researcher (see Appendix 3.4a). However, the stimuli for Group A were
randomly assigned their name, skill and eye colour (Appendix 3.4b) to ascertain
if there were intrinsic links between the alien characters and their word forms
and / or skills that facilitated their high score in any way.
3.3.1.2 Initial training and assessment procedure
The training and assessment procedure was a replication of preliminary study
one (see section 3.2.1) with two additional features. Firstly, immediately prior to
training, the successful learning techniques from the high scoring group in study
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