Reference no: EM132187219

Sleep & Learning: Scenario

This research scenario is an imagined attempt to replicate Mazza research that indicated two study sessions with sleep in between were a more effective studying technique than sleep or study alone.

Stimuli/Tasks

Word Learning. Participants were presented with 16 Swahili words, and tasked with learning the English translation of each word. During a "learning" or "relearning" session, participants would see a pair of words, Swahili-English, for 7 seconds, in random order. Then, after all 16 pairs had been seen once, participants would see each Swahili word alone, and type in what they thought the correct English translation was. If they were incorrect, the correct Swahili-English word pair was shown for 4 seconds, and later in the session (after a few other words were shown) the Swahili word was presented again for them to write the English translation. This continued until they had typed in the correct English translation for all 16 words. During a "test" session, each participant would only see each Swahili word alone, and type in what they thought the correct English translation was. The number of words remembered correctly the first time they were tested at each session was recorded.

Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index - Adapted (PSQI). All participants completed a survey that asks participants questions about their sleep quality, including whether they could get sleep within 30 minutes, had to get up in the middle of the not, had bad dreams, what time they went to bed, and what time they got in the morning. This survey usually askes about over the past month, but was adapted to ask about the previous night's sleep. All participants completed this at their 9am session. The index is scored from 0 to 21, with scores less than or equal to 5 indicating a good quality of sleep, and scores greater than 5 indicating poor quality sleep. The total number of hours slept the previous night was also calculated.

Procedure -

Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) wake-relearn, who learned the words at 9 am, then came back to relearn them at 9 pm the same day; 2) sleep-relearn, who learned the words at 9pm, then came back to relearn them at 9am the next morning; or 3) sleep-testonly, who learned the words at 9pm, then came back for a test at 9am the next morning, but did not receive any feedback on their performance in that morning session. Participants in all three groups came back 1 week after their initial learning session, and 3 months after their initial learning session, to be tested on the words. This table shows what each group did at each session:

DEMONSTRATION OF TECHNIQUE -

In SPSS + Writing

Make sure you only turn to Excel only for a) creating charts or b) things that SPSS cannot do. Follow the guidelines for formatting, naming, and submitting your files from the syllabus.

1) Import the data from Excel to SPSS. Without changing the variable names or any of the individual data points from the downloaded Excel file, make sure the output will present meaningful names for conditions and variables - NOT "Word1" or something that requires the reader to double-check what each variable/category name is. Make sure all of the variables have appropriate characteristics, including decimal places. In the output, provide meaningful labels for the results so that I can identify which question is being answered and what analysis is being run to do so. Use the same Output file for all analyses (if you stop and re-start, open the output file along with the data file), and do not delete any "Log" files.

2) The researchers want to make sure that the two "sleep" groups get equivalent quality of sleep between their initial session and their second session; it would be a problem if the sleep-relearn group got better sleep than the sleep-testonly group. Transform the PSQI scores for all participants to indicate "good" or "poor" quality sleep, as defined in the scenario, and check whether the "poor" sleepers got fewer hours of sleep overall than the "good" sleepers. Then, check whether the sleep-relearn and sleep-testonly groups are equally likely to report good quality sleep. For each test, report your hypothesis, null hypothesis, and results.

3) Sleep is supposed to be beneficial for learning, and the more sleep the better; in theory, for the two groups that got to sleep between the first and second session, the amount of sleep they got should predict the number of words they remembered at the start of the second session. Test whether this is the case. For the same participants, test whether the number of words recalled improved from the first to the second session. For each test, report your hypothesis, null hypothesis, and results, and interpret the effect size (if applicable) and possible error.

4) Focus on the participants who experienced two learning sessions, ignoring the "sleep-testonly" group. Does the number of words remembered improve from the second session to the one week follow-up, and is the improvement greater for the sleep-relearn group than the wake-relearn group? Report your main effect and interaction hypothesis and null hypotheses, your pattern of results, and interpret the effect size (if applicable). You do not need to report hypotheses or null hypothesis for follow-up tests, or interpret possible errors. Create a chart to display your results, displaying the 95% confidence intervals in your error bars, and write a meaningful caption.

5) Focus on the recall of words three months after the initial training session. First, check whether there are any differences in the average number of words the three groups recall. Then, get the median number of words recalled after three months, create a new variable that codes each participant as being "at or above" or "below" the median, and determine whether the sleep-relearn group is more likely to be above the median than the wake-relearn group. Report the results with interpretations of effect sizes; you may report the hypotheses and null hypotheses if you wish, but are not required to.

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar