An educational psychologist wanted to investigate whether binaural beats affect short-term working memory capacity. She recruited a sample of university students to complete two sequential memory-span tasks inside a soundproofed laboratory cubicle.
Task 1 – Participants had 5 minutes to study and recall a sequence of 20 abstract geometric patterns presented on a tablet in silence.
Task 2 – Immediately afterwards, participants had 5 minutes to study and recall a different sequence of 20 abstract geometric patterns of equal complexity while listening to a 40 Hz binaural beat at 60 dB through noise-cancelling headphones.
For both tasks, the tablet screen brightness, distance from the participant (40 cm), and temperature of the cubicle (21°C) were kept constant.
The investigation outlined above was a laboratory experiment.
Explain one strength of a laboratory experiment. Refer to the investigation above in your answer.
32 exam-style questions on AQA A Level Psychology Experimental method. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.