Ms Patel has asked Chemistry students and Psychology students to take part in a cognitive psychology experiment. She asked both groups of students to learn a list of 15 target words. The Chemistry students were given an interference task (solving mathematical puzzles) for 5 minutes before trying to recall the word list, while the Psychology students sat quietly for 5 minutes (no interference task) before recall.
Table 1 shows the performance results of Ms Patel's experiment.
| Participant | Number of words correctly retrieved by Chemistry students (with interference) | Number of words correctly retrieved by Psychology students (no interference) |
|---|---|---|
| A | 6 | 11 |
| B | 8 | 12 |
| C | 5 | 9 |
| D | 7 | 10 |
| E | 9 | 14 |
| F | 6 | 11 |
| G | 10 | 13 |
| H | 8 | 9 |
| I | 5 | 12 |
| J | 6 | 9 |
Using the data in Table 1:
Calculate the mean score for both conditions to two decimal places. Show your workings.
Explain what these mean values suggest about the effect of interference on memory retrieval.
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