A cognitive psychologist is investigating the impact of a new binaural-beat soundscape on working memory capacity. To minimize participant variables without having participants complete the memory task twice (which would introduce order effects), the researcher recruits 100 participants and measures their baseline working memory using a digit-span test. She ranks the participants by their scores, groups them into pairs with adjacent scores, and then uses a coin toss to allocate one member of each pair to the binaural-beat condition and the other to the silent control condition.
Which experimental design is being described in this study?
Matched pairs
Repeated measures
Independent groups
Natural experiment
644 exam-style questions on OCR A Level Psychology Research methods and techniques. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.