Influence Of Age On Depth Of Processing Effects On Recall: A Research Study

Overview of the Studies

Topic: The influence of age on the depth of processing effects on recall

The depth of processing can be described as the extent or the degree at which people understand and interpret things or ideas to draw meaningful conclusions from the things or ideas (Leow & Mercer, 2015). The depth of processing plays a significant role in determining how the interpreted things or ideas will be easily or hardly recalled by the people (Alipour, Aerab-sheybani, & Akhondy, 2012). When the depth of processing is high or when people interpret and understand different ideas more deeply, their chances of recalling these ideas in the future is highly boosted, which means deep processing has a positive effect on the recalling capabilities of people. Similarly, when the depth of processing is shallow, the chances of recalling the processed things or ideas are significantly reduced, which generally means shallow processing has negative effects on the recalling capabilities of people (Connell & Lynott, 2013). Studies that have been done in the past have shown that there are different factors that affect or influence the depth of processing of people. Age has been proved to be one of the main factors which influence the depth of processing of people. Generally, it has been argued and shown that the depth of processing varies with age where the most productive ages are the mid ages (not too young and not too old) (Nashiro, Sakaki, & Mather, 2012). For children or the very young people, their brains or minds don’t have the capacity to hold, process, and retain too much information as they are still growing. For the very old people, their brains or minds are already tired, and most of them suffer from memory loss making their depth of processing a bit weaker compared to the middle-aged people. Therefore, it remains that the most active and the most productive people as far as the depth of processing is concerned are the middle-aged people whose brains or minds are mature and fresh to hold, process, and retain much of the information they get (Lindsay & Norman, 2013). However, it’s good to mention that as much as the middle-aged people are the most productive as much as the depth of processing is concerned, there is the exception of the middle-aged people who have some mental problems which affect their mind processing capabilities lowering their capabilities of processing information. This paper aims to investigate the influence of age on the depth of processing effects on recall. This study is of great significance as it will help to show the most productive period (age-wise) as far as the depth of processing is concerned. As such, the learners will be aware of their mentally most productive age period and will utilize that period accordingly for their own benefits. The main variables to be utilized in this study will be the age and depth of processing. The analysis will be done in SPSS to help establish the relationship between age and the depth of processing, which will help to answer the main research question, which is “Does age influence depth of processing effects on recall?”

Study 1: Does age influence depth of processing effects on recall?

To conduct this study successfully, it will be hypothesized that there is a significant influence of age on the depth of processing effects on recall. In other terms, this means that the age of a person has a significant impact on his/her processing capabilities, which consequently affects his/her ability to recall things or ideas. The given hypothesis is in agreement with the main research question which aimed to answer whether age influences the depth of processing effects on recall.

Participants

In this study, 100 participants were chosen to take part in the study. These participants were randomly selected to eliminate the chances of obtaining biased results (Acharya et al., 2013). It’s also good to mention that the selected participants included males and females, which reduced the chances of obtaining gender-biased results. All the selected participants were young participants aged between 19 to 29 years and who were still undergoing mental development, which enabled the study to show the significant relationship which exists between age and the depth of processing of the minds. Therefore, to qualify to participate in this study, it was a mandatory requirement to be aged between 19 and 29 years. The other important considerations which were made when selecting the participants were the socioeconomic status of the participants where all the selected participants came from the middle-class income level as far as the socioeconomic status was concerned and the education level where all the participants were required to have at least bachelor’s level education to reduce the chances of covariates.

The required ethical considerations observed in research were observed accordingly. Firstly, before recruiting the participants of the study, they were notified about the study and assured that all the data or information that they will give will remain confidential and won’t be accessed by any unauthorized parties, which is always highly recommended in research (Heffetz & Ligett, 2014). They were also informed that participating in the study was voluntary, and nobody should force or manipulate them to participate (Cotter, Lokman, & Najah, 2011). Lastly, these participants were promised some incentives in forms of airtime and one-time lunch vouchers in their desired restaurants around. These incentives were meant to encourage people to participate in the research (Matheson et al., 2012).  The incentives could only be given after successful completion of the standardized recall test which was given to the participants.

Materials

Some of the main materials that were used in this study are data recording materials, which were used to record the results which were obtained in the study. Some suitable standardized test materials were also used in testing the participants to understand their depth of processing and their recalling capabilities. Also, there were some data analysis materials and tools which were used in the analysis of the data or the results obtained in the study.

Study 2: The habituation effect of a drug on motor activity

Procedure

As stated earlier, this study aimed to investigate how age influences the depth of processing effects and thus the recalling capabilities of people. To accomplish the study successfully, the selected 100 young participants of different ages we given a standardized test and their recall scores recorded for further analysis. The main statistical software which was used in the analysis of the collected data was SPSS, which is very efficient in data analysis (Hinton, McMurray, & Brownlow, 2014). After the required analysis was done, some scatter plots were drawn, and the trend line used to show the relationship between ages and the depth of processing and thus the recalling capabilities of the participants.

Data Analysis

In data analysis, the variables used were age and recall, where age was used as the independent variable and recall as the dependent variable. The data of these two variables helped in the preparation of the scatter plots which were used to investigate the required relationships. The alpha levels applied in the study were 0.01 (1%) and 0.005 (5%), which are the common alpha or significant levels applied in statistical analysis (Trafimow et al., 2018). The results obtained at both significance levels were statistically significant which proves that indeed, age influences the depth of processing effects and thus the recalling capability of people. The sample size applied in this study was of reasonable size, and so, the results obtained after the data analysis can be used to make reasonably good deductions and conclusions about the effect of age on the depth of processing of the people. The actual detailed analysis and the results obtained in the study are discussed in the results section below.

A simple linear regression was carried out using SPSS to determine the influence of age on the depth of procession effects on recall. The predictor variable (independent variable) is age, while the response variable (dependent variable) is recall. A scatterplot was initially constructed to visually verify the existence of a linear relationship between age and depth of procession effects on recall. Scatterplot for the two variables showed a weak negative linear relationship. A close examination of the scatterplot did not reveal any significant outliers. The scatterplot of the relationship is shown in figure 1 (appendix). A Pearson correlation coefficient was -0.286 (see table 1), which is statistically significant (p =0.004) at both the 5% and the 1% significance levels.

The assumption of homoscedasticity was not violated because a residuals plot against the fitted values did not show an obvious pattern. The points were evenly distributed above and below the x-axis and also on the y-axis (figure 2 in the appendix). A further examination of a P-P plot indicated that residuals were normally was normally distributed. The dots on the plot showed little deviation from the straight line on the plot (figure 3 in the appendix)

Study 3: Does depressive symptom changes as a response to an earthquake?

The results for the simple linear regression revealed that the overall model was significantly significant, F(1, 98) = 8.75, p = 0.004. Linear regression findings imply that age is a useful predictor of the depth of procession effects on recall. The overall results are shown in Table 1. The model r-squared was 0.082. Age explained only 8.2% of the variation in depth of procession effects on recall. The value of the r-squared obtained was very small, which may be an indication of a weak model fit. The simple linear regression equation for the relations is: Recall = 14.406 – 0.057* Age. Age is a significant predictor of depth of procession effects on recall, t(98) = -2.96, p = 0.004. The coefficient for age is -0.057, which is interpreted as the estimated decrease in depth of procession effects on recall is 0.057 for every one year increase in age. The intercept of the equation (14.406) is the estimated depth of procession effects on recall when age is 0. The intercept does not have a practical meaning since we can’t have a person with zero years. 

Tables

Table 1

Correlations
	age	Recall
age	Pearson Correlation	1	-.286**
Sig. (2-tailed)		.004
N	100	100
Recall	Pearson Correlation	-.286**	1
Sig. (2-tailed)	.004
N	100	100
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 2

Model Summaryb
Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate	Durbin-Watson
1	.286a	.082	.073	4.999	.809
a. Predictors: (Constant), age
b. Dependent Variable: Recall

Table 3

ANOVAa
Model	Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	218.587	1	218.587	8.746	.004b
Residual	2449.203	98	24.992
Total	2667.790	99
a. Dependent Variable: Recall
b. Predictors: (Constant), age

Table 4

Coefficientsa
Model	Unstandardized Coefficients	Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.	95.0% Confidence Interval for B	Collinearity Statistics
B	Std. Error	Beta	Lower Bound	Upper Bound	Tolerance	VIF
1	(Constant)	14.406	1.069		13.472	.000	12.284	16.528
age	-.057	.019	-.286	-2.957	.004	-.095	-.019	1.000	1.000
a. Dependent Variable: Recall

 

Considering the fact that all the selected participants belonged to the middle-aged group, it was expected that, in this case, an increase in the age had a positive effect on the depth of processing of the participants as most of the participants in this group were still undergoing mental growth, which means, an increase in the age would lead to an increase in the mental processing capability of the participants. The results obtained were in agreement with the expectations since it was noted that there was an almost linear relationship between the age of the respondents and the recall obtained. This is evident from the scatter plots graphs obtained, which showed the recall values or count increased with the ages of the participants. From the results section, we established that the simple linear regression equation for the relations is: Recall = 14.406 – 0.057* Age, which reaffirms our point the existence of an almost linear relationship between age and recall or the recalling capabilities of the participants.

Our study and findings can be compared to Eysenck’s study of 1974, which argued that as people get old, they struggle to remember things as compared to when these people are young. In his study, Eysenck instructed the participants to recall some words which they had been exposed to under different conditions that required various levels of processing. Eysenck was interested in knowing and determining whether the words which could be recalled by these participants were related to the initial levels of processing of these words in the minds of the participants (Craik & Lockhart, 1972). Eysenck dealt with both young and old participants, and his study revealed that for the old participants, they had some serious challenges in remembering most of the words despite having had good and deeper processing of the words initially. To the young participants, they recalled most of the words which they had achieved good and greater processing initially. This can be attributed to the fact that most of the young participants had fresh minds that were capable of processing and holding and thus recalling more information than the old participants. However, it’s good to note that unlike Eysenck’s study, which dealt with both young and old participants, our study dealt with young participants only, and that’s why the results were a bit different from the results which were obtained in Eysenck’s study. In our case, only young participants whose brains and minds were still undergoing some growth and development were considered in the study. Therefore, unlike in Eysenck’s study where old age limited the recalling capability, the results of this study, which involved youths, only showed some positive results on the increasing age of the participants. Whenever the age of the participants increased, their recalling capabilities also increased. This can be attributed to the fact that the brains and thus the minds of these participants were very active and still growing, and thus, the increasing age was enhancing or improving the growth and the development of the minds of the participants improving their recalling capabilities.

Introduction to Research Question

The results obtained in this study are consistence with the previous researches and studies which have been done about the depth of processing and recalling capabilities of young people. The previous researches and studies have revealed that the brains and the minds of young people grow, develop, and mature with time, which means their depth of processing and recalling capabilities also improve with time as we found in our study. Therefore, giving a thorough examination of the results obtained shows there is an agreement between our study and the previous studies or researches that have been done by the other scholars.

This study had various strengths and limitations. To start with the strengths, the participants used in the study were randomized participants which reduced the chances of obtaining biased results. Another significant strength of the study was using SPSS statistical software, which helped to give generally good results which could represent the whole population of the young people satisfactorily.

On the limitations, the main limitations faced were on the methodology and statistical analysis. On the methodology, it was quite hard to convince the participants to participate in the study, and the researchers were forced to give some incentives to the participants to motivate them to participate. This ended up increasing the cost of the study, which was already financially limited. On statistical analysis, it was quite challenging to do the required SPSS analysis to obtain the desired results. SPSS is a bit complex software, and is quite challenging to use it effectively and interpret all the results appropriately (Field, 2013). Also, the recall scores were very close which forced us to use scatter plots in the analysis. In most cases, the results obtained using scatter plots are always not accurate but just good and reasonable estimations, which help to give a general view of the issue being studied or investigated (Mayorga & Gleicher, 2013). In this case, the scatter plots helped us to get the general relationship which links the age of the participants and their depth of processing and thus their recalling capabilities.

The general implication of the results obtained in this study is that there is a significant relationship between age and the depth of processing and thus the recalling capability of young people. The higher the age of the young people, the higher is their mental capabilities, and thus the better is their mental processing and recalling capabilities. For future directions, it’s recommended that studies involving all the groups of people, that is, children, young people, and old people should also be done. The results of these studies, which will incorporate all the generations of all people, will give a better and clearer stand of the relationship which exists between age and the depth of processing and recalling capabilities. In these future studies, modern technologies should be applied which will enhance the way the studies will be conducted and thus give better and more satisfying results.

Hypothesis

In conclusion, it can be said that this study is very crucial as it helps to reveal the relationship which exists between age and the depth of processing and recalling capabilities of the youths. The results obtained showed that age is one of the major determiners and influencers of the depth of processing effects and recalling capabilities of the youths, which helped to answer our research question.

References

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