HELP with research hypothesis and null hypothesis!!!

My investigation was an experiment in which all participants had to learn a main list of words and recall it. Half of the participants would learn another list of words (interfering list) before the main list while the remaining half would learn it after the main list. The aim of this experiment is to investigate which of the retroactive or proactive interference would have a greater impact on forgetting.

and my research question is - Which one of the two memory interference, retroactive and proactive, has a greater effect on forgetting?

However, in my intro part, I wrote 2 researches in retroactive interference and 1 research in proactive, but did not indicate which one is superior.

So i dont know how to write my hypothesis...thatz what i wrote:

Research Hypothesis (H1): It is expected that the number of words recalled accurately with any one type of interferences would be less than that recalled without interference.

Null Hypothesis (Ho): It is expected there would be no significant relationship between the number of words recalled accurately and the presence of any type of interferences. Any relationship observed will be due to the operation of chance factors.

But they seemed irrelevant to the research question...PLEASE HELP!!!

OR should I change my research question to sth like 'does memory interference influence our ability to recall information accurately?'

VERY CONFUSED....

Reply 1

The_Goose

well do you want a one tailed or a two tailed hypothesis?

By the looks of it, you have a two tailed.

if you want to specify that learning the interfering list afterward will have a greater amount of forgetting then this is a one tailed hypothesis, it will affect the statistics when you come to do your test so it's important to know what kind you have.

The null hypothesis looks good to me, basically the null hypothesis is that there will be no connection, nothing will happen.

Could yopu just clalify what you actually want to get from your study.

Reply 2

vihedy

thanks for the reply,

what i want to get is - whether presenting the interfering list before (or after) the main list would have a greater effect on forgetting...

what happens when u have a 2 tailed hypothesis? and does my null hypothesis have to changed if it is 2 tailed?

and is there any research that indicate the before or after effect is stronger than the other? want to make my hypothesis 1-tailed

Reply 3

The_Goose

The question basically is what do you think wil happen? personally i would go witht hat having to rember a list after the core list would have a greater effect on interference, but your's may differ.

my experimental hypothesis for your study would be that learning the interfering list after the main list will have a greater effect on interference than learning an interfering list before a main list.

null hypothesis: the point at which the interfering list was learning will have no effect on interference, there will be no connection.

When you come to do your stats test there will be different critical values depending on whether you have a one or two tailed hypothesis

Reply 4

vihedy

But then if u have such a research hypothesis, u have to justify why.

I cant find anything on to which of these effects is stronger than the other...

Any idea?

Reply 5

The_Goose

you could talk about recency. People have a tendency to remember what they heard last. so if you have the interfering list after the main list, they are more likely to remember the interfering list rather than the main list. research shows people can generally remember + or - 7 items. Go back through some as memory stuff.

That would be my justfication.

HELP with research hypothesis and null hypothesis!!!

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