1. Word Complexity & Intervening Tasks
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Brittany Klinkner
Independent Research Project
PSY 385
11/25/14

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Abstract
Our ability to recall items can be affected by many aspects. The purpose of this study is to see if
an individual’s ability to recall items can be affected by word complexity and by the type of
intervening task. In this study, participants will be asked to study a series of words, participate in
an intervening task and then recall as many words as they can remember. Word Complexity had
two levels: high complexity (one-to-two syllables) and low complexity (three-to-four syllables).
The type of intervening tasks had two levels: solving a crossword puzzle and listening to
instrumental music. The hypotheses were that individuals would be able to recall more words
that were low complexity and while listening to music. The results were consistent with the
hypotheses. This study concludes that it is more difficult for people to recall high complexity
words regardless of the intervening task.

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Introduction
People are consistently recalling items whether it’s items from a grocery list or
remembering what you have to do the next day. Our ability to recall items depends on many
factors. For instance, can the complexity of the words and the type of intervening task affect our
ability to remember items? As stated by free dictionary, recall would be defined as to remember
and recollect. The complexity of words would be defined as the amount of syllables that are in
the word. As stated by free dictionary, a type of intervening task would be described as
something that occurs between two periods of time. The complexity of words along with an
intervening task can affect our memory. This is why people may not be able to remember as
much as they think they can. Do intervening tasks and word complexity affect our memory?
In a study developed by Baddley, Thompson, and Buchanan (1975) results showed that
memory is related to the length of words. The experiment that was conducted looked at the
differences between short and long sets of words. The short words consisted of one syllable
words while the long word sets consisted of five syllables. It was concluded that shorter syllables
are easier to remember than longer syllable words. The study also explains that people are only
able to remember a certain amount of information. The experimenters conclude that the amount
of words an individual is asked to remember can also affect how much a person is able to recall
later on (Baddley, Thompson, & Buchanan, 1975).
In another study conducted by Blumenthal and Robbins (1977) participants were
presented with brief passages on specific topics. They were tested on a series of questions about
the passages. There were four trials during this experiment. After the subjects were presented
with all of the passages they were given a final test to complete. The topic of the passages did not
change until the final trial. Select participants had a topic change while the others did not. The

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participants were given a crossword puzzle as an intervening task. The results of the study
showed that after many trials the results declined (Blumenthal & Robbins, 1977).
Additionally, in a study by Baddeley and Salame (1989) the study compared vocal and
instrumental music on participants performance. In the study, the subjects were told to study a
series of sentences on the screen and to ignore the background music. After the stimuli was
presented the participants were given 13 seconds to recall the sentences. The study discusses
how background music can definitely have an impact on a person’s memory. Also, the results
show that vocal music was more distracting than instrumental music. Overall, the study
concluded that instrumental and vocal music showed a decline in the participants ability to recall
sentences (Baddeley & Salame, 1989)
In this specific study, word complexity and intervening tasks will be looked at to see
whether or not either of these aspects have an effect on an individual’s ability to recall words.
This will be tested by having the participants memorize a set of words for two minutes. There
will be two lists of words: list A and list B. After memorizing the words, the participants will
have three minutes of an intervening task. The intervening tasks are: solving a crossword puzzle
and listening to instrumental music. Then, the participants will have two minutes to recall as
many words as they can remember from the word lists. This is a within-subjects design. This
means that each participant will receive different levels of the word complexity and intervening
task. The main goal of this study is to see if high complexity words and intervening tasks affect a
person’s ability to recall items.

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Method
Participants
There were 20 individuals that participated in this study. The participants were composed
of all college students and one middle aged person. Each participant was assigned to each level
of the independent variables. The individuals that participated through the SONA system
received extra credit for their Psychology courses. Individuals who did not participate through
SONA did not receive any incentive. The participants were tested in either a psychology
classroom on Central Michigan University’s campus or in a natural home environment.
Materials
The type of apparatus that was used was a Mac laptop. The types of stimuli that were
used were two sets of word lists. There was word list A and word list B. Both word lists
contained 20 words. There were ten words that were one-to-two syllables on each list and ten
words that were three-to-four syllables. Each word list was shown on Microsoft Power Point.
The color of the presented stimuli was black and the background of the stimuli was white. The
stimuli were presented in rows on the entire screen. There were two independent variables in this
study: word complexity and intervening tasks. The two types of intervening tasks were: solving a
crossword puzzle and listening to instrumental music. The crossword puzzle was medium in
difficulty. The crossword puzzle was called snow, snow, snow and the clues were about snow
related items. There were 18 clues for the participants to solve. The instrumental music the
participants listened to was “Dark Horse” by Katy Perry. The types of word complexity were:
low complexity (one-to-two syllables) and high complexity (three-to-four syllables). The
dependent variable of the study was how many words were recalled.
Procedure

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The study took place in either a psychology classroom on Central Michigan University’s
campus or in a natural home environment. The study was a within- subjects design. The primary
task of this study was for the participants to study word lists and to recall as many words as they
could remember after they completed an intervening task. The participants were tested with word
list A and word list B. There were two trials in this study. The participants were asked to
memorize the words for two minutes. The participants received either word list A or word list B
first. After they were done viewing the words, the participants received an intervening task. The
intervening tasks were: solving a crossword puzzle and listening to instrumental music. Each
participant had three minutes during each intervening task. After the intervening task, the
participants were asked to recall as many words as they could remember from the word lists.
They had two minutes to recall the words. I counterbalanced the paring of the lists to the
intervening tasks. Every participant was exposed to the same condition. For example, list A
going with the crossword puzzle and the music and likewise for list B. There were equal
instances of the crossword puzzle going first/ music second and music going first/crossword
puzzle second. At the end of the study, the participants were fully debriefed and any questions
they had about the study were answered. The entire procedure took less than 30 minutes to
complete.
Results
Recall (in numeric) for each condition are displayed on Figure 1. These data were
analyzed through a 2 (Word Complexity: high complexity (one-to-two syllables) and low
complexity (three-to-four syllables) X 2 (Intervening task: crossword puzzle and instrumental
music) repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). The ANOVA revealed a main effect
of word complexity, F (1, 19)= 31.861, p=. 001. Consistent with the hypothesis, low complexity

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(one-to-two syllables) were recalled more (M= 4.325, SE=. 329) followed by high complexity
words (three-to-four syllables) (M= 2.800, SE=. 233). The ANOVA also revealed a marginal
significance with music leading to more items being recalled, F (1,19) = 3.498, p= .077.
Consistent with our hypothesis, more items were recalled with music (M= 3.875, SE= .254) than
with the crossword puzzle (M= 3.250, SE=. 343). There was no significant interaction between
word complexity and the type of intervening task, F (1, 19)= .681, p=. 419. As illustrated in
Figure 1, it shows that low complexity words are recalled more regardless of the intervening
task. This concludes that it does not matter what the intervening task is. People will still recall
fewer words when they are high complexity (three-to-four syllable) words.
Discussion
Does word complexity and intervening tasks affect a person’s ability to recall items? The
two independent variables in this study were word complexity and intervening tasks. Word
complexity had two levels: low complexity (one-two-syllables) and high complexity (three-to-
four syllables). Types of intervening tasks also had two levels: solving a crossword puzzle and
listening to instrumental music. The hypothesis for the first independent variable is that the
participants will be able to recall more high complexity words compared to low complexity
words. I found that my results were consistent with the hypothesis. For the second independent
variable, which was the type of intervening tasks I hypothesized that participants would be able
to recall more words when they were listening to music and less when they were solving a
crossword puzzle. The results were also consistent with the hypothesis. There was not an
interaction between levels of complexity and the type of intervening tasks. No matter what the
intervening task was, people would still recall less high complexity words compared to low
complexity words.

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There are many other variables that could be researched in the future. Some alternative
explanations as to why this study does not really reflect reality could be because the study used
instrumental music. Wouldn’t the music be as distracting if there were words used in the music?
Additionally, most people tend to listen to music that has vocals. Another explanation for my
results was because of the limited number of participants. I was only able to recruit 20
participants, which most likely the data would have been quite different if I was able to recruit
more participants. My second independent variable (type of intervening task) only showed a
marginal significance in my results. If I had recruited more participants I probably would have
noticed a significant difference.
As stated above, a follow up study that involved vocal music would be a good step to
take in following up on this research. The study could be a replication to this study, but instead
of the instrumental music, the vocal music would be in replace of the instrumental music. This
would look at the differences in intervening tasks comparing instrumental music and vocal
music. Additionally, another follow up study that could be researched would be looking at the
complexity of sentences. Instead of showing a list of words, it would be interesting to have
participants study a list of complex sentences (5-7 words) to see how much they would be able to
recall. Also different types of intervening tasks could make a difference in the study. For
instance, texting could be an intervening task, which could make a difference in an individuals
ability to recall information from their memory.
The results conclude that there is not an interaction between word complexity and the
type of intervening tasks. It is shown that high complexity words are harder to recall. Recall is an
important quality to have because people are constantly remembering items from their memory.
Just by knowing that word complexity does affect our memory can be helpful to know this while

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an individual is trying to study for an exam. It would be useful for an individual to create small
acronyms when they are studying because people are able to remember more low complexity
words. Additionally while studying it may help to do a simple intervening task in between study
breaks instead of something complicated. Even though there is not an interaction between word
complexity and intervening tasks it’s important to know that word complexity affects our
memory no matter what the intervening task is.

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Figure 1. Shows the amount of words recalled with the levels of complexity and the intervening
tasks. The green line indicates music while the blue line indicates the crossword puzzle. The 1
specifies as low complexity while the 2 specifies as high complexity.

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References
Baddeley A. & Salame.P (1989). Effects of background music on phonological short-term
memory, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41, 107-122
Baddley, A.D., Thompson. N, Buchanan. M (1975). Word length and the structure of short-term
memory. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior. 6, 575-589.
Blumenthal & Robbins. (1977). Delayed release from proactive interference with meaningful
material: how much do we remember after reading brief prose passages? Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 3, 754-761.
Farlex. (n.d.). The free dictionary. Intervening and recall. Retrieved from
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/intervening
Katy Perry - Dark Horse [Karaoke / Instrumental]. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK1-6R6V3ig
Vickery-Smith, J. (2007). Snow, snow, snow. Retrieved from
http://www.theholidayzone.com/winter/Snow_Snow_Snow_Crossword.pdf

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Appendices:
Word List A
 Presentation
 Cry
 Challenging
 Proportional
 Man
 Day
 Introduction
 Competition
 Hurry
 Agreement
 Baby
 Life
 Kindergarten
 Relationship
 Actor
 Explanation
 Ice
 Athlete
 Punish
 Requirement
Word List B
 End
 Morning
 Duplication
 Playful
 Digest
 Obnoxious
 Bucket
 Ate
 Merchandise
 Novel
 Distraction
 You
 Appliance
 Tip
 Amazement
 Independent
 Miserable
 World
 Absorbing

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 Occupant
Crossword Puzzle Link:
http://www.theholidayzone.com/winter/Snow_Snow_Snow_Crossword.pdf
Music Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK1-6R6V3ig