Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932)

Aim:
To find out if verbal labels shown with pictures affects perception and the way the pictures were remembered

Procedure:

 * The experiment was a lab experiment.
 * It used an independent groups design.
 * Participants were split into 3 groups. Group 1 was shown pictures with verbal labels from List 1. Group 2 was shown pictures with verbal labels from List 2. A control group was shown pictures with no verbal labels from either group.
 * Then they were asked to draw the picture.
 * The pictures were compared to the original. This was the dependent variable.

Results:

 * In Group 1, 73 percent of drawings resembled the word given.
 * In group 2, 74 percent of drawings resembled the word given.
 * In the control group, only 45 per cent resembled either one of the words.
 * This shows that the words affected the participant’s memory of the pictures.

Conclusion:
 
 * Memory for pictures is reconstructed.
 * The verbal labels affect the recall because the memory of the word alters the way the pictures are represented.

Evaluation
Strengths
 * control group who didn’t hear anything at all was used to show that people’s drawings weren’t always distorted in the same way
 * 12 pictures gave a lot of evidence
 * Two lists showed clearly that verbal labels affected people’s drawings.

Weaknesses
 * In real life things are not as ambiguous
 * Prentice (1954) tested the effects of verbal labels on recognition instead of recall. His results showed that verbal labels did not affect recognition. This would mean that Carmichael’s findings did not apply very widely.