IA question on extent of replication

[sungylim]

Hi, my group members and I have decided to replicate Rauscher et al.'s 1993 study on the influence of Mozart's sonata k448 on spatial-temporal reasoning. We were doing some research but we could not come across anything that indicates clearly the instructions and methods approached by the researchers. But the basic gist of the experiment is that there are three different conditions that the participants were exposed to: 1) silent condition, 2) relaxing music condition, and 3) Mozart's K448 condition.

I was wondering to what extent do we have to replicate the published study? For example, in condition #2, our research does not indicate what kind of music the researchers have used to aid relaxation in participants. Do we then have to find some other relaxing music to carry out our experiment or will the IB oppose that? Also, the type of spatial-reasoning tests that were handed out to the participants is not mentioned. Can I download some questions from legitimate sources (e.g. stanford-binet) or is that against what the IB requires?

I understand that higher level students can manipulate some variables but since I am a standard level student I cannot do so (along with my group).

[blindpet]

Hi, my group members and I have decided to replicate Rauscher et al.'s 1993 study on the influence of Mozart's sonata k448 on spatial-temporal reasoning. We were doing some research but we could not come across anything that indicates clearly the instructions and methods approached by the researchers. But the basic gist of the experiment is that there are three different conditions that the participants were exposed to: 1) silent condition, 2) relaxing music condition, and 3) Mozart's K448 condition.

I was wondering to what extent do we have to replicate the published study? For example, in condition #2, our research does not indicate what kind of music the researchers have used to aid relaxation in participants. Do we then have to find some other relaxing music to carry out our experiment or will the IB oppose that? Also, the type of spatial-reasoning tests that were handed out to the participants is not mentioned. Can I download some questions from legitimate sources (e.g. stanford-binet) or is that against what the IB requires?

I understand that higher level students can manipulate some variables but since I am a standard level student I cannot do so (along with my group).

The extent of replication really isn't that important. To give you an example I did the Stroop Effect which is always popular because it's easy to get high marks. You can find mine (got a 7 ) and other exemplar IAs on my blog btw with IA advice (shameless plug ;P). Anyway, We by no means used the exact same colors or the same number of colors or same number of rows and columns for our replication. In fact, we even used colors we knew would purposely be problematic for Danish speakers so we had a confounding variable to discuss in the discussion section. We even digitized it to make the data collection easier which Stroop didn't do. Other people in my class did Loftus & Palmer's eyewitness testimony replications and did not use the same pictures, video or questions.

The point of the replication is to show that you have acquired the skills to carry out an experiment. The IB are definitely not out to get you for missing out tiny details you left out of the experiment - they aren't that pedantic.

So, that said, you will not be expected to play the exact Mozart piece if you can't find it - but you should find some Mozart piece and play it for 10 minutes like they did in the original experiment. You can probably also just find some free hypnosis mp3 or meditation mp3 and use it for relaxation. For the spatial/abstract IQ test this is a quote from the original study's paper 'The abstract/spatial reasoning tasks consisted of a pattern analysis test, a multiple-choice matrices test and a multiple-choice paper-folding and cutting test.' It would be perfectly ok for you to only use one of these tests. In my experiment we only did 1 out of 3 of his original experiments - so it is only a partial replication. For SL you are not expected to do a full replication you can easily just do a partial replication.

I have attached a review on the music and spatial task performance which shows some examples of the paper-folding tasks they did which should give you a better idea in case you want to include such a task. Otherwise just using IQ questions would be fine because they did use the Stanford-Binet - check your PMs for the original paper in case you didn't have it already.

Hope this answers your question, good luck with it.

Music and spatial task performance - A Causal Relationship.pdf

Edited August 30, 2010 by blindpet