A group of college students is participating in a memory study where they perform the same task daily under varying conditions. However, as each day passes, the students appear increasingly comfortable with the task completion. Which internal validity threat has confounded this study?
Social Studies · High School · Mon Jan 18 2021
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Answered on
- The internal validity threat that could be confounding this study is "practice effects" or "learning effects."
- Practice effects occur when participants become more skilled or accustomed to a task simply by repeating it multiple times. In memory studies, if participants show improvement in task performance over time due to increased familiarity or practice, it can confound the results and make it challenging to isolate the true effect of the experimental manipulation (varying conditions) on memory performance.
- To mitigate this threat to internal validity, researchers often use counterbalancing techniques, randomization, or control groups to account for practice effects and ensure that changes in performance are indeed due to the varying conditions being tested and not merely the result of practice or familiarity with the task.