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Memory Span and Experience
Running head: MEMORY SPAN AND WORD EXPERIENCE
Memory Span and Word Experience
Jeremy Owens
Hanover College
Winter 2007
Memory Span and Word Experience
Many cognitive theories propose that there is a short-term system or working memory that allows for temporary storage of a limited amount of information (Francis, Neath, MacKewn, & Goldthwaite, 2004). Working memory is said to be comprised of the functional components of cognition that allow for comprehension and mental representation of people’s immediate environment, the retaining of information about immediate past experience, and to create, relate, and act on current goals (Baddeley, & Logie, 1999). Working memory is a system that temporarily holds and manipulates information as we perform cognitive tasks, and it is through this system that the limits of memory span can be tested (Solso, MacLin, & MacLin, 2005).
The existence of a short-term memory system such as working memory is principally derived from experiments testing types of memory spans (Francis, Neath, MacKewn, & Goldthwaite, 2004). As noted by Miller (1956), the memory span for humans was approximately seven plus or minus two items or chunks. These items can be seen as slots or chunks; they are not necessarily one uniform unit of information and can vary across people. Miller (1956) further noted that since the memory span is a fixed number of chunks, the amount of information remembered can be increased simply by constructing larger chunks. Miller (1956) further notes that these chunks are organized by learning patterns of larger and larger chunks and the amount of information a person can remember increases correspondingly. Through this reasoning, it is reasonable to assume that a person can learn to increase the bits of information per chunk through more experience and practice.
This study will further look into how ones experience with words affects their ability to recall long and short words in comparison to those with less experience with such words through an experiment looking at memory span capabilities. Students will be selected from four different types of majors including: Foreign Language, Math/Economics/CBP majors scored significantly lower than the English/Theater/Classics and Psychology/Sociology to participate in this experiment. After collecting information on their relative experience of using long and short words, a memory span experiment will be used to assess their memory capabilities in these areas. It is expected that those people who have had more practice and exposure to words will do better at recalling such words than those who have not had as much experience.
Method
Participants
The participants were 23 students from a small Midwestern college who were recruited by the researchers by major type. The age range was 20 to 23. There were 13 males and 10 females. All participants were Caucasian, except for one Hispanic participant. There were six Math/Accounting/CBP majors, 13 English/Theater/Classics majors, and four Psychology/Sociology majors.
Equipment
The program used to run the study and collect the data was called “CogLab,” which was designed by Greg Francis and Ian Neath and ran on a Gateway E Series computer model E4300 with a Pentium 4 processor. The monitor was a flat screen LCD display, model FPD1565. A questionnaire was also distributed (see attached) to assess each participant’s demographic information and previous experience with words and numbers.
Stimulus
The experiment presented five different stimuli: Numbers, Letters that sound different, Letters that sound the same, Short words, and Long words. Each type of stimuli was presented five times, with the lengths of the list changing. Stimuli were presented on the left half of the screen for one second each. After the full list of stimuli were presented, buttons appeared on the right side of the screen to show some of the stimuli just presented and other stimuli of that type that were not shown.
Procedure
The participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire assessing their previous experience with words and numbers. Participants were then instructed to complete the “Memory Span” experiment which was run on the “CogLab” CD. Instructions to the experiment were provided, and the participants were asked to start the trials by pressing the Next Trial Button. Once the trial began, a sequence of one of the five different types of stimuli was presented. When the sequence was finished, the participants were presented with nine buttons to which the participant would click on if they thought they saw that stimulus during the sequence. After each trial, the participant was given feedback whether their answers were Correct or Incorrect before they proceeded to the next trial. Participants had five trials for each of the five stimulus types. If the participant was correct for a given sequence, then the next sequence for that stimulus type would be one item longer, and if a participant was incorrect for a given sequence, the next sequence for that stimulus type would be one item less. The participant’s final list length for each stimulus type was displayed in a separate window when they completed the experiment and were recorded.
Results
Each participant went through five different sequences of each condition and the number of stimuli in each sequence recognized was recorded. The data was then analyzed in a 4 X 5 mixed design ANOVA test with repeated measures.
Analysis found a significant main effect of task on participant performance, F(4, 80) = 11.86, p<.001. The interaction between task and major was not found to be significant, F(8, 80) = 1.16, p = .33. Figure 1 shows the mean overall score for the participants by their respective major. Tukey Post-hoc analysis found that Math/Economics/CBP (N = 6) majors scored significantly lower than the English/Theater/Classics (N = 13) and Psychology/Sociology (N = 4) major groups. It should be noted the study was unable to obtain any students from the Foreign Language major type, so they were not included in the analysis.
Figure 1. Average final list length by major type.
Conclusions
These results provide evidence as to which major types are able to recall more items in their memory span. The Math majors scored significantly lower than both the English and Psychology majors in their length of memory span. Since Math classes require more work with numbers and less work with words, it could allow for a lower memory span of words because of their lack of experience with words relative to the other two major types. In terms of overall experience with words and memory span length, one would think that English majors would have the longest memory span due to their exposure to words in class, but the Psychology majors actually outperformed the English majors. Psychology majors in comparison are exposed to lesser amounts of words than English majors, but they could be more familiar with the memory span task overall considering this is a topic of direct study for them. It is reasonable that through their familiarity with the topic that they could have developed some sort of mnemonic to remember the sequences more proficiently. Overall, these results could indicate that our short term memory capacity can be increased due to exposure to certain stimuli or even the task of remembering.
In the future, experimenters could expand upon this type of study by looking into more specific majors and possibly across a wider demographic area than the sample of predominately white young adults this study uses. Broad major areas were used in this study in order to make more general conclusions, but more specific knowledge could be gained by examining a larger group of more specific majors.
References
Baddeley, Alan D.; Logie, Robert H. (1999). Working memory: The multiple-component
model. In A. Miyake & P. Shah (Eds.), Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control. New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press, 1999. pp. 28-61.
Francis, G., Neath, I., MacKewn, A., & Goldthwaite, D., (2004). Short-term memory-
Memory span. In CogLab. Canada: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven plus or minus two: Some limits on our
capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
Solso, R. L, MacLin, M. K., MacLin, O. H. (2005). Cognitive Psychology (7th ed). New
York: Pearson Education, Inc.
Questionnaire: Please fill out the following questionnaire as thoroughly and completely as possible.
Name (optional):_____________________________
1. Gender (Please circle one) Male Female
2. What is your ethnicity?
3. How old are you?
4. What is your major?
5. What is your minor?
6. How many math classes have you taken while at college?
7. How many language-related classes have you taken while at college (including English, foreign language, theater)?
8. Have you had any experience with the performing arts, including theater and/or choir, in high school or college?
9. Have you participated in any extra-curricular activities involving mathematics aside from class requirements?
10. Do you feel confident in working with numbers? Please rate on a scale 1-10. A rating of 1 meaning no confidence and 10 meaning extremely confident. _____
11. Do you feel confident in working with words? Please rate on a scale 1-10. A rating of 1 meaning no confidence and 10 meaning extremely confident. _____