Short-Term Memory

Our science fair project was on short-term memory. Memory is the brains ability to store information for periods of time. Shot-term memory starts when the brain is given information which lasts longer than 30 seconds. If the subject does not repeat this newly given information, they will surely forget it within an hour. For our experiment we chose to test audio memory also.

We wanted to see how short-term memory varies with the genders and grades of junior high students. Do males remember better than females? Can the grade sevens recall more words than the grade eights or nines? These are the sort of questions we wanted to answer.

Our hypothesis, the grades nines, being older, would be able to recall more words than the grade eights or sevens. We also predicted that the females would recall more words than the males.

To conduct our experiment, we used a twenty-four randomly selected students, eights students from each grade, four females and four males. Their teachers randomly selected the students. We came up with the following list of fourteen simple words: boat, fence, lollipop, orange, car, duck, book, balloon, ship, flower, snake, photo, tree and butterfly. We then came up with fourteen fairly simple math questions, here are some examples: 27 - 3 = 24 ; 5 + 7 = 12 ; 13 + 10 = 23 ; 53 - 4 = 49 . A watch with a timer was also used.

Teresa took the list of math questions and words home and made surveys. Once the surveys had been out together, we went around the school in search of students. We went to classrooms and asked the teachers of it would be alright if I could take two students out of class, one after the other for two minutes. If the teacher agreed, we asked them to choose two students from the class, one female and one male. We then took one of the selected into the hallway and began our experiment.

Our first step was to ask the student for his or her name, just in case we made an error and needed to contact the student again. Then Teresa recorded the student's grade, gender and age. Once that was done, Teresa said to them , "I'm going to ask you a list of fourteen words and I just want you to listen to them." Then she slowly read the student the list of words, approx. one word every seconds. We chose not to let the student know ahead of time what exactly what the experiment was about. If the student knew the project was on memory, the student would than try to remember the words. We wanted to see how well the students could remember without trying.

Next, Teresa said, "Now I'm going to ask you fourteen math questions which I want you to answer them to the best of your ability." Teresa then orally asked them the math questions allowing the student to answer only once, whether they answered correctly or not. The math questions offered as a distraction from the words. Also without the math questions, the experiment only would have lasted for 15 seconds, and 30 seconds is required for short-term memory to click in.

Once the student finished answering the questions Teresa then said, "Okay, now I want you to recall as many words as you can remember from the previous list within 30 seconds." Janice then started the timer and told the student to begin. Teresa recorded the words that each student recalled while keeping an eye on the clock. Once the time was up, Janice stopped the student, we both said thank-you and called the next student out and repeated the steps again.

We found that when the students were asked to recall as many words as they could remember, all the students suddenly look worried. We also noticed that when we told each student to begin, they quickly recalled about two to four words and then suddenly stopped to think. We also noticed that the first word on the list , boat was recalled the most often.

Our results were as follows: The average number of words recalled by grade nine students was 3.75. The average number for grade eight students is 3.625 and the average for grade seven students is 3.125. The average amount of words that the females recalled was 3.6. The average number of words that the males recalled was 3.3.

In conclusion, our hypothesizes were both correct. The grade nines did recall more words than any other grade and the females remembered more words than the males. This information can be useful of students. It's proof that cramming for a test is not the best idea, since you would only be able to remember very little, especially if you have a distraction just before you write the test.

Teresa Ferreira standing beside the finished science fair project.

(Janice Sittler absent)

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