Memory Span A Comparison Between Major Types Amy Bender, Jeremy Owens, and Jared Smith Hanover College 2007

Introduction Working memory –Allows for temporary storage and manipulation of a limited amount of information –Derived from experiments testing types of memory spans (Francis, Neath, MacKewn, & Goldthwaite, 2004)

Introduction Cont. Miller (1956) –Memory span = 7 ± 2 items or chunks –Amount of information remembered increased by constructing larger chunks –Chunks organized by learning patterns of larger and larger chunks –More experience and practice means more complex chunks?

Research Question How does ones experience with words affects their ability to recall long and short words in comparison to those with less experience with such words? –Look at students by major type Foreign Language Math/Economics/CBPEnglish/Theater/ClassicsPsychology/Sociology

Hypothesis It is expected that those people in majors which have more practice and exposure to words will do better at recalling such words than those who have not had as much experience.

Method Participants –N = 23; 13 males & 10 females –6 = Math/Econ/CBP –13 = English/Theater/Classics –4 = Psychology/Sociology –Participant age ranged from years old. –Participants were recruited by the researchers according to major type.

Method Cont. Equipment –CogLab (Memory Span Experiment) Software. –Questionnaire –Hardware; Gateway E series with Pentium 4 processor.

Method Cont. Stimulus –Five different stimuli Letters (similar and different sounding) Numbers Words (short and long) –Each presented five times (at various lengths) –Stimuli presented on left side of screen. –Buttons presented on right side of screen.

Method Cont. Procedure –Stimulus list was displayed one at a time. –Response options appeared. –Correct response = longer list –Incorrect response = shorter list –Final list length displayed at end for each stimulus type. –There were 25 total trials.

Results 4x5 Mixed design ANOVA with repeated measures Significant main effect of task on participant performance, F(4,80)= 11.86, p<.001 Interaction between task and major not significant

Results Cont. Tuckey Post Hoc analysis indicated that Math/Econ/CBP Majors scored significantly lower than other two major groups

Conclusions No significant relationship found between major type and task Psychology majors scored better overall, possibly due to exposure with task type English and psychology majors scored better overall than math majors, possibly because more experienced Short term memory capacity can be increased due to exposure

References 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,