DOES THE AMOUNT OF SLEEP SOMEONE GETS EFFECT THE SHORT TERM MEMORY? By Olivia Earney and Imogen Graham Year 7, Mentone Girls' Grammar School

AIM & HYPOTHESIS Aim- Our aim is to determine whether short term memory is affected by the amount of sleep a female year 7 student had the night before. Hypothesis- Our hypothesis is that the more sleep a female year 7 student (aged 12-13) has, the better their short term memory will be.

To test this hypothesis, we surveyed 60 year 7 girls. We recorded how long they slept for and then showed them a list of 20 words for one minute. The list was then covered and they had to remember the words and write down as many as they could remember from the list. After that they had one minute to examine a picture of a house that was coloured randomly. Again, it was then covered and they had one minute to remember the colours and write them in a blank outline of the house. METHOD To the left is a blank example of the sheets we handed out and to the right are the picture and word list we showed.

RESULTS These results are represented pictorially in graphs on the next two slides. They show the average percentage of questions that were answered correctly, grouped by the amount of sleep from the previous night. 4 1/2 hours 6 hours6 1/2 hours 7 hours7 1/2 hours 8 hours8 1/2 hours 9 hours10 hours11 hours 39%50%59%39%59%62%55%57%45%57%

DISCUSSION The results showed that the amount of sleep does not affect short term memory. We have formed this based on the similar results across all amounts of sleep, meaning that the short term memory of words and colours is not affected by the amount of sleep from the previous night. We can draw the conclusion that for short tests during units, sleep is not an incredibly important issue and that a student with 4 1/2 hours of sleep is, if able to revise before the test, can achieve around the same mark as a student who had 10 hours of sleep. The highest average percetage of questions answered correctly was achieved by students who had had 8 hours of sleep the night before.

CONCLUSION Our results did not support our hypothesis. Female year 7 student's ability to retain information in the short term is not affected by the amount of sleep from the night before. This means that, according to our results, cramming for tests right before them is beneficial to the student's test result. To improve on this experiment next time we would alter the test to show the students information, let them go home and sleep, record their hours of sleep and ask them how much they remember. This way we could examine if their hours of sleep affects how their minds consolidate information, the second of three stages of memory which is believed to only occur duing sleep.