Lesson 4 assignment: information processing assignment

In this week’s reading and lecture, we discussed several ways to help commit information into memory, including chunking, rehearsal, organization, and elaboration. For this assignment, you will need to seek assistance from at least one other person to conduct a small experiment to test memory. You may do this with more than one individual and compare answers, but this is your choice.

This assignment will take 24 hours to complete, so you must prepare in advance.

The point of the assignment is to see if the person(s) that you question apply the memory strategies listed above when attempting to remember the information you present. In your experiment, you will tell the person(s) that you select that you are going to be reading some numbers or letters out loud, and after you say all of the numbers/letters in the series, they are to write down as many as they can in the same order that you said them. Make sure to provide the person with paper and writing utensil.

There are four trials:

·         Trial 1: 7 4 9 2 7 5 1

·         Trial 2: 5 2 1 6 7 8 2 9 3 6 4

·         Trial 3: 4 1 1 4 8 0 1 2 3 3 6 0

·         Trial 4: T G I F S O S M T V L O L

So the steps are:

1.      Read all of the items in the trial aloud, allowing about one second per number/letter.

2.      Ask the person write down all of the numbers or letters that they remember in the correct order.

3.      Collect their response(s).

4.      Give the person all of the numbers in order from Trial 1 and instruct the person to try to commit the information to memory as best they can for the next 24 hours.

5.      After 24 hours, ask the person to recall the sequence of numbers to the best of their memory and write them down.

6.      Collect their response(s).

At the end of your experiment, you are to write a paper answering the following questions:

1.      How many numbers/letters did the person(s) you questioned remember for each in-the moment trial? Is this consistent with the “magic” number of 7 plus-or-minus 2 that we hold in our working memory? Discuss.

2.      How many numbers from trial one did the person(s) after at least 24 hours? What type of memory was the person committing this information into?

3.      Did the person that you questioned use any strategies to remember the numbers/letters? Did the strategies differ when you asked them to recall the information in the moment versus a day later? Discuss.

4.      What kinds of learning strategies do you use in your life to help you remember information? What strategies work best for you? What did you learn from this exercise?

This assignment should be at least 250 words in length, but should not exceed 1,000 words.