Activity 6
Memory Studies
Dr. R. G. Tonks

Review the material in the text on  serial position and memory.

The Lab has three parts to it, all arising from activities on NASA's Human Factors Lab.

Here you will explore three aspects of human memory. In the first lab you will look at a long list of words to remember.  Here the concepts of short-term memory capacity and the serial position curve become relevant.  In the second part you will look at different types of interference on memory of a list of numbers.  In the third part you will examine different modes of encoding as they impact your recall.

For your Report on this activity please answer the questions in purple below from each of the three parts, and submit your report to the Activity 7 dropbox in CourseSpaces

Part 1: Memory

Click on this link to review memory (if you like or just go straight to the experiments 1-3 below).   

What did you learn about memory in this experiment?  If you look at which words you got correct on each list and which words you made errors on is there support for the serial position curve? Why do you think that you performed differently on these various lists?

After you have completed this series of experiments (and questions) click on INTERFERENCE for part 2.

Part 2: Interference

Read through the instructions and complete the three experiments.

Answer the questions on the last page of this lab (after the completion of experiment three).
 Include these answers in what you send to me at the end of this lab.

What was the effect of interference in your study? How does this compare to your results from Part 1 above? 

After you have completed this series of experiments (and answered the questions) click on
Short-Term Memory (for part 3)  .

Part 3: Short Term Memory
As with the first two parts, read through the instructions and complete the three experiments. 

Answer the questions on the last page of this lab (after the completion of experiment three).  And include answers to the following in your lab report:

Which form of encoding worked best for you?  Did your results match those expected results as indicated on the webpage for short term memory?  What have you learned about memory from this series of studies?

After completing the lab, drop a word file (or .rtf) with your  answers the questions from each part into the drop box for Activity 7.