Memory Experiment

Memory Lab Experiment 

Question: Do people remember 3 seconds of looking at pictures, or do they remember better, when they look at pictures for 7 seconds?

Hypothesis: If we show people 10 pictures for 3 seconds, and then show 10 pictures for seven seconds, then they will remember looking at pictures for seven seconds.

Materials:  1. 20 different card pictures

                    2. A sheet to record your results

                    3. Lab testers (we used 6)

                    4. A sheet for your lab testers to record what they remembered. 

Procedure:  Show a group of people 10 pictures for 3 seconds one at a time, and then show people a group of pictures for 7 seconds one at a time. Have them record their results, and then see which one people remembered the most.

Results: Our results were that we ended up getting more people to remember when they studied a picture for 7 seconds. The averages for seven seconds of out of 6 of our testers was an average of 8.2 (82%). The testers for 3 seconds got an average of 7 out of 10 (70%).

Conclusion:  We were investigating if people remembered 3 seconds better, or if they remembered 7 seconds of looking at pictures, and then trying to remember them. We predicted that they would remember 7 seconds better. We found out our data by testing a group of 6 people. We then graphed it into a chart, and found out that the 7 second testers remembered better than the 3 second testers. This supported our hypothesis because our prediction was true.

We think we got these results, because the longer you look at a picture, the longer you have to study it. One difficulty we encountered was that not all of our testers would concentrate on our experiment. Some things that worked well in the experiment was that our data was easy to find, and the outcome was very clear. If I were to expand the experiment, I would see if they remembered 6 seconds better than seven seconds, and see if something as small of a change as that would make any difference.