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Short Term Memory

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Short Term Memory
Evaluating the Short Term Memory

Abstract
Short term memory also known as primary or active memory can be defined as the capacity for retaining information in mind, in an active state or a short period of time. Short term memory often involves recent events over a period between 30 seconds to several days. According to the researcher George A. Miller, the typical storage capacity for short-term memory is seven plus or minus two items depending on each and every individual. There exist different techniques used to enhance the storage capacity of the human memory like chunking and chewing. Other factors like age groups which will be discussed later in this experiment account to that as well.
Keywords: memory, short term memory, gender,
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Socializing and exercising both our brain and body could contribute in enhancing our semantic and procedural memories that enable us to recall concepts and general facts as we get closer to our middle-ages. However, the episodic memory keep declining over time and some problems that contribute to a decline in memory include Anxiety, dehydration, depression, poor nutrition and psychological stress. In order to maintain and improve our memory, we could keep calendars as well as to-do lists and avoid distractions diverting our attention.
As earlier mentioned several factors and techniques account to the capacity of information the short term memory can store.
Our hypothesis for this experiment is that chunking and age group is directly proportional to the amount of information the short term memory can store. Hence, our independent variables for this experiment will be the chunked words and the age of the different individuals while our dependent variable will be the ability for each individuals to memorize. However there are some variables like the time taken to memorize these words and the time taken to write them
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For the first two minutes they are given the set of 16 random words to memorize and immediately, the stop watch is set for two minutes. After two minutes, the stop watch is stopped and this group of males and females are asked to write down the words they were able to memorize on the sheets of paper they are provided with, for the next two minutes. For the second part of this experiment, the first part is repeated but in this case, a set of 16 psychology related words are used as an alternative to the set of 12 random words. The results are then compared for the set of random and the set of psychology related

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