MEMORY

First activity:

Think you have a good memory? Then take this little Short Term Memory Test. Also, test your memory for pictures with this Short Term 

Question 1.  Write down how you did.

Second Activity:

Simon says, "Play These Games!" to test your memory.

• Play SIMON SAYS Game 2

Question 2: Write down how you did.

Third Activity

How good is your memory for faces? Find out with the Face Memory Test.

Click on the question marks to cycle through the facial features.  

• Face Memory Test - Version 2

Question 3: Write down how you did on this one.  

Fourth Activity STOP!!! Only one of you will do this as you will be experimenting on your partner!

False Memories

Sometimes your brain makes up its own memories. Try to "implant" a memory by asking people to remember the words on list 1. Wait about five minutes, then probe their memory by asking them which words on list 2 they remember.

List 1: read, pages, letters, school, study, reading, stories, sheets, cover, pen, pencil, magazine, paper, words

List 2: house, pencil, apple, shoe, book, flag, rock, train, ocean, hill, music, water, glass, school

Did they say that "book" was on list 1? Only pencil and school were on list 1.

Try these words:

List 1: sheets, pillow, mattress, blanket, comfortable, room, dream, lay, chair, rest, tired, night, dark, time

List 2: door, tree, eye, song, pillow, juice, orange, radio, rain, car, sleep, cat, dream, eat

Did they say that "sleep" was on list 1? Only pillow and dream were on list 1.

Make up your own lists and see if you can create a false memory.

Materials:

Question 4.  Were you able to create false memories?  

Activity 5

Concrete Words, Abstract Words and Just Plain Nonsense

The ability to recall a word depends on how meaningful the word is to a person. Along with the meaningfulness of a word, the "concreteness" of a word is important for memory. Concreteness refers the ability of a word to form a mental image. A word with high concreteness is easy to "see"; a word with low concreteness (an "abstract" word) is difficult to visualize.

Here are three lists of words: concrete words, abstract words and nonsense words. See which list is easier to memorize. You could also read these lists to other people to see how many words from each list they remember.

Concrete Words

alligator - apple - arrow - baby - bird - book - butterfly - car - corn - flower - hammer - house - money - microscope - ocean - pencil - rock - shoes - table - window

Abstract Words

anger - belief - boredom - chance - concept - effort - fate - freedom - glory - happiness - honor - hope - idea - interest - knowledge - mercy - mood - moral - theory - truth

Nonsense Words

ator - botam - crov - difim - firap - glimoc - ricul- hilnim - jolib - kepwin - leptav - lumal - mib - natpem - peyrim - rispaw - stiwin - tubiv - vopec - yapib

Question 5. Which list was easier and which more difficult?  Why do you think this is?

Activity 6

How good is your memory? I will present you with a table of 25 different objects. Look at them for 30 seconds, then close the object window to return to this page. Then write down all the objects that you can remember.

Here are the 25 objects.

Question 6: How did you do? How many did you remember? 

Please hand in or email me your answers.  Don't forget you names.