The Magical Number Seven

Apparatus This digit span experiment was conducted in the Social Sciences Laboratories at UCI. All three participants carried out the experiment through a computer software, MatLab. In order to implement the experiment, the stimuli used were strings of varied number of letters and randomized color condition or not, which were manipulated based on the experimental design. After all the…

has been studied by many psychologists for many years to discover the factors of cognitive. Many past studies have concluded that short term memory is very limited and can only hold up to just a few seconds of information. In order to retain information for a longer period of time, many techniques such as repeating information, can possibly be converted into long term memory. The purpose of this study is to determine which gender can score higher on a short term memory assessment when placed…

Introduce memory The analysis of human memory spans as far as 2000 years ago to Aristotle 's efforts to comprehend memory in his thesis "De Memoria" (Bloch, 2014). Following Aristotle, many advancements have been made in the knowledge of the human memory, and in 1878 the first scientific approach to studying memory was developed by Herman Ebbinghaus (Nadel & Nadel, 2005). Ebbinghaus categorised the three individual types of memory as sensory, long-term and short-term. (Ebbinghaus, 2013).…

George Miller’s magical number 7, plus or minus two, helps confirm the capacity of short term memory (Miller, 1956). Most people 18 and over can hold 5 to 9 items in their short term memory (Miller, 1956). Miller believed that short term memory could only hold his magic number because of the limited “slots” in which memory could be placed in the brain. Miller reached this conclusion by getting the participants of the initial study to listen to a number of tones that were different by pitch.…

Once the information is presented in the instructor’s lecture, it is time to begin the studying process. George Armitage Miller, one of the founders of what is known as “Cognitive Psychology” conducted studies on the limits of our capacity for human processing. His findings were published in 1956 in his paper The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information. Miller found the average human learns in “chunks.” When we first hear information, it is…

in, which we hold and manipulate information in a conscious attention through a phonological loop, visuospatial, central executive system and episode buffer. In past research done by Miller he found working memory capacity to be roughly around seven, however now it is believed that working memory is less than that. Long-term memory is the next stage and it has infinite capacity. There are many methods that are used to enhance long-term memory such as repeating and practicing. An important method…

articulatory suppression effect on comprehension (Baddeley, Elridge & Lewis, 1981). Counting and mental arithmetic are other functions which the PL is very involved with. Nairne and Healy (1983) got their subjects to count backwards and found that subjects were likely to skip repeated digits (e.g. 99, 88, etc.) and multiples of 10 (e.g. 90, 80, etc.). They suggested that this was due to the phonological similarity of the prefix (ninety, eighty) to the most recently articulated number and caused…

of research suggests that MTL is also associated with STM, especially those regarding novel relations. For example, Nichols et al. (2006) wanted to examine if MTL played a role in STM maintenance for novel faces. They tested STM and LTM for faces in normal subjects by fMRI and in amnesic subjects behaviourally. Normal subjects were scanned while they performed the STM task which required them to determine whether two novel faces, presented seven-seconds apart, were the same or not. They were…

Memory is an extremely important element in shaping our intellect. Technology should not be relied upon to replace memory. At any point, technology can crash, or information can be inaccurate, so it should not be depended on to give answers and information. Memorization and research are better means to building our intellect. Technology can sometimes be a distraction from communication, learning and gaining intellect. Many would rather use technology to store the information we need in place…

Sven, Tristan T. Nakagawa, Patricia Puci, Alexandra Zech, and Markus Buhner, aims at investigating the differences in performance between visualizers and verbalizers cognitive strategies by using digit span backwards. The digit span backwards has been used for many decades to assess the working memory capacity. The concept of working memory initiates the way we are able to memorize certain tasks and how we manipulate information into our memory. By using the digit span method, this researcher is…