Booth Id:
BEHA056I
Category:
Biomedical and Health Sciences
Year:
2015
Finalist Names:
Saoud, Elizabeth
Abstract:
This project is designed to test the extent of people's short-term memory, and reveal how age and gender cause people's minds to function differently. The hypothesis was if the age of female test subjects decreases, then their visual short-term memory will improve because as you age, your ability to recall recent information worsens, and statistics show that females tend to recall information better than males, due to increased observation. The procedure was to ask test subjects from their respected experimental groups, for 30 seconds to memorize 20 images on a piece of paper. Then, give them 60 seconds to verbally recall what they saw and record their results in a notebook. As for results, the female 31-40 experimental group performed the best with an average of 11.3 average, and males 10-20 did the worst with a 10.0 average. Females outperformed males in 3 out of the 4 categories. The gender result is consistent with the hypothesis because it was predicted that females would have better short-term memory. However, the age was not because the peak was 31-40, instead of there being a decrease with increasing age. My interpretation is that females tend to be more observant, and memory increases, peaks, and then declines as you age. People should be excited about these findings because in addition to the results, this project uncovered different patterns and unique thinking within the experiment.