I.

Introduction

As an old saying goes, With age comes great wisdom but in contrary to that statement, we
often assume that when we get older, we start to lose our ability to remember things. But have you
forgotten your lunch in the fridge before? Or forgotten your homework on your desk? Is age really an
important factor in how well we remember things? Is memory loss directly related to age, then?
Scientists and psychologists generally divide memory into three categories: sensory memory,
short-term memory, and long-term memory.
Short-term memory is what you use to recall information within a period of several seconds.
Studies have found that you are able to hold about 4-7 things in your short-term memory at one time.
Short-term memory also degrades fairly quickly, which is why it is difficult to remember, for example,
your friends address a few seconds after shes told it to you. Both sensory and short-term memory have
very limited capacities and operate in the frontal lobe of the brain.
Long-term memory has a much larger capacity. It includes all of your memory capacity beyond
short-term memoryall the way to your earliest childhood memory! You may not to be able to
remember your friends address right after shes told you, but you can probably remember your own
address. Long-term memory uses a greater area of the brain.
Things in your sensory and short-term memory can settle into your long-term memory with the
help of sleep and the part of your brain called the hippocampus. When you sleep, your brain files
through all the memories of the day and converts the important stuff into long-term memory.
Most people cant remember anything before they were about three or four years old. Babies
memories develop during these first few years, gradually growing in capacity. Once youre no longer a
toddler, your memory is at full operating capacity.
In this study, the researchers aimed to test the short-term memory capacity of different age
groups and examine the data to if younger people really have a better memory than older people and
interpret these data using statistical equations and principles. The sample comprised 30 participants
aged between 9 and 75 whom were given 30 seconds to memorize as many words as they can within 30
seconds.
Based on the statistics of the study, it showed that age is not really a great factor when it comes
to memory. The researchers found out that even if one is younger than the other doesnt mean that
his/her short term memory is sharper that the older one. Thus, arriving that the correlation between the
age and memory is weak and negligible.

II. Aim

The aim of this project is to give determine whether age really is a factor in having sharp
memory. If younger people remember more than older people do. And to use different statistical
equations and principles in interpreting the collected data.

III. Methodology

Materials:

The experimenters made a list of 100 random words which were given to the respondents to
memorize words as many as they can in under 30 seconds. They also used a timer to time the length of
memorization of the respondents. The instrument is attached in the Appendix.

Participants:

A total of 30 participants were used, split between 5 experimenters. Each experimenter worked
with an even number of participants to ensure equal numbers were used.
Friends and family were most accessible to each of the experimenters and therefore
Opportunity Sampling was used for the purposes of this study. It was agreed that the age parameters
would be set between 9 and 75. It was also agreed that gender was unimportant for the purposes of this
experiment.
To decide which participants were placed into each group randomisation was used. This was
undertaken by picking names out of a hat or using a shuffling process.
Procedure:
In order to test the hypotheses a list of 20 words was used, each word containing no more than
6 letters each. (see Appendix for lists).
The 30 participants were randomly selected. To ensure that each participant was treated and
tested in the same way the study was controlled within strict time parameters, giving them 30 seconds
to memorize.
For each participant was required to study a prepared organised list of 20 words for exactly 1
minute. They were then given a pen and blank piece of paper and allocated 2 minutes to write down as
many of those words as they could remember.
IV. Results

Table 1.Shows the array of data collected in this research and the columns used for the statistical
interpretation of the data collected. The researchers used the measures of central tendency, measures
of variability, skewness and kurtosis, and the correlation in measuring and interpreting the collected
data. The complete solutions are shown in the Appendix.


V. Interpretation and Analysis of Data

The researchers attained a mean of 26.9 and 9.30 for age and memory, a median of 18.5 and 8,
and a mode of 18 and 8. The median and the mode for both the age and memory are if not the same,
almost close to each other. However, the mean for age and memory have a differences of 8 and 1.30
points from its mean and mode. The mean, median and mode are the three components of the
measures of central tendency.
Aside from determining the central point from the greatest frequency, the experimenters also
solved for the measures of variability. This was composed of the range, quartile deviation, mean
absolute deviation, the standard deviation and the coefficient of variation. For the age, the researchers
obtained results of 66, 14.5, 14.19, 17.28, and 63.24% respectively. While for the memory score, they
acquired results of 19, 3, 3.51, 4.17, and 50.56%. Since the CV is larger for the age, there is more
variability in the recorded ages rather than in the scores attained by the respondents.
Skewness and kurtosis were also used by the researchers. Skewness determines the extent or
direction to which a distribution depart from the symmetry while kurtosis indicates the degree of
peakedness of the distribution. The researchers, determined a skewness of 1.458 and 0.828 for the age
and memory. This results showed that the distribution is skewed to the right or positively skewed. For
the kurtosis, the researchers got outputs of 0.387 and 0.316 indicating that both age and memory
produces a leptokurtic curve since their coefficients were greater than 0.263.
The correlation of the distribution was also used by the experimenters. They used both the
Pearsons Coefficient r, and the Spearman Rho. Correlation determines the relationship in the changes
of the variables. For the r, the researchers obtained a result of -0.26 while in using the formula for rho,
they got a result of -0.15. Both results shows that the correlation between the age and memory are
negative and weak.
VI. Conclusion and Recommendation

Based on the results, the researchers therefore conclude that the short-term memory of
a person can negligently be affected by his/her age. It doesnt mean that once you get older,
you memory starts to wear off too. Other factors also affect the sharpness of ones memory.
Though, having said that, the researchers found that the correlation was closer to 0 than
to -1. This may be due to the high range for both the age and memory, and to the fact that the
respondents were randomly picked and their ages really produces variation. Other than that,
the result may also be influenced by the memorization time that the respondents were given. 30
seconds may not have been sufficient for the respondents to memorize random words easily.
However, this can also mean that their reflexes under time pressure is quite low. But this has
got to be affirmed by conducting another experiment.
The researchers recommend that the age range should be lessen. Maybe from 9-75,
they can make it to 16-75 and as much as possible try to find a more effective means of
selecting the respondents. Aside from using a random sampling method, they could use a more
systematized one.
Having said all of those things, the researchers still stick to their conclusion that age is
not the sole factor in short-term memory loss.

















APPENDIX













Measures of Central Tendency

Mean:

Median:

Mode:

Measures of Variability

Range:

Quartile Deviation:

Mean Absolute Deviation:

||

||

Standard Deviation:

Coefficient of Variation:

Skewness and Kurtosis
Skewness:

0.828

Kurtosis:

Correlation
Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, r:

;


Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient,:

;
The correlation in the
distribution between age
and memory score is
negative and weak.
The correlation in the
distribution between age
and memory score is
negative and negligible.