Part C: Experimental Report write-up (85 marks) – Prepare an experimental report based on the CogLab “Memory Span” experiment and discuss the experimental results which answer the following research question: Does age detrimentally affect memory span?

Report writing process:

Select any of the journal articles shared in Part B group work to write up the Introduction section of the experimental report. You may use additional journal articles.

Write up the Methods section.

Your instructor will collate the CogLab data you submitted by email in Part A, conduct the statistical analysis, prepare and upload the results (1 week after the Part A deadline). Once the statistical analysis has been released, write up the Results and Discussion sections. If you have not done PSY392 Methods of Data Analysis, it is highly recommended that you review the narrated PowerPoint presentation on ANOVA (accessible from Canvas L-group). This will help you to gain a better understanding of the statistical results.

Attach the Appendix (ANOVA results/SPSS output).

Provide a title for your report (Note: Do not start with “An Experimental Report on….”).

Write up the Abstract (this appears at the top of the report).

Remember to copy-and-paste the Peer Review Form (from Part B) to the end of your TMA02 document.

Note: The research hypotheses stated in the Introduction section should be logically formulated based on the literature review conducted and should have nothing to do with the actual statistical results (or the graphs from the SPSS output). It really does not matter how our results turn out. The statistical results of our data may or may not support the experimental hypotheses and that is perfectly fine. There is absolutely no need to be concerned about the actual statistical results when formulating the experimental hypotheses, bearing in mind that if you were to conduct an experimental study, you would always formulate your hypotheses BEFORE collecting and analysing the data

Classmates Posts:

It is relevant to the research question as it is a metal-analysis of over 104 studies of memory span and aging, the participants that ranged from 16 to 29 for younger adults while the older adults ranged 60.7 to 77.8 years old, and since it is a meta-analysis study from many researched data can provide a better estimation of the relation of memory and old aged , hence this study can be used to support the findings of single study finding where old aged does affect the memory span and thus providing evidences that the research question required.

https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/60/5/P223/585455 (Links to an external site.)

Edited by YAP YI MING on Feb 10 at 7:57pm

This journal article conducted an experiment to study how adult age differences can affect the performances short-term and working memory. There is a total of 4 age groups which range 45 years old to over 90 years old. The finding of the study is that by comparing the 3-span task which is the forward and backward digit span and the size judgment, there is a noticeable difference in the result where the older the person, the poorer the performance. Hence, this journal article provides the empirical evidences where the older you are, the more degradation to the memory performance.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-011-0119-7 (Links to an external site.)

Edited by YAP YI MING on Feb 10 at 8:03pm

Age differences in predictions and performance on a cued recall task.pdf

This experiment was conducted on 18 young adults with mean age of 19.4 years and 18 older adults with mean age 68.7. Before the start of the experiment, both groups were asked to predict their memory performance. Both predictions were similar, suggesting that the older adults rated their memory as they were much younger. The results of the experiment shows that both groups did best with the category cued recall and worst for letter cued recall. The older adult group also scored lower than the younger group. It is interesting to see the discrepancy between predicted and actual performance.

Edited by SONG YICK TERNG on Feb 10 at 12:04pm

Age differences in recall and recognition.pdf

This experiment was conducted on 15 college undergraduates with the mean age of 20.7 years, and another group of 15 older adults with mean age of 72.8 years. The experiment required them to perform cued recall and recognition tasks while carrying out a reaction-time task. The results showed that the young adults performed better than the older adults in recall tasks but not recognition tasks. The performance in reaction-time tasks also indicates that recalling tasks takes up more cognitive resources than with recognition tasks, leaving the older adults less resource to recall.

This article discusses about the decrease of the explicit memory or known as declarative memory, in the later life of adults. This article provides clear explanations of the reasons why the decline in memory as humans age. From the experiments conducted, the results have showed that older adults face difficulties in learning new things, too. As such, it further supports the research question that aging does affect one’s memory as he ages. A closer analysis also deduced that these experiments provide a basis of affecting and influencing the performance of the aged group of people. Assumedly, aging does affect one’s memory especially their implicit memory.

Edited by SHUKOR BIN KASSIM on Feb 11 at 12:35pm

Life-span changes in implicit and explicit memory.pdf

The experimental findings suggest that aged people have deficits in recalling contextual information may affect effortful operations. It is then understood that as humans age, they have a tendency of misplacing items. Aged people would have the difficulty in remembering the location of the item was last placed at. For instance, a grandmother would need assistance from the people in locating for her pair of spectacles after her shower. The empirical evidences have also shown about the degradation of memory as humans age.

Edited by SHUKOR BIN KASSIM on Feb 11 at 12:39pm

Differential Effects of Aging on Memory for Content and Context A Meta-Analysis.PDF