The Relationship Between Seventh Grade Exam Achievement and Short-term memory Retention and Capacity

Slide 1: The relationship between science exam achievement and short-term memory capacity and retention in seventh grade students STEPHANIE H. FAZIO

Slide 2: Working Memory: Working Memory Model temporary (Baddeley and Hitch 1974) form of information storage; what you’re Performance/Action thinking about; where cognition happens; limited capacity Short-Term Memory: memories that Long- Sensory Encoding Working Retrieval last seconds to hours Term Info Memory Memory and are vulnerable to disruption Long-Term Memory: Consolidation memories you Short- can recall days to years Term after originally stored; Memory unlimited capacity?

Slide 3: Current Research Study  Is there a relationship between short-term memory performance and science examination performance?  Do STM capacity limits affect examination performance?  Do STM retention limits affect examination performance?  Hypothesis:  A direct relationship between STM capacity and exam score  A direct relationship between STM retention and exam score

Slide 4: Method  Participants  22 seventh grade students (11 male, 11 female)  Materials  65-question comprehensive science examination  Short-term memory assessment  Procedure  Part 1: Comprehensive science examination  Part 2: 3-trial short-term memory assessment  3 distraction intervals: 0 seconds (trial 1), 5, seconds (trial 2), 10 seconds (trial 3)  5 sequence lengths: 3, 6, 7, 8, 10 letters

Slide 5: Results – Comprehensive Examination Table 2. Exam Performance Summary for Males, Females and All Participants Female Male Total Range 59.03 - 93.97 56.62 - 96.39 56.62 - 96.39 Mean 81.27 79.96 80.61 Median 83.13 86.75 83.73 SD 7.97 10.47 9.10

Slide 6: Results – STM Assessment Table 3. Short Term Memory Performance Summary for All Participants Distraction Interval Number of Letters 0 seconds 5 seconds 10 seconds 3 letters 3.00 (1.00) 2.27 (0.76) 1.95 (0.65) 6 letters 5.59 (0.93) 3.64 (0.61) 2.73 (0.45) 7 letters 6.41 (0.92) 4.14 (0.59) 3.23 (0.46) 8 letters 6.45 (0.82) 4.23 (0.53) 2.27 (0.28) 10 letters 5.05 (0.50) 3.82 (0.37) 0.91 (0.09)

Slide 7: STM Assessment – Linear Regression

Slide 8: STM Assessment – Linear Regression

Slide 9: STM vs. Exam Performance – Linear Regression

Slide 10: STM Assessment - Multiple Regression (Y – Exam Score, X1-5 – STM Score for each Sequence Length in Trial 1) Regression Coefficients b B B xrxy 3 letters -0.0444 -0.0826 -0.0238 6 letters -0.0269 -0.0423 -0.0109 7 letters 0.4192 0.6782 0.5409 8 letters 0.2503 0.3139 0.1485 10 letters 0.0951 0.0830 0.0510 Multiple R 2 0.7058 A djusted Multiple R 2 0.6138 S tandard Error of Multiple Estimate 0.0591 A NOV A Table S ource SS df MS F p Regression 0.1759 5 0.0352 7.65 < 0.0001 Residual 0.0734 16 0.0046 Total 0.2493 21

Slide 11: STM Assessment – Multiple Regression (Y – Exam Score, X1-3 – STM Score for 7 letters for each Trial) Regression Coefficients b B B xrxy 0 seconds 0.3919 0.5641 0.4380 5 seconds 0.0774 0.1887 0.1057 10 seconds 0.1254 0.2955 0.1740 Multiple R 2 0.7178 A djusted Multiple R 2 0.6708 S tandard Error of Multiple Estimate 0.0579 A NOV A Table S ource SS df MS F p Regression 0.1790 3 0.0597 15.31 <.0001 Residual 0.0703 18 0.0039 Total 0.2493 21

Slide 12: Conclusions  As sequence length (number of letters) increases, STM score decreases (strong linear relationship).  As the distraction task duration increases, STM score decreases (strong linear relationship).  There is a strong relationship between exam score and STM capacity (without a distraction task).  There is a strong relationship between exam score and STM retention.

Slide 13: Further Analysis  Limitations of the current study:  Small sample size (N = 22)  STM Assessment took place at different times of the day and over a long period of time  Attempt to correlate STM to exam performance in other academic subjects  Determine the effect of memory strategies on STM and/or exam performance  Attempt to correlate STM performance to MRI and/or fMRI images of participants’ frontal cortex or hippocampus