Activity 4.5: Short Term Memory

Performing these short-term memory tasks seemed kind of funny to me, as if the tables had turned a little bit, because there are tasks on cognitive assessments (which, for those who are unaware, are the school psych’s specialty, in a way) that measure short-term memory, like number recall; I always feel thankful I don’t have to perform those tasks.  But, today, I did.  And I learned that I don’t have great short-term memory, especially when it comes to numbers!  Something I did learn, however, was on item #3 when the word pairs were also paired with pictures, I performed better, and I also displayed some chunking, primacy, and recency in my answers.  Also, I noticed that on the countries task, I tended to remember the country names in which I found interesting and exotic, i.e., Botswana and Dubai.  Another thing I learned was if I am interrupted and asked to do another task (i.e., item #12), I am not very good at retaining the information I was learning to begin with.  I found this activity interesting, because, like I said before, I usually am on the other side, measuring others’ memory, and so it was refreshing to be able to test my own instead.