Science Projects on Memory & Age
According to a Harvard study, which was completed in 2007, age affects memory in the same way it affects the body: Since the brain is no longer in top condition, older people find it more difficult to remember small details of everyday life or recall past experiences and events. Schoolchildren certainly do not have the means of Harvard students, but there are simple projects that will allow children to test older people's recollective powers and the effects of aging to their short- and long-term memory.
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Memory and Age Groups
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Children will examine how the ability to recollect short-term memories, such as yesterday's dinner, as well as remembering details of a conversation or a television show, may be affected by age. For this experiment, members of different age groups, such as young adults, middle-aged people and seniors, will be asked the same questions. For instance, students can ask what they had for breakfast two days ago, or read them a short story, or a newspaper article and ask specific questions on it afterward. Students will collect the data and evaluate the different age group representatives' memory, by the number of questions answered and how long it took them to remember the answer.
Visual and Auditory Memory
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Older people have difficulty seeing or hearing properly, and students can examine if this affects their short-term memory. Visit senior relatives or a retirement home and focus on people with hearing impairment, or with eyesight problems, but not with both. Watch a television program together, asking them to focus on it. The following day, question them on specific issues, such as the presenter's clothes, or the color of the walls, to test their visual memory and ask about what was said during the program, for the auditory memory. See if there is a connection between their hearing and eyesight problems and the level of their visual and auditory memory.
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Long-Term Memory
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Ask your parents, grandparents and other middle-aged and senior relatives to help you with this project. Find a family event that happened more than 10 years ago, such as a marriage, family holidays or a child's birth. Ask the same questions to both age groups and compare the answers, based on their accuracy and the details provided. You have to ensure that during these past events, the role of senior and of somewhat younger members was the same; your dad can surely remember his wedding day better than your great-uncle, for example.
Important Information
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Examine if seniors have the ability to remember important events of their personal life or the country's history, ignoring information seemingly irrelevant to them. To test their short-term memory, ask questions on both important and unimportant issues, such as the pills they take every day and which show they watched on the television the previous day. Likewise, if you know the seniors were interested in either politics or sports, ask about presidential elections of the past and the Super Bowl finalists, to test their long-term memory. Make sure they already know both of the answers, so that you test their ability to remember, not their knowledge.
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