I Thought I Knew That! The Effect of Fonts on a Person's Memory

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of my project is to examine the effect of different types of fonts on a person#s memory. The results of my experiment can help students who need help with studying vocabulary words, history notes, or just memorizing a certain math concept. Methods/Materials Computer, printer, 25 subjects, paper, timer, pencil. I had 25 people look a list of words (coffee, fence, binder, pencil, tree, apple, piano, roller skates, spoon, lettuce, pilot, and television) for one minute in one of the five fonts Times New Roman, Times New Roman Bold and Italicized, Mistral, Edwardian Script JCT, and Party LET. After that, they wrote down the words they could remember in order on a separate piece of paper. Finally, I collected the results and recorded them in a table. Results The people who used the font Mistral and Party LET had the highest average recall out of all of the fonts; 56% correct on average for Party LET and 53% correct on average for Mistral. Tying for third were the fonts Times New Roman and Times New Roman Bold and Italicized, both averaging 46%. The font Edwardian script JCT averaged the lowest at 35% correct. The people who were in the group that used Edwardian script JCT got lower scores (15% and 25%) which lowered the average. There was also a person who got 100% which was an outlier to the other scores in the group Times New Roman Bold and Italicized. Many of the other people in this group scored around 20 percent or lower. Conclusions/Discussion My data supported part of my hypothesis. Less common fonts, Party LET and Mistral, were easier for people to remember. However Edwardian Script had the Had the lowest recall rate, even though it is an uncommon font.

Competition history

• CSEF 2012 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0733

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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