Mission: Memory

Overview

Working memory is what allows us to manipulate the information stored in our short-term memory. In this project, we wanted to learn more about how working memory ability changes over different age groups and difficulty levels. We utilized a working memory test called the n-back task, in which participants had to monitor a sequence of stimuli, in this case numbers, and respond when the current item matches one presented “n” items earlier. The actual test itself consisted of n-backs using 3 different difficulty levels or n’s (1, 2, and 3), where the stimuli (digits from 0-9) were the same per participant. To conduct the study, we recruited 47 3rd and 4th graders, and 14 adults from the school community. After implementing the study in the classroom, we analyzed the data files for both groups, gathering data for reaction time when the response was correct (hits), reaction time when the response was incorrect (false alarms), and accuracy for each n-back difficulty level. Then, we tested the statistical significance of our data using t-tests and a repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The most important pieces of data we have found are the accuracy scores for 3rd and 4th graders and adults, adult reaction times for hits and false alarms when comparing n-back one and n-back two, n-back one and n-back three, and the accuracy when comparing n back two to n back three. Observing this data, we saw that adults had higher accuracy, both the 3rd and 4th graders and adults had mixed reaction times, and that n back one was the easiest for both groups, but n back two was harder than n back three. We saw statistically significant results for hits, and accuracy, but not for false alarms. The result from accuracy suggests that working memory capacity does increase from childhood to adult, and the result from hits may suggest that the adults were faster when they were confident, and the opposite for the 3rd and 4th graders. A possible explanation for n back 2 being harder than n back 3 is that the participants had adapted to the difficulty of the test by then.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Behavioral & Social Sciences (Junior Division) · Entry J-03-14

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• CSEF Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project