Memory is an important part of our everyday lives, whether it be remembering a phone number or remembering to brush your teeth.   Memory enables us to make it through the day, completing our daily tasks.   The major structure of the brain that is responsible for memory is the hippocampus.   This can be found in the limbic lobe of the brain (Cobb, 2001).   Memory is a series of interrelated systems made up of, sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.   We will be focusing on working memory, otherwise known as short-term memory.   STM has a limited storing capacity, which is usually replaced by new information every 30 seconds if it is not rehearsed.   Retrieval of these items is automatic and not everyone has the same capacity of memory, especially when it comes to young children.   Older children can hold onto more information in their working memories than can younger children can (Cobb, 2001).  

Although there have not been many studies on children’s memory versus time, there have been studies based around children’s memory in general.   In one such study, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia found that children’s increased speed of recall accompanies the improvement in short-term memory (Cowman, 2005).   This is important because the memory serves as an index for intelligence and mental maturation.   The memory span in turn increases because of the growth in the speed of mental processing.   This means that as we age, our short-term memory increases.  

As part of our experiment, we want to discover when children’s memory begins to improve or if there is any significant improvement at all.   In attempt to ascertain this, we will be testing the memory of two-year-old and five-year-old children and comparing
their results based on the length of time between seeing an object and recalling the object.   Hopefully, this will be able to tell us if children’s short-term memory is dissimilar at different ages.   In my own prediction, I feel that... [continues]

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