HI, I am currently developing an experiment on short-term memory where the user has to look at a sequence of numbers and characters and then retype that sequence. Do you know any similar experiments? What is the best way to build a sequence in order to avoid chunks which could be better remembered by the user? How much time should be provided for remembering? At the moment I am giving the user a half of a second per character/number.
I think the best way to build the sequence is by using a random (aleatorial) table of numbers or use the RANDOM function of a calculator to generate the sequence.
A problem with remembering words, digits, is
that their acoustical representation consists
of syllables. One should restrict to
one-syllable words. Omit the se-ven,
sie-ben.
An alternative would be to conduct
the experiment with nonsense syllables.
tu li fo ma gu ...
You could use a dictionary to avoid
that known words can be constructed
from them.
Regards,
Joachim
Chunking is unavoidable -- participants will try to group no matter what you give them. But this is OK if the groupings are subjective and novel and should not affect any other manipulation you are giving. Numbers are useful for typed repsonses because the keyboard is in logical linear order and the symbols are very familiar; only the order needs to be remembered. I would go with that and use any moderately random sequence.
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