How can memory be improved?

A teacher thinks that her memory has improved since she started taking vitamin C daily. She thinks it might?

• also improve her students’ memory of her lectures. Design an experiment to test this claim. 1. What would be a good, testable hypothesis? 2. How should participants be selected and assigned to groups? 3. Design a simple two-group experiment based upon your hypothesis. Describe exactly what you would do to carry out your experiment, including your Independent variable, Dependent variable, and the Data you would collect and compare. Be as thorough as you can (within reason!) 4. What is your Independent variable? 5. What is your Dependent variable?

• Answer:

  Well, let's see. 1) Your hypothesis would be something like: Students who take vitamin C every day will do better in class than students who do not take vitamin C. 2) The teacher should use two classes in which she teaches the same topic (say 2 Intro Psych classes) and flip a coin to put one class in group 1 and the other class in group 2. 3) The teacher asks the students in one class to take 500mg of vitamin C every day (or she gives it to them as they enter class). This is her experimental group. For the other class she doesn't do anything out of the usual (the control group). At the end of the semester she gives both classes the exact same final exam. 4) The independent variable is the administration of vitamin C. 5) The dependent variable is the score on the final exam. That should do it! Michael http://www.thepsychfiles.com