WordMemory R Documentation

Experiment on Word Memory

Description

Percentage of different types of words recalled

Format

A dataset with 40 observations on the following 4 variables.

 Subject Code to identify each subject: A to J Abstract Words were abstract? No or Yes Frequent Words were common? No or Yes Percent Percentage of words recalled (out of 25)

Details

One hundred words were presented to each subject in a randomized order. The goal of the experiment was to see whether some kinds of words were easier to remember than others. In particular, are common words like potato, love, diet, and magazine easier to remember than less common words like manatee, hangnail, fillip, and apostasy? Are concrete words like coffee, dog, kale, and tamborine easier than abstract words like beauty, sympathy, fauna, and guile? There were 25 words each of four kinds, obtained by crossing the two factors of interest, Abstraction (concrete or abstract) and Frequency (common or rare).

This dataset appears in the first edition, but is not used in the second edition.

Source

Data from a student laboratory project, Department of Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College.