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In science, I am starting a Science Fair project and I have a few questions that need to be answered for guidance and advice. My project is: How do the size, color and amount of time to see an image affect a person's image memory?

1) What do you suggest I should do to test the affects of different sizes, colors and amount of time to look at an image on a person's image memory?

2) How would I measure these effects?

3) What do you suggest I should do to record my data?

4) Does level of intelligence and age affect a person's image memory? How?

5) Based on your experiences, how do you think image memory affects a person or a community?

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

Question Date: 2011-10-24
Answer 1:

I think part of any science fair project is being able to come up with your own experimental design. However, here are some suggestions to ponder with regard to your questions.

1, 2, and 3) Allow someone to look at different images for different periods of time and then ask them to redraw the image or tell you what each image was at the very end. You would probably want to repeat this with several people. Separately test people with images that are the same but simply different colors and in the end again ask what was in each picture and see if a particular color was easier to remember. A method to record data could be you writing a person's description of a set of images at the end compared to what the actual image was. Or you could ask them to draw the images and compare side by side how similar it is to the original.

4) You could certainly test this by asking people of varying age to perform the same task of specific images. Record what age performs better.

5) For this last question, I pose a question to you. What could be beneficial about someone being able to recall every detail from a picture in for example a textbook?

Hopefully those are thorough enough answers.



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