Procedure

1. In the first part of the experiment you will be shown two alphabets side by side (see the figure below). You will be asked to indicate by pressing a button whether the two alphabets are Same or Different. Your reaction time for pressing the button will be recorded.

 

 

 

Following table shows the correct responses

Condition	Examples	Correct Response
Visual  and  name  match	A  A	Same
Name  match	A  a	Same
Visual  and  name  mismatch	A  T	Different
Visual  and  name  mismatch	A  t	Different

 

Observations to be noted

You will observe that the reaction time for the second condition ( A a ) will be more than for the first ( A A ). This is because identical letters (A A) are judged by their visual characteristics while letters having the same name but different shape (A a ) are compared by their verbal characteristics. Thus the A A match was made on the basis of physical (visual code) and so the response time is less. Thus coding of information in STM is first visual and then based on name.

In case when alphabets are shown after a time delay of few seconds the name coding takes over the visual coding and hence the difference in response time for A A and A a is very less.

 

The experiment has three sub parts. All of them can be tried out.

a) Character Set

b) Color Set

c) Image Ser

 

Please follow following procedure

1. Click on the SIMULATOR tab to proceed for the experiment.

2. You will see a button which will direct you to the experiment page.

3. Read instructions given carefully for each experiment and perform all 3 parts in sequence.

4. A graph will be displayed after each sub-experiment. You are expected to capture this graph and save it on to your local drive.

5. Try to analyze the graphs and see if the results about STM prove to be valid in your case.