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Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters
volume XIV, Part II (1903)

Jegi, John I.
Auditory memory span for numbers in school children,   pp. [509]-513 PDF (1.4 MB)


Page [509]


    AUDITORY MEMORY SPAN FOR NUMBERS IN
                  SCHOOL CHILDREN.
                       JOHN I. JEGI.
    Late Professor of Physiology and Psychology, Milwaukee Normal School.
  The problem for this study was to determine! the native mem-
ory power in children between the ages of five and fifteen years,
or ais we find them in the grades from the first to the eighth in-
clusive. Does memory power increase at a uniform rate from
age to age as shown by the number of different things a child
can retain and reproduce? Does it increase more rapidly at
some ages than at others? Do the many things a child has to
remember increase his native memory power?  What may we
regard as the actual memory splan in children throughout the
grades? Is there a "memory period" as such during which
this
power suddenly and rapidly blossoms out and shdws itself in a
remarkable increase of native power? This investigation was
undertaken to throw some light on these and kindred questions
relating to this very important power of the human mind. The
study is limited, however, to a single one of the six modes or
forms of impression-the auditory, and to a single one of the
scores of objects, that may be remembered- numbers.
  Several studies have been made which throw some light on
some of these questions, but memory span as such in school chil-
dren has not been studied directly so far as I know. Mr. F. W.
Smedley, Director of the Department of Child Study and Peda-
gogical Investigation, of the Chicago Public Schools, gives a
table of memory span in the third report (1900-1901), but the
method he used could not be expected to yield very accurate
results, and besides he attempted only to determine some simple
standard for comparing memory power in abnormal children
whom he was studying and not to ascertain the actual span for
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