Letter Memory
Watch a sequence of letters and recall the last 4 letters.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What does the letter-memory task measure?
Updating and monitoring in working memory: continuously revising what you hold in mind as new letters arrive, keeping only the most recent ones.
Why not just remember everything?
The task only asks for the last few letters, so holding older items wastes capacity and invites interference — efficient updating means letting go.
What does accuracy reflect?
How reliably you refresh the running set. Errors often come from reporting a letter that had already dropped out of the window.
How is it related to other working-memory tasks?
It belongs to the updating family — alongside keep-track and n-back — which forms one of the executive-function factors identified in Miyake's research.
How fast are the letters shown, and can I rehearse them?
In the classic running-span procedure letters appear at roughly 250-500 ms each — too fast for serial rehearsal. This version uses the upper bound of that range (500 ms per letter), so letter-by-letter rehearsal may still partially occur; treat your score as a demonstration-level reference.
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References
- Morris, N., & Jones, D. M. (1990). Memory updating in working memory: The role of the central executive. British Journal of Psychology, 81(2), 111-121.
- Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "frontal lobe" tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49-100. 10.1006/cogp.1999.0734
- Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Chee, A. E. H. (2010). The components of working memory updating: An experimental decomposition and individual differences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(1), 170-189. 10.1037/a0017891
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About This Experiment
This experiment is an educational adaptation for demonstration purposes. It is not a clinical diagnostic tool. Results reflect your performance in this specific session and should not be interpreted as an assessment of your cognitive abilities.
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