The digit memory-span increases with age rather than with grade-promotion measures of intelligence, reaching a limit of six digits for most grammar and high school pupils¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 1909 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Using a seventy-five per cent correct criterion, pupils below the 6th grade and over thirteen years reached their span limit at six digits and all others at seven. → Patterson 1909

Evidence¶

Patterson 1909¶

Patterson, T. L. (1909). Pedagogical Suggestions from Memory Tests. The Journal of Educational Psychology. https://books.google.com

q2 · i? · causal · r1

Applying a seventy-five per cent correct-judgment standard to the same digit-span data, the article reports the six-digit limit for pupils below 6th grade and over thirteen, and seven for all others. The criterion is the article's own choice, with no test statistic printed.

"If we then choose seventy-five—though it seems a less figure might be chosen—the results show that all pupils below the 6th grade and over thirteen years of age reach the limit of their memory span at six, and all others at seven."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Teachers' classifications of pupils as good, fair, or poor agree only weakly with digit memory-test standing — related
• Across repeated digit tests pupils improved with practice, with large uniform increases attributed to unconscious memory of the previous day's digits, and no fatigue effect on recall was found — related
• Test-retest correlations of memory span are low, questioning the validity of a single memory span test — related
• Auditory memory (digit-span) tests are overrepresented in the adult scale and depress the rankings of otherwise high-performing students — related