We think that colour  will have an impact on memory. We believe that red will be the colour that will have the highest amount of words memorized. It is our  hypothesize that red will have the highest results because it is a sign of danger so they may recognize these words more because they are focused on the colour. We also believe warmer colours are more eye-catching and brighter than cooler colours and therefore warmer colours like red will have a more postitive result. We also think the second colour with the highest results will be green because green is associated  with feelings of happiness and calm. When you are happy and calm you are more ikley be regulated and therefore more consentrated.  We think Blue will have the third highest results because it represents the emotions of sadness and when you are sad you may have a harder time rembembering words. We finally think that black will have the lowest results because  black is a colour that reprsents depression and when you have these emotions rembering words may be difficult.

What is Memory?

“Memory is the process of storing experiences in the brain and recalling them later.” (Britannica Kids, 2024). People use their memory every day.  There are three types of memory which are, short term, sensory and long term. Short term memory is when you only keep a little bit of  information in your mind for a short time.  “The amount of time the mind is able to do this is usually some seconds” (Kiddle Facts, 2024). Sensory memory comes from our five senses: hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste. Remembering the smell of a flower is an example of sensory memory. Long- term memory is remembering events from our past.

What is Colour?

Colour is light bouncing off different types of objects.  When white light hits different things, it absorbs the colour or it bounces off the object. We see the colour that bounces off the object.

There are primary and secondary colours.  Primary colours cannot be made by any other colours. These colours include, red yellow and blue. Secondary colours can be created by mixing primary colours together. Orange, green and purple are all secondary colours.  Tertiary colours are when you mix a primary and a secondary colour together.

Colour and Memory

‌ Colour is everywhere around us. It can help us memorize and improve our attention.

According to an article, “ The influence of colour on Memory Performance: A review” colour can help students improve their academic achievement because colour plays an important role in helping students learn.

Colour and Emotions

Different colours can bring different emotions to people. Warm colours represent feelings of happiness, energy and can also be a sign of danger. Cool colours are calming, nurturing or even sad. Red brings passion, anger and danger. Green symbolizes joy, peace, healing, and jealousy. Blue represents peace, cold, knowledge and trust. Black is associated with death, and negativity.

Manipulated variables: Our first manipulated vairable are the different colours that will be used to test for memory. The second variable will be the days we test. We will be testing on different days of the week. Our last manipulated variable are the different students in each group because we are not testing the same 10 people for each colour word list.​​​​​​
 

Controlled variables:  Our first  controlled variables is that  each group will be tested with the same words. The second controlled variable is we will test at the same time, and they will all be  two minutes to study the words. All groups will have to wait one hour before testing. Each group will also have two minutes to complete their final test. Another controlled variable is that each group will have the same amount of students who are in the same grade level.

Responding variables:  Our responding variable is how many words the participates remember because the students are responding to how many words they remember from their coloured list.

1. Determine the list of words that will be tested. We chose words from a Grade 5 Dole List. We put all 227 words in a randomizer and chose the first 20 words to be tested for each group. This is list #1
2. Then we took the 20 words that were picked out of the randomizer and put the rest of the words back into the randomizer. We then chose the first 20 words to add to our second testing list.
3. Then we took the 40 words and put them in another randomizer to create the final testing list of words to ensure the words that were being tested were in random order and mixed in with the other words. This is list #2
4. Then we took our 20 words and created a black, green, blue, and red list. These  lists were used to test each colour group.
5. Then we created the final testing sheet which included the first 20 words and then the second 20 random words. This list was created in black to see which words each colour group would remember.
6. We gathered our participants for testing. Each colour group had 10 students.
7. Start with the black colour group. We gathered them at 1:20pm. And read the instructions to the students.
8. The students had 2 minutes to read the list.
9. After 2 minutes the list was taken away and students went back to their classrooms
10. After 1 hour the students were gathered back and given list #2. They were instructed to highlight they remembered from list #1. They had 2 minutes to complete this task.
11. After 2 minutes they handed in their testing sheets.
12. Checked their answers with the marking key
13. Recorded the information.
14. Repeat steps 7 – 13 with the red, blue and green group at 1:20 pm every day.
15. Compare the results from each colour group to see if they remembered words in colour better or words in black.

The control group had their words written in black ink.  According to figure 1 the average number of words remembered were 12.5. In this group the lowest score was 1 and the highest score was 16.

The first coloured group had their words written in blue ink. In figure 2 the average number of words memorized were 13.4. The lowest score was 10 and the highest score was 18.

The third coloured group had their words written in green. In figure 3 it shows that the average number of words memorized was 13.2. The lowest score was 7 while the highest score was 19.

The final group had their words written in red ink. Figure 4 shows that the average words that were memorized were 16.3. The lowest score in the red group was 13 and the highest was 19.

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In conclusion, we hypothesized that red would have the highest results and black would have the lowest results. Our results showed that the students who tested with the red words got the highest results. The average of the red group was 16.3 words remembered. The average of the black group was 12.5 words remembered.

In our hypothesis, we thought that green would be the second highest and blue would be the third highest. Our tests showed that blue was the second highest with 13.4 words remembered while green was 13.2 words remembered.  Blue and green had very close results  and the different was only 0.2%.

We think red did the best because it is a warm colour and it represents danger which keeps people focused on the colour.  We think green and blue did not do as well because they are cool colours.

The purpose of our experiment is to see if colour affects memory. Memoization is a big part of exams and tests but many people struggle with memorizing. Mostly all study sheets and textsbooks are in black text but to memorize things, teachers tell you to highlight it. So we are seeing if you change the text to a different colour if you will memorize more things.

We believe we had three different errors that occurred while testing. Our first source of error was that  the word 'dirt' was missing on the second list. To correct this error we picked a new group of students to test. Another source of error is we did not have an equal amount of boys and girls in each group due to week long field trips. During testing, some students would not hand in the first test at the end of two minutes. They kept their sheets for a few seconds longer to finish studying the words. This could have been an error because they got more time than the other participants that handed in their sheets. These errors may have had a small impact on the final results.

Britannica Kids. (2024).  memory. Retrieved: March 2, 2024, from

https://kids.britannica.com/kids/article/memory/390806#:~:text=Memory%20is%20the%20process%20of

Dzulkifli, M. & Mustafar, M. (2013). The Influence of Colour on Memory Performance: A

Review. Retrieved: March 2, 2024, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3743993/#:~:text=Colour%20has%20been%20found%20to,are%20reviewed%20in%20detail%20below

Olesen, J. (2018, August 13). How Does Color Affect Memory? Color-Meanings.com.  Retrieved: March 6, 2024, from https://www.color-meanings.com/how-does-color-affect-memory/

Pantone. (2024) What is Color? Retrieved March 6, 2024, from https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-fundamentals/what-is-color

Short-term memory Facts for Kids. Kids.kiddle.co. Retrieved March 4, 2024, from https://kids.kiddle.co/Short-term_memory

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We would like to thank our parents for supporting us through the whole

Process.

We would especially like to thank our classmates for participating, giving us their time and making this experiment possible.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge our teachers for allowing us to conduct this experiment during class time.