Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

hi
my experiment is around testing diff aspects of memory as the education level increases.
e.g elemetary vs/ middle school students.

i plan to take 10 subjects for elementary group and 10 for middle school and then do some tests with them
However How do i find a suitable control group for these. Since independent variable is education level,
and dependent is how good their memory is (still need to quantify it), how can i figure out what the control group is ?

When you're trying to contrast two groups like that, you don't really need a control. If you feel the need for one though, young adults would be the best group to do your comparisons to. For memory, try digit span tests (http://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/b ... digit-span), and compare 6 or 7 year olds to 16 or 17 year olds and you'll see the biggest difference in memory performance. In essence, kids have poor short term memory compared to adults and high school kids are much closer to adults than elementary school kids.

Howard