[From Bill Powers (2003.05.27.1134 MDT)]
Marc Abrams (2003.05.26.1833) --
>The more I read and learn about memory, imagination,
>cognition, etc. The more convinced I am that I am on a good solid course.
Good. A suggestion. In Demo1, there's one section that deals with different
kinds of controlled variables, and among the tasks you can select is
control of the pitch of a sound, The way this one works is that first you
hear a continuous tone, and then (after hitting the space bar to start the
run) the sound starts to change pitch randomly and you use the mouse to
keep the pitch the same as it was at the start.
As you can see, this requires remembering what the pitch was at the start
in order to correct disturbances of the pitch. We can see what pitch
reference level the person is trying to maintain by seeing how the person
resists disturbances (as usual, the experiment is really a form of the
Test). So we can see if the pitch reference level drifts during the
30-second run, and pretty closely how much. The plot of the data after the
run shows this quite clearly, although the display isn't set up to make
accurate measurements.
If this suggests anything useful to you, Rick or I could provide some
programs to you for measuring memory changes in this way. I'm sure there
are many variations on this idea that could be used.
Best,
Bill P.