Influence of colour in short-term memory performance of young children

Abstract

Perception, attention, memory, and thinking are all interconnected mental processes in human cognition. Children perceive by using their senses to gather and understand information and respond to the world around them by cognitive effort. Colour plays a crucial role in visual perception. Identifying the effective colour that can reduce the cognitive burden will help us design a product that can enhance young children's learning. Many researchers have suggested that colour can influence learning. Based on that, this paper aimed to find the effective colour that can increase the short-term memory performance of young children. Visual digit span test was used to assess children's memory with different colour backgrounds such as red, blue, green, yellow, orange and purple and also in the white background. Performances were assessed for each colour relative to the white baseline. For the study, 238 children of 6-7 years were selected from different schools and were divided into 6 study groups and one control group, each containing 34 children. The results revealed that the study groups showed a significant increase in short-term memory compared to the control group. The findings of the present study will facilitate the designers to consider the use of colour in instructional materials.