Capacity of visual short term memory of the Malaysian population in the design of a virtual environment

One of the factors that contribute to the enhancement of the effectiveness of a Virtual Environment (VE) is the capacity for visual short term memory (VSTM) or memory span. This paper describes an investigation of the memory span of Malaysian population for virtual environment design. Experiments were conducted where number, letters, word, and object or pictures were presented to test subjects. Nineteen University students, (6 males and 13 females) participated in the experiment. Their age is range from 17 to 30 years old. Subjects were asked to observe a group of numbers and letters for ten seconds as well as words for sixty seconds and objects or pictures for thirty second and to write down all the numbers, letters, words and pictures that they have seen during thirty seconds. The two tailed t test is conducted to test the difference of memory span between the male and female population. The result shows that there is no different between the capacity of visual short term memory Malaysian of the male and female population. The memory span was found to be in the range of 6 and 9 digits for numbers, 5 and 10 alphabets for letters, 5 and 11 strings for words, and 6 and 11 items for objects or pictures.