LEARNING STRATEGIES
What we remember depends, in part, on how we were thinking and acting at the time of the original experience. This knowledge can allow us to develop strategies that help us modify what we remember. The role of rehearsal An early strategy often adopted by children is to repeat material over and over again. The mere repetition of information, with no additional thought about meaning or associations, can help us to retain information for a few seconds, but it is a very poor method of learning for the longer term, as demonstrated by Craik and Watkins (1973). Their participants learned lists of words. In one condition, they were encouraged to repeat the last few words over and over again for some time before recall. These participants recalled the repeated words well in the immediate test, but at the end of the experiment all of the different lists that had been
presented were tested. In the final test, the words that had been rehearsed repeatedly (and remembered better in the immediate test) were recalled no better than other words. This rehearsal was described as maintenance rehearsal – maintaining the memory temporarily but doing nothing for longer-term memory. In contrast to maintenance rehearsal is elaborative rehearsal. Rather than simply repeating information in an effort to maintain its availability, in elaborative rehearsal the meaning of the information is considered and elaborated. Although both types of rehearsal can keep information available for a short time, recall after a delay is much better when the information has been rehearsed elaboratively than when it has merely been rehearsed in a maintenance fashion (Bjork & Jongeward, 1975). Expanding retrieval practice Regardless of the type of rehearsal, later recall of information benefits from spaced retrieval practice – a technique for maximizing learning with the minimum of effort applied at the optima moment. The underlying principle here is that memory is strengthened most when recall is attempted just before it becomes too difficult to accomplish (Bjork & Bjork, 1992). When we first encounter some information, it may be relatively fragile in terms of memorability. By successfully recalling the information correctly a short while after studying it, we are more likely to recall it again later, so we can allow a somewhat longer delay before our next successful retrieval effort. With each successful effort, the delay can increase and still lead to further successes. The effectiveness of this expanding schedule for retrieval practice was demonstrated by Landauer and Bjork (1978). They showed fictitious first and last names to their participants, who were then asked to recall the last names when the first names were shown again. The tests were scheduled to explore a range of possibilities, including testing after short, moderate and long intervals filled with intervening items, and a further condition, the expanding schedule, in which the tests were at first introduced after a short delay and then the interval was steadily increased. For the expanding schedule, the first test took place immediately, the second test after three intervening items and the third after ten further items. Landauer and Bjork found that any retrieval practice was beneficial (relative to the control unpractised condition), but that the greatest benefit was found for the expanding schedule, which produced recall at approximately twice the level of unpractised items. Expanding retrieval practice is an excellent strategy for students. It is relatively undemanding in terms of the effort and creativity required, and can be applied to virtually any material (Morris & Fritz, 2002).
The benefits of spaced study
It is natural to plunge intensively into trying to learn new information, but this strategy has been shown repeatedly to be misguided (Dempster, 1996). The benefits of spacing study trials were observed by Ebbinghaus (1885/1964), who found that spreading his study sessions over three days approximately halved the amount of time actually spent in actively studying the lists. In fact, two spaced presentations of material to be learned are often twice as effective as two massed presentations (Dempster, 1996). Bahrick and Phelps (1987) demonstrated the robustness of the spaced study effect. They compared the performance of participants who had originally learned and then relearned Spanish vocabulary by testing them eight years after the teaching session. One group had originally learned and relearned the vocabulary with an interval between learning and relearning of 30 days. Another group had learned and relearned on the same day. Eight years later, the participants who had learned and relearned with a 30-day interval performed at a level 250 per cent higher than the same-day learning/relearning group!
Mnemonics
Many students are familiar with rhymes such as ‘30 days hath September . . .’, whose rhythm and rhymes provide structures that aid recall (Morris & Gruneberg, 1979) and with first-letter mnemonics such as ‘Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain’ that help recall order – in this case, the colours of the rainbow (Morris & Cook, 1978).
But the oldest mnemonic method is the method of loci, traditionally attributed to Simonides around 500 BC and taught from Classical times until the present day. The technique involves knowing a series of places or loci that are familiar yet distinct – students might use places around their campus. The first item to be remembered is imaged in the first of these places, the second item in the second place, and so on. Recall then involves mentally revisiting the places and re-experiencing the images. Research has shown the technique to be highly effective (Morris, 1979), but its use is obviously limited by the availability of suitable loci and material to image. The method of loci has since been elaborated into the more flexible pegword system, using the phonetic mnemonic in the construction of the pegwords (Higbee, 2001). Easily imagined pegwords that can be relatively easily learned replace the places of the method of loci. For example, we might learn words to represent each of the numbers from 1 to 100. The w rds are easily learned because they are constructed according to a few simple rules that underlie the phonetic mnemonic. Each digit is replaced by a specific consonant sound and then vowel sounds are inserted in between to create concrete, imageable words instead of number combinations (for which it is more difficult to create images). In the phonetic mnemonic the consonant sounds for the digits 1 and 2 are ‘t’ and ‘n’, respectively. So, the number 21 can be represented by ‘net’ or ‘nut’. The full phonetic mnemonic and pegwords for the numbers 1 to 100 can be found in Higbee (2001). Pegword mnemonics allow a much more flexible use of the imagery mnemonic than the method of loci and can be dramatically effective (Bellezza, 1996; Morris & Reid, 1970); they form the basis of most professional memory improvement techniques. The pegs provide easily accessed memory cues, while the use of imagery links the cue and the item to be remembered through visuospatial interaction (Morris & Stevens, 1974). Imagery mnemonics ave been developed to tackle a range of practical memory problems. For example, Morris, Jones and Hampson (1978) evaluated an imagery mnemonic that was recommended by several stage memory performers. To remember a name, it had to be converted into some easy-to-image pegword form. For example, the name Gordon could be converted into a ‘garden’. Then a garden would be imagined growing on some prominent feature of the person’s face to link the pegword cue and the item to be remembered. By deciphering the pegword cue ‘garden’ into ‘Gordon’, this mnemonic produced an 80 per cent improvement in the learning of names. Similar techniques have been extended to language learning, such as the Linkword system – extensively investigated and developed by Gruneberg (1987, 1992). The foreign words are converted to some similar-sounding English word that can be easily imaged. A mental image is then formed to link the image with the actual meaning of the foreign word. So, for example, the French for tablecloth is nappe, so Gruneberg recommends imagining having a nap on a tablecloth. Wilding and Valentine (1997) describe studies of memory champions and other memory experts, many of whom have discovered for themselves the value of mental imagery as a memory improvement technique. The use of imagery is not essential for memory improvement, of course. It is just one way in which material that is superficially meaningless and disconnected can be made more meaningful and connected and therefore easier to remember. A simple way of connecting words from a list is to compose a story. Bower and Clark (1969) showed that getting people to make up a story that linked together a list of 12 words made later recall of the words very much better.
Reflecting on our own learning
Metamemory refers to the understanding that people have of their own memory. When attempting to learn something, it seems reasonable to assume that we will monitor our own learning and schedule subsequent study activities to attempt to improve it. But how accurate are we at judging how well we have learned something? If the judgment is made soon after studying the material, we are comparatively poor at predicting our later performance. On the other hand, when the judgment is made after a delay, we are relatively better at making this judgment (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1992). If we can adequately judge how well (or poorly) we have learned material, we can apply this knowledge to inform our subsequent study plans, spending additional time on material that is less well learned. Laboratory studies suggest that people schedule their time appropriately, in just this way. But preliminary work by Metcalfe and Son (1999) suggests that, in some more natural learning situations, people are more likely to schedule their stu y time with emphasis on areas that they know well or find particularly interesting, neglecting areas that need work.
What we remember depends, in part, on how we were thinking and acting at the time of the original experience. This knowledge can allow us to develop strategies that help us modify what we remember. The role of rehearsal An early strategy often adopted by children is to repeat material over and over again. The mere repetition of information, with no additional thought about meaning or associations, can help us to retain information for a few seconds, but it is a very poor method of learning for the longer term, as demonstrated by Craik and Watkins (1973). Their participants learned lists of words. In one condition, they were encouraged to repeat the last few words over and over again for some time before recall. These participants recalled the repeated words well in the immediate test, but at the end of the experiment all of the different lists that had been
presented were tested. In the final test, the words that had been rehearsed repeatedly (and remembered better in the immediate test) were recalled no better than other words. This rehearsal was described as maintenance rehearsal – maintaining the memory temporarily but doing nothing for longer-term memory. In contrast to maintenance rehearsal is elaborative rehearsal. Rather than simply repeating information in an effort to maintain its availability, in elaborative rehearsal the meaning of the information is considered and elaborated. Although both types of rehearsal can keep information available for a short time, recall after a delay is much better when the information has been rehearsed elaboratively than when it has merely been rehearsed in a maintenance fashion (Bjork & Jongeward, 1975). Expanding retrieval practice Regardless of the type of rehearsal, later recall of information benefits from spaced retrieval practice – a technique for maximizing learning with the minimum of effort applied at the optima moment. The underlying principle here is that memory is strengthened most when recall is attempted just before it becomes too difficult to accomplish (Bjork & Bjork, 1992). When we first encounter some information, it may be relatively fragile in terms of memorability. By successfully recalling the information correctly a short while after studying it, we are more likely to recall it again later, so we can allow a somewhat longer delay before our next successful retrieval effort. With each successful effort, the delay can increase and still lead to further successes. The effectiveness of this expanding schedule for retrieval practice was demonstrated by Landauer and Bjork (1978). They showed fictitious first and last names to their participants, who were then asked to recall the last names when the first names were shown again. The tests were scheduled to explore a range of possibilities, including testing after short, moderate and long intervals filled with intervening items, and a further condition, the expanding schedule, in which the tests were at first introduced after a short delay and then the interval was steadily increased. For the expanding schedule, the first test took place immediately, the second test after three intervening items and the third after ten further items. Landauer and Bjork found that any retrieval practice was beneficial (relative to the control unpractised condition), but that the greatest benefit was found for the expanding schedule, which produced recall at approximately twice the level of unpractised items. Expanding retrieval practice is an excellent strategy for students. It is relatively undemanding in terms of the effort and creativity required, and can be applied to virtually any material (Morris & Fritz, 2002).
The benefits of spaced study
It is natural to plunge intensively into trying to learn new information, but this strategy has been shown repeatedly to be misguided (Dempster, 1996). The benefits of spacing study trials were observed by Ebbinghaus (1885/1964), who found that spreading his study sessions over three days approximately halved the amount of time actually spent in actively studying the lists. In fact, two spaced presentations of material to be learned are often twice as effective as two massed presentations (Dempster, 1996). Bahrick and Phelps (1987) demonstrated the robustness of the spaced study effect. They compared the performance of participants who had originally learned and then relearned Spanish vocabulary by testing them eight years after the teaching session. One group had originally learned and relearned the vocabulary with an interval between learning and relearning of 30 days. Another group had learned and relearned on the same day. Eight years later, the participants who had learned and relearned with a 30-day interval performed at a level 250 per cent higher than the same-day learning/relearning group!
Mnemonics
Many students are familiar with rhymes such as ‘30 days hath September . . .’, whose rhythm and rhymes provide structures that aid recall (Morris & Gruneberg, 1979) and with first-letter mnemonics such as ‘Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain’ that help recall order – in this case, the colours of the rainbow (Morris & Cook, 1978).
But the oldest mnemonic method is the method of loci, traditionally attributed to Simonides around 500 BC and taught from Classical times until the present day. The technique involves knowing a series of places or loci that are familiar yet distinct – students might use places around their campus. The first item to be remembered is imaged in the first of these places, the second item in the second place, and so on. Recall then involves mentally revisiting the places and re-experiencing the images. Research has shown the technique to be highly effective (Morris, 1979), but its use is obviously limited by the availability of suitable loci and material to image. The method of loci has since been elaborated into the more flexible pegword system, using the phonetic mnemonic in the construction of the pegwords (Higbee, 2001). Easily imagined pegwords that can be relatively easily learned replace the places of the method of loci. For example, we might learn words to represent each of the numbers from 1 to 100. The w rds are easily learned because they are constructed according to a few simple rules that underlie the phonetic mnemonic. Each digit is replaced by a specific consonant sound and then vowel sounds are inserted in between to create concrete, imageable words instead of number combinations (for which it is more difficult to create images). In the phonetic mnemonic the consonant sounds for the digits 1 and 2 are ‘t’ and ‘n’, respectively. So, the number 21 can be represented by ‘net’ or ‘nut’. The full phonetic mnemonic and pegwords for the numbers 1 to 100 can be found in Higbee (2001). Pegword mnemonics allow a much more flexible use of the imagery mnemonic than the method of loci and can be dramatically effective (Bellezza, 1996; Morris & Reid, 1970); they form the basis of most professional memory improvement techniques. The pegs provide easily accessed memory cues, while the use of imagery links the cue and the item to be remembered through visuospatial interaction (Morris & Stevens, 1974). Imagery mnemonics ave been developed to tackle a range of practical memory problems. For example, Morris, Jones and Hampson (1978) evaluated an imagery mnemonic that was recommended by several stage memory performers. To remember a name, it had to be converted into some easy-to-image pegword form. For example, the name Gordon could be converted into a ‘garden’. Then a garden would be imagined growing on some prominent feature of the person’s face to link the pegword cue and the item to be remembered. By deciphering the pegword cue ‘garden’ into ‘Gordon’, this mnemonic produced an 80 per cent improvement in the learning of names. Similar techniques have been extended to language learning, such as the Linkword system – extensively investigated and developed by Gruneberg (1987, 1992). The foreign words are converted to some similar-sounding English word that can be easily imaged. A mental image is then formed to link the image with the actual meaning of the foreign word. So, for example, the French for tablecloth is nappe, so Gruneberg recommends imagining having a nap on a tablecloth. Wilding and Valentine (1997) describe studies of memory champions and other memory experts, many of whom have discovered for themselves the value of mental imagery as a memory improvement technique. The use of imagery is not essential for memory improvement, of course. It is just one way in which material that is superficially meaningless and disconnected can be made more meaningful and connected and therefore easier to remember. A simple way of connecting words from a list is to compose a story. Bower and Clark (1969) showed that getting people to make up a story that linked together a list of 12 words made later recall of the words very much better.
Reflecting on our own learning
Metamemory refers to the understanding that people have of their own memory. When attempting to learn something, it seems reasonable to assume that we will monitor our own learning and schedule subsequent study activities to attempt to improve it. But how accurate are we at judging how well we have learned something? If the judgment is made soon after studying the material, we are comparatively poor at predicting our later performance. On the other hand, when the judgment is made after a delay, we are relatively better at making this judgment (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1992). If we can adequately judge how well (or poorly) we have learned material, we can apply this knowledge to inform our subsequent study plans, spending additional time on material that is less well learned. Laboratory studies suggest that people schedule their time appropriately, in just this way. But preliminary work by Metcalfe and Son (1999) suggests that, in some more natural learning situations, people are more likely to schedule their stu y time with emphasis on areas that they know well or find particularly interesting, neglecting areas that need work.
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