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Sunday, January 23, 2011

LINK BETWEEN STUDY AND TEST

LINK BETWEEN STUDY AND TEST
The encoding specificity principle Tulving (1983) developed the encoding specificity principle, (encoding specificity principle states that what is remembered later depends on the similarity of the retrieval situation to the original encoding conditions) which emphasizes the relationship between what occurs at study time (encoding) and what occurs at test time (retrieval). What is encoded in any particular situation is selective – it is determined by the demands on the individual at study time. According to the encoding specificity principle, what will be remembered later depends on the similarity between the memory test conditions and the original study conditions.


An experiment by Barclay et al. (1974) nicely illustrates encoding specificity. They required participants to study a series of sentences with key words embedded in the sentences. So, for example, the word ‘PIANO’ was presented in one of two sentences: ‘The man tuned the PIANO’ or ‘The man lifted the PIANO.’ Recall of the sentences was cued by phrases that were either appropriate or inappropriate to the particular attributes of the named object (the piano). Cued with the phrase ‘something melodious’, participants who had received the sentence about tuning the piano remembered ‘PIANO’. Participants who had studied the sentence about the piano being lifted were less likely to recall ‘PIANO’ after the ‘something melodious’ cue, because the melodious aspect of the piano had not been emphasized in their sentence. Conversely, participants who had studied the sentence about lifting the piano were more effectively cued at test by the phrase ‘something heavy’ rather than the cue ‘something melodious’. This experiment demonstrates two important aspects of encoding specificity:
1. Only those aspects of our experience that are specifically activated by the study situation are certain to be encoded.
2. For information to be optimally recalled, test cues need to target the particular aspects of the information that were originally encoded. In other words, remembering depends on the match between what is encoded and what is cued.


[Endel Tulving (1927– ) has been a dominant figure in research on memory for several generations and a pivotal figure in the late twentieth century. His work on subjective organization demonstrated that participants in memory studies are not passive but impose their own organization and expectations upon the material they study. He drew attention to a distinction, originally made by Plato, between the availability of items in memory and their accessibility. Tulving is even better known for his work on the relationship between what is encoded and what can be retrieved. He developed the encoding specificity principle and collaborated with Craik in exploring the ‘levels of processing’ framework. He was also the first psychologist to suggest that episodic and semantic memories were two separate memory systems. More recently, with Schacter, he has been involved in a considerable body of research and theorizing on the distinction between implicit and explicit memories and in research on the neuropsychological correlates of memory.]

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