The Nasser discussion Mike Palij refers to is also discussed in Baddeley's Human Memory book - he cites Nasser Memory Observed (spine well described Mike :) that tells of a professor writing to Titchener in 1917 that despite saying a prayer over 5000 times, he had very poor memory for it. I retell this story to students and ask them to contrast that with, say, hearing just the first few beats of their favorite song from ~5 years ago, after which they can most likely recall every lyric from the song even if they haven't heard it in a long time. It begins a discussion of elaborate versus maintenance/rote rehearsal (with the awkward implication that the prayer wasn't said with much meaning or effort; incidentally, I wouldn't call Baddeley's spine purple- more gray to me though I'm slightly chromatically challenged)
And Mike, you're dating yourself- Hays has been blue since the early '90s (my gray copy of Hays is from 1963, but with the dust jacket it is 2/3 green anyway!). Patrick Patrick O. Dolan, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Chair of Psychology Drew University Madison, NJ 07940 973-408-3558 [email protected] >>> "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> 3/28/2010 12:33 PM >>> <snip> This is research by Rubin and Kantis (1983) and if one has a copy of Baddeley's (1990) "Human Memory: Theory and Practice" (it has a purple cover :-) a figure containing some of their stimuli is in Figure 2.4, page 24. Ulric Neisser, I think it is in his "Memory Observed" (white spine and back, black and white photo on front ;-) also mentions that there are certain repetitive behaviors such as saying a prayer or, infamously in the U.S., being unable to say the Pledge of Alegiance or sing the National Anthem even though all of these language based activities may have been performed hundred or even thousands of times (contrast this with motor behavior -- would behaviors repeated so often also be so poorly remembered?). These are problems for memory researchers because it shows that mere repetition of verbal materials, even with large amounts of practice, can lead to poor memory (though I believe that this is not always the case). Meaningful encoding should lead to more distinctive memories that are resistant to interference effects but even these do not hold up over time. But one might think that having to read a book, processing it at a meaningful level, and doing other things with it would produce more durable memory. Consider: in graduate school, didn't all of you start to remember articles and textbooks by author's name? The need to cite the author as well as identify the source of one's information (e.g., the statistical test is shown in Hay's "Statistics for the Social Sciences" [the gray book ;-]) probably were inducements for graduate students know how to refer to articles and book by author while undergraduates don't seem to have the same inducement. Why? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1596 or send a blank email to leave-1596-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
