I agree with others that the memory problem is one of encoding failure. However, I remember the authors of my introductory text in 1966. Morgan and King. Does that mean I was meant to become a psychologist?
Bill Scott >>> Claudia Stanny <[email protected]> 03/28/10 6:05 PM >>> I think the color of the book is retained because it is a useful cue when doing a visual search (locating it on a bookshelf, in a pile on a desk, rummaging through a backpack, etc.). My shelves aren't organized alphabetically by author, they are organized by content area. So a search strategy that starts in an area for content and then searches for colors is effective (if I don't misremember the color!) and rapid. Color coding also serves another purpose for me. New editions emerge with redesigned colors on the covers. So a search by color gets me to the correct edition faster than an author search. (And I refer to these as the "blue cover" or "brown cover" editions rather than the edition number.) Once a student buys the book, the author's name isn't useful for much. (Apologies to textbook authors on the list!) I hope the student spends his or her time studying the content of the book (versus practicing recalling the author's name!). In general, we remember what captures our interest and features of learned material that we use regularly. The cases that illustrate lots of repetition with poor retention are examples in which the repetition occurs in a rote, mindless manner (versus deep or elaborate processing associated with use of material to achieve a goal). I think we begin encoding texts by authors (and recalling articles by author names) as we develop a more complex knowledge base in the field. Recalling a text by title (Cognition, Introduction to Psychology) can be even less useful than recalling the book color or author. For me, there are at least 6-9 authors with texts called Cognition (even more for those called Psychology). So the author is more important than the title for distinguishing between texts (when I'm not doing a visual search). For students, the book title, book color and author are frequently redundant. They only have one book. Which of these three features will be most useful for day-to-day tasks with the book (like asking their roommate if they've seen it in their room)? I suspect a process of content elaboration brings author names to the forefront as useful retrieval cues. When students just begin reading scholarly literature in the field, they retrieve articles by title, main point, or even which journal they found it in (assuming they haven't read much in any one journal). After a while, those cues are no longer effective as retrieval cues - they are associated with too many things (a sort of fan effect develops as their reading broadens). So we shift to other cues - like author names. It is part of the elaboration of knowledge that characterizes expert performance (calling everything a tree shifts to distinguishing between oaks, maples, etc., which in turn shifts to red oaks, white oaks, live oaks, etc. as expertise develops). I try to learn the names of my students, but name recall has never been my strength. Even for students whose names I learn during the term, I find that a term or two latter, I only remember faces, personality quirks, and similar visual and behavioral features. These characteristics are much more interesting to me than the names themselves. They are what I attend to most and what I remember best. I'd be happy as a clam if my students forgot the author of the textbook and even forgot my name, if they DID recall why inferential statistics are important and the underlying logic of a t-test! -- or even why elaborate coding and attention produces memories that last longer than superficial codings! :-) Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida 11000 University ParCUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13058.902daf6855267276c83a639cbb25165c&n=T&l=tips&o=1602 or send a blank email to leave-1602-13058.902daf6855267276c83a639cbb251...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- 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=1603 or send a blank email to leave-1603-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
