I think Claudia does a great job going over some of the relevant issues regarding the encoding specificity effect, fan effect, and short-term vs long-term retention of information. I would just like to make a few points:
(1) One needs to be cautious when using memory research and applying its results to classroom learning. Traditionally speaking, the episodic and semantic distinction can be used to group different types of learning situations and has implications for learning and teaching. The encoding specificity effect would be classified as an episodic memory task because it requires one to recall/recognize/remember information that had been provided at a specific point in time and place. I am hesitant to say that this is a "superficial" learning task because the focus is on list learning and the performance criterion is how many items from the list are correctly which we know will generally not be "perfect" and affected by a variety of variables (e.g., word familiarity, length, pronouncability, etc.). Mnemonists or individuals that have mastered techniques to organize arbitrary collections of stimuli can overcome the effect of these variables because they have developed skills, primarily how to organize incoming information into "chunks" or incorporating it into well-organized existing knowledge structures. One might want to consider to what exist does the material presented and tested in class corresponds to an episodic memory task or a semantic memory task (in the sense of developing a complex knowledge structure). (2) If one has to point to a "learning style" difference, one might want to focus on whether a person when given information actively attempts to organize it on the basis of (a) apparent relationships that are present at the time of learning and which can be used to "chunk" the material into higher order meaningful units and (b) associating the new information into existing knowledge structures that represents not only the content of the information but its relationships to existing knowledge (e.g., the variance and standard deviation can be thought of as simply being descriptive statistics but once this concept is established, one can identify the role that variance/SD plays in t-tests, ANOVA, correlation, and regression analysis -- at the end of a statistics course, a student should not just have the concept variance/SD but also how it is used in different types of analysis, that is, a complex knowledge structure should have been developed that contains both "semantic" and procedural knowledge). As teachers, we should strive to provide tools and guidance on (a) how to organize information and (b) how all of the material in course are interrelated. From this perspective, though one may give quizes/exams for specific terms, concepts, relationships, etc., a comprehensive cumulative final exam would be the best way to test learning. A student who has developed a complex knowledge structure interrelating what has been learned over the course of the semester should do better than person who essentially learned lists of apparently unrelated terms, concepts, and procedures. (3) Although learning as a process of developing knowledge structures can be experienced as more effortful than strategies that encourage something akin to list learning, the real issue is how much relevant knowledge does one have that can be used as the basis for learning new information -- the "what you know determines what you can remember position". One interpretation of Frederic Bartlett's work with the "War of the Ghosts" story is that if you give people material that they have little background on, they will not remember most of it correctly and their memory for the material will change to some extent, to make it more consistent with existing knowledge. Today, if you took a person who never saw the TV series "Lost" and gave them a story to remember from one of the episodes, they will probably remember much less of the story than someone who is actively involved in following the series (I did not watch the series and it is not clear to me that what happened to the participants was adeuqately explained by the final episode but this probably was not too big a deal to serious fans of the series, that is, even though some things may still not make sense, their active organization of the series episodic information [even with contradictions and loose ends that can't be connected back to anything] fans would still be able to recall significant amount of information and be able to do very well on memory tests involving the series). This raises the question of what do they know that they can be used as a basis for organizing new knowledge in contrast to having to organize new information from scratch. Remember the self-reference effect: people can remember more words that they can related to themselves than other processing instructions. But there are only a limited number of personal situations that can be used to get "self reference" types of effects and many more situations where one will have to organize the info from scratch (e.g., I'm not watching the TV series "Rubicon" but from what I have seen, one has to be dedicated to watching it in order to understand what is going on from week to week - knowing that is something like the movie "Three Days of the Condor" provides some general info but the series tries to be "original" but introduces all sorts of plot complications). So, students are capable of creating complex knowledge structures about things in the world (e.g., TV series, vampire movies, vampire books, etc.) and one question that arises is how to get them to apply that effort to material taught in class. I think that every class may have a couple of students who really engage course material this way but most students don't seem to make the commitment. As teachers, I think, we need to know how to use techniques that overcome this lack of "motivation" and in some sense make them learn in spite of themselves. Just some thoughts. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] On Mon, 6 Sep 2010 22:04:16 -0500, Claudia Stanny wrote: > Encoding specificity doesn't really refer to the effect of environmental > context cues, although the phenomena are related. > > Cues from context (like studying in the same room) are weak relative to > associations developed between meaning of cues and information to be > retrieved. So studying in the same physical environment is good for > short-term retrieval of weakly-learned material. When other associations > work for the retrieval and these are strong, the effects of these stronger > retrieval cues overshadow contextual cues. Contextual effects fade as the > strength of overall learning increases. > > Encoding specificity (a la Tulving and Thompson) is related to the > specificity of retrieval cues learned at the time of study and those > available at the time of test. These could be context cues, but Tulving and > Thompson focused on cues related to the material learned and the specificity > refers to the encoding of these associations. Tulving and Thompson had > students learn words in the context of weak associates as study cues (e.g., > HEAD - LIGHT). When HEAD is presented as the cue during test, retrieval was > usually successful. If a different weak associate was presented as the cue > (e.g., NIGHT), the cue was ineffective. They got this effect when either > weak associate was used as the studied cue (half studied with HEAD, half > with NIGHT). When a strong associate is presented as a free association cue > (e.g., DARK), students produce LIGHT as a free associate response, but > frequently fail to recognize this as a to-be-remembered word connected to > one of the weak associates. (A weird example of a recognition test > producing worse performance than a retrieval task.) This phenomenon > supports the advice that students should anticipate the types of questions > (and types of retrieval cues) they will get during testing and explicitly > encode the material with those retrieval cues when they study. > > A related phenomenon to this discussion is the fan effect (many studies by > John Anderson). The fan effect describes the way in which excitation for > retrieval is distributed among the many associations to a retrieval cue. > The larger the fan (the more items associated with the cue), the slower the > speed of activation and the weaker the activation of any one item. The > more items associated with a single cue, the less effective that cue will be > in retrieving any one item. However, in a semantic network in which items > are widely interconnected, this effect is minimized. That is, if an item > serves as a retrieval cue for many items, the negative effect of the fan > effect is offset by the fact that to-be-retrieved items are associated with > many potential retrieval cues. Thus, any learning that increases the number > of potential retrieval cues that might successfully activate the > to-be-remembered item will lead to more successful recall. This is why > experts retrieve knowledge in their domain of expertise quickly and > successfully rather than get mired in fan effects: Their semantic networks > are highly structured and interconnected, enabling retrieval through a > variety of routes and using various retrieval cues. This highly redundant > and interconnected associative network can emerge from distributed study > times, study in a variety of contexts, connecting new learning to other > known material, etc. All good study strategies, but effortful. > > The problem for education is that we frequently test students only after > short retention intervals. In many cases, strategies that produce good > long-term retention don't look as good as the short-term strategies in an > immediate test - the benefits of these "better" strategies only appear in > experiments in which students are tested after a delay (e.g., two weeks > after the study session). Given the way we test, students who use > strategies that enhance short-term retention at the cost of long-term > retention (cramming, relying on cues in a single environmental context) get > reinforced for using these strategies instead of strategies that produce > deeper, long-term retention but take more effort and might not produce > results as good as cramming in a short term test. > > Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. > Director > Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment > Associate Professor > School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences > University of West Florida > 11000 University Parkway > Pensacola, FL 32514 - 5751 > > Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 --- 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=4665 or send a blank email to leave-4665-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
