Human Learning and Memory by David A. Lieberman

Author:David A. Lieberman
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

As Ebbinghaus had predicted, then, it appeared that under some circumstances memory can be virtually permanent (see also Conway, Cohen, and Stanhope, 1991). Moreover, Bahrick provided evidence that this impressive retention was due to the principles that Ebbinghaus had identified some 100 years earlier – above all, frequency and distribution of practice. Bahrick compared participants who had taken one, three, or five Spanish courses on their memory for elementary vocabulary – material that would have been learned in the first course – and found substantially better performance in participants who had taken more courses. He estimated that the level of permanent recall in participants who had taken only one course was virtually zero, rising to about 30% after three courses, and over 60% after five courses. The more students practiced their vocabulary – even at a stage where they might have thought they already knew it well – the better they later remembered it.

Bahrick also investigated the effects of spacing practice. In one study, Bahrick and Phelps (1987) compared the performance of students who learned 50 Spanish words in lessons spread 1 day apart with that of students who received the same number of lessons but separated by 30 days. When tested 8 years later, the students who had distributed their practice recalled almost twice as much, even though the total amount of time the two groups had spent studying was identical. (See also Bahrick et al., 1993.)

Long-term memory seems to depend crucially on extensive practice – in studying a foreign language, students repeat the same vocabulary over and over again – and, perhaps equally important, on people having the opportunity to review or refresh their memories at periodic intervals.

To summarize our discussion of Ebbinghaus, he has unquestionably proved to be one of the giants in the history of psychology. After centuries in which our only knowledge of how the mind works was based on armchair speculation, he showed that the principles of memory could be investigated empirically. With only one participant and no support, he invented procedures that guided research on memory for almost a century, and he used these techniques to discover principles that are still valid (for example, Rubin and Wenzel, 1996; Meeter, Murre, and Janssen, 2005). Inevitably, later research suggested new principles, but it was Ebbinghaus who provided the foundation for this research. (For further discussion of his contributions, see Kintsch, 1985; Slamecka, 1985; Gorfein and Hoffman, 1987.)

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