Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Psychology, Experimental
The elimination of the indirect association couplets and the
acceptance of the remainders as fair portrayals of the influence of
objects and movements on recall is therefore a much nearer approach to
truth than would be the retention of the indirectly associated
couplets.
The following conclusions deal with recall after two days only. The
recall after longer intervals will be discussed after Table III.
The summary from Tables I. and II. shows that when objects and nouns
are coupled each with a foreign symbol, four of the six subjects
recall real objects better than images of objects, while two, _M_ and
_Ho_, show little or no preference. The summary also shows that when
body movements and verbs are coupled each with a foreign symbol, five
of the six subjects recall actual movements better than images of
movements, while one subject, _M_, shows no preference. The same
subject also showed no preference for objects. With the subjects _S_
and _B_ the preference for actual movements is not marked, and has
importance only in the light of later experiments to be reported.
The great difference in the retentive power of different subjects is,
as we should expect, very evident. Roughly, they may be divided into
two groups. _M_ and _Mo_ recall much more than the other four. The
small percentage of recall in the case of these four suggested the
next change in the conditions of experimentation, namely, to shorten
with them the intervals between the tests for permanence. This was
accordingly done in the _C_ set. But before giving an account of the
next set we may supplement these results by results obtained from
other subjects.
It was impossible to repeat this set with the same subjects, and
inconvenient, on account of the scarcity of suitable words, to devise
another set just like it. Accordingly, the _B_ set was repeated with
six new subjects. We may interpolate the results here, and then resume
our experiments with the other subjects. The conditions remained the
same as for the other subjects in all respects except the following.
The tests after nine and sixteen days were omitted, and the remaining
test for deferred recall was given after one day instead of after two.
In learning the series, each series was shown four times instead of
three. The results are summarized in the following table. The figures
in the left half show the number of words out of sixteen which were
correctly recalled. The figures in parentheses separate, as before,
the correctly recalled indirect-association couplets. In the right
half of the table the same results, omitting indirect-association
couplets, are given in per cents, to facilitate comparison with the
summary from Tables I. and II.
TABLE III.
SHOWING RECALL AFTER ONE DAY.
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