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 fourth change was from imaged or made movements of the body alone
to imaged or made movements employing objects. If, as the _A_ and the
_B_ sets have already demonstrated, the presence of objects at all is
an aid to recall, the movement series of the _C_ set should show a
greater gain over their corresponding verb series than the simple
movements of the body in the _A_ and the _B_ sets showed over their
corresponding verb series. For, employing objects in movements is
adding the aid of objects to whatever aid there is in making the
movements.
Turning to the results, we consider the _C_ set by itself with
reference to the effect of the use of objects vs. images in general.
The summary from Table IV. shows that under the conditions given,
after intervals of from slightly less than one day to two days, five
of the six subjects recall object couplets better than noun couplets.
One subject, _M_ recalls noun couplets better. It also shows that
under the conditions and after the intervals mentioned all six
subjects recall movement couplets better than verb couplets. In view
of the small difference here and of his whole record, however, _M_ is
probably to be classed as indifferent in both substantive and action
series.
RECALL AFTER NINE AND SIXTEEN DAYS.
Thus far recall after these longer intervals has not been discussed.
The experiment was originally devised to test recall after two days
only, but it was found that with two of the subjects, _M_ and _Mo_,
recall for greater intervals could be obtained with slight additional
trouble. This was accordingly done in the _B_ and _C_ sets. The
results of the four other subjects in the _B_ set are not so
satisfactory on this point, because not enough was recalled.
The most interesting fact which developed was an apparently slower
rate of forgetting, in many cases, of the nouns and verbs than of the
objects and movements. In the noun-object group of the _B_ set it is
noticeable in three out of the four possible subjects, viz., _B, Ho_,
and _Mo_. _M_ alone does not show it. The two other subjects, _S_ and
_B_, did not recall enough for a comparison. In the verb-movement
group of the _B_ set it is also marked in three out of the four
possible subjects, viz., _M_, _Ho_, and _Mo. B_ alone does not show
it. It is also seen in the _C_ set in the results of _M_ and _Mo_, in
both the noun-object and the verb-movement groups. With the four other
subjects in the _C_ set it could not be noticed, since the series ran
their course in a day. In _M_ (verb-movement group, _C_ set) and _Mo_
(noun-object group, _C_ set) the originally higher object or movement
curves actually fall below their corresponding noun or verb curves.
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