The peculiarities of words or syllables in a list or passage that is being memorized, the relationships observed among the parts, and the meanings suggested or imported into the material, though very useful in the early stages of memorizing, tend to drop out of mind as the material becomes familiar. A pair of syllables, "lub--mer", may have first been associated by turning them into "love mother", but later this meaning fades out, and the two syllables seem simply to belong together in their own right. A pair of words, like "seldom--harbor", that were first linked together by the intermediary thought of a boat that seldom came into the harbor, become directly bound together as mere words. A short-circuiting occurs, indirect attachments giving way to direct. Even the outline and general purpose of a connected passage may fade out of mind, when the passage becomes well learned, so that it may be almost impossible for a schoolboy, who has learned his little speech by heart, to deliver it with any consciousness of its real meaning. A familiar act flattens out and tends to become automatic and mechanical.
Economy in Memorizing
Memorizing is a form of mental work that is susceptible of management, and several principles of scientific management have been worked out that may greatly assist in the learning of a long and difficult lesson. The problem has been approached from the angle of economy or efficiency. Suppose a certain amount of time is allowed for the study of a lesson, how can this time be best utilized?
The first principle of economy has already been sufficiently emphasized: observant study, directed towards the finding of relationships and significant facts, is much more efficient than mere dull repetition.
The value of recitation in memorizing.
"Recitation" here means reciting to oneself. After the learner has read his lesson once or twice, he may, instead of continuing simply to read it, attempt to recite it, prompting himself without much delay when he is stuck, and verifying his recitation by reference to the paper. The question is whether this active reciting method of study is or is not economical of time in memorizing, and whether or not it fixes the lesson durably in memory. The matter has been thoroughly tested, and the answer is unequivocally in favor of recitation. The only outstanding question is as to how soon to start attempting to recite, and probably no single answer can be given to this question, so much depends on the kind of material studied, and on peculiarities of the individual learner. Where the sense rather than the exact wording of a lesson has to be learned, it is probably best to recite, in outline, after the first reading, and to utilize the next reading for filling in the outline.
The results of one series of experiments on this matter are summarized in the adjoining table.
THE VALUE OF RECITATION IN MEMORIZING (from Gates)
Material
studied 16 nonsense syllables 5 short biographies,
totalling about 170 words
Per cent, remembered Per cent. remembered
immediately after immediately after
4 hours 4 hours
All time
devoted
to reading 35 15 35 16
1/5 of time
devoted to
recitation 50 26 37 19
2/5 of time
devoted to
recitation 54 28 41 25
3/5 of time
devoted to
recitation 57 37 42 26
4/5 of time
devoted to
recitation 74 48 42 26
The time devoted to study was in all cases 9 minutes, and
this time was divided between reading and recitation in
different proportions as stated in the first column at the
left. Reading down the next column, [{340}] we find that
when nonsense syllables were studied and the test was
conducted immediately after the close of the study period,
35 per cent. were remembered when all the study time had
been devoted to reading, 50 per cent, when the last 1/5 of
the study time had been devoted to recitation, 54 per cent
when the last 2/5 of the time had been devoted to
recitation; and so on. The next column shows the per
cents. remembered four hours after the study period. Each
subject in these experiments had before him a sheet of
paper containing the lesson to be studied, and he simply
read it till the experimenter gave a signal to recite,
after which the subject recited the lesson to himself as
well as he could, prompting himself from the paper as
often as necessary, and proceeded, thus till the end of
the study period. The subjects in these particular
experiments were eighth grade children; adult subjects
gave the same general results.
Three facts stand out from the table: (1) Reading down the columns, we see that recitation was always an advantage. (2) The advantage was more marked in the test conducted four hours after study than in the test immediately following the study. To be sure, there is always a falling off from the immediate to the later test; there is bound to be some forgetting when the lesson has been studied for so short a time as here; but the forgetting proceeds more slowly after recitation than after all reading. Recitation fixes the matter more durably. (3) The advantage of recitation is less marked in the meaningful material than in case of nonsense syllables, though it is marked in both cases. The reason is that meaningful material can better be read observantly, time after time, than is possible with nonsense material. Continued reading of nonsense material degenerates into a mere droning, while in repeatedly reading meaningful material the learner who is keenly interested in mastering the passage is sure to keep his mind ahead of his eyes to some extent, so that his reading becomes half recitation, after all.