Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2

by Unknown

During this experiment I came to notice the effect produced by the natural tendency to learn the five elements of the dissociated series in a rhythmical form, thereby increasing the ability to retain them; while there appeared to be no natural tendency to apply any such inclusive rhythm to the ten elements of the series when learned in the given order. To counteract this effect the subjects were instructed to consider the series, when learned in the given order, as two consecutive series of five elements each, and to use the same natural rhythm in learning these as they did in the dissociating. But this correction was not made in the first two hours, nor very perfectly in the rest.

(4) The elements were all numbers, printed as before, five of the ten being placed a quarter of an inch out of alignment, and in irregular groups, precisely as in the last experiment.

The time was reduced to three seconds for some and two seconds for the others. Details of presentation were as described in no. 1.

This time all the subjects tried to neutralize the effect of the instinctive rhythm for the five-element series by learning the ten-element series in two groups of five elements each.

(5) The elements were all nonsense syllables, each consisting of a vowel between two consonants, printed on white cards 20×20 mm. Eight of these were placed in an even row on a sheet of white cardboard, and four of them were marked by laying a quarter-inch strip of blue paper over the bottom of the card. The serial position of the marked cards was irregular, and was altered each time.

Ten seconds was given to some subjects, eight to the others. Other details of exposure, etc., were as in no. 1.

In learning the series in the given order, the blue markings were ignored; but in dissociating, the marked and unmarked syllables were learned in separate groups.

There seemed to be no rhythmical tendency; but to be safe the subjects were instructed to learn the straight series in groups of fours.

Seven series were given to be learned in each method during the hour with each subject.

(6) The elements were one-syllable nouns, alternated with nonsense syllables, all spoken by the operator. The nonsense syllables were all different from those used in the preceding experiment: the nouns were ordinary words, and were so arranged as to avoid any obvious sequence or relation among them. Very few, if any, were used twice in one hour. Five nouns and five syllables were given in each series.