The following relate findings from the first paper that I found relevant and interesting:
• "When nonsense series of 16 syllables each were impressed in memory to greater and greater degrees by means of attentive repetitions, the inner depth of impression in part resulting from the number of the repetitions increased, within certain limits, approximately proportionally to that number. This increase in depth was measured by the greater readiness with which these series were brought to the point of reproduction after 24 hours."
It seems intuitive that repitition of something can be analogous to the depth of impressing something. The more I scratch at a tree, the deeper I am going to get, and every stroke is about equal in its indent.
• "In other words: for each three additional repetitions which I spent on a given day on the study of a series, I saved, in learning that series 24 hours later, on the average, approximately one repetition; and, within the limits stated, it did not matter how many repetitions altogether were spent on the memorisation of a series."
This is interesting that there is a 3-1 ration of retention over the 24 hour period. I wonder how replicable these studies are. Would they hold with larger sample size?
• "If this relation were approximately to continue to hold with very numerous repetitions, it would be reasonable to expect that, after 24 hours, series on whose impression four times as many repetitions had been expended as were necessary for their first reproduction could be recited without any further expenditure of energy. Instead of this, in the cases examined, the relearning required about 35 per cent of the work required for the first recital."
Interesting that this statistic confirms the 3-1 ratio, which could be written as 1 - .33.
• "The effect of increasing the number of repetitions of series of syllables on their inner fixedness in the above defined sense grew at first approximately in proportion to the number of repetitions, then that effect decreased gradually, and finally became very slight when the series were so deeply impressed that they could be repeated after 24 hours, almost spontaneously."
So what this is saying is that if we repeat something enough, after 24 hours, we can recall that information without hardly any effort? Interesting.
"forgetting would be very rapid at the beginning of the process and very slow at the end"
"the quotients of the amounts retained and the amounts forgotten were inversely as the logarithms of the times."
These statements, along with the 3rd paper we read, seem to show an interesting phenomenon about forgetting. Forgetting happens quick immediately, and the gradually slows. I wonder if this has anything to do with the capacities mentioned in the 2nd paper. Could it be that information that is learned through more dimensions is retained longer than information that is learned through fewer dimensions? I think that this would be a very interesting study.
"If series of nonsense syllables or verses of a poem are on several successive days each time learned by heart to the point of the first possible reproduction, the successive differences in the repetitions necessary for this form approximately a decreasing geometrical progression (about half)."
Magical Number 7
○ Tone = 2.5 bits
○ Loudness = 2.3 bits
○ Taste = 1.9 bits
○ Visual position = 3.25 bits
"the mean is 2.6 bits and the standard deviation is only 0.6 bit. In terms of distinguishable alternatives, this mean corresponds to about 6.5 categories, one standard deviation includes from 4 to 10 categories, and the total range is from 3 to 15 categories."
We are limited to about 7 channel capacity decisions in judgment.
What about faces, words etc.? They differ in many ways, but the sensory things differ only in one way
Wouldn't it be interesting to see if we could find an average for 2 differences?
"The point seems to be that, as we add more variables to the display, we increase the total capacity, but we decrease the accuracy for any particular variable. In other words, we can make relatively crude judgments of several things simultaneously. "
We can hear a lot of different sounds because phonemically language has about 8 dimensions. Again, I wonder how retention plays into these findings. I have always believed that the more connections that we have to something when we learn it, the better we are able to retain it. For example, a new and effective way that teachers are starting to study multiplication facts is to combine the numbers to rhythms and beats. This allows students to create more connections and aids in retention.
The three most important of these devices are
(a) to make relative rather than absolute judgments.; or, if that is not possible,
(b) to increase the number of dimensions along which the stimuli can differ; or
(c) to arrange the task in such a way that we make a sequence of several absolute judgments in a row.
From these 3 papers, I am again turned to my previous question from last week of whether content has anything to do with the processes of memorization and forgetting. Are the principles that we learned universal for all learning, or are they contingent on the content. The second paper went to great lengths to show that our capacity for one-dimensional absolute judgments are true regardless of information. This included all the different senses.
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