Pupil dilations following pairs of identical and related to-be-remembered words

Abstract

Two experiments are reported in which the spacing between pairs of identical (Experiment 1) or pairs of related (Experiment 2) to-be-remembered words were varied while pupil diameter and frequency judgments were measured. In Experiment I, frequency judgments increased with increases in spacing length. In Experiment 2, frequency judgments decreased with increases in spacing length. In both experiments, however, pupil dilations increased with increases in spacing length. These results are interpreted as supporting theories that argue that massed repetitions require less processing than spaced repetitions. It is argued that this deficiency in processing reduces retention of massed repetitions of identical words. For massed presentation of related words, organizational strategies can be used with little effort to increase retention.A common finding in memory research is that spaced repetitions of to-be-remembered words result in better retention than do massed repetitions. Many theories have been proposed to account for the spacing effect, but none has received a consensus of support. Several accounts of the spacing effect propose that massed repetitions receive less processing than do spaced repetitions. Underwood (1969) suggested that massed repetitions are not attended to as well as spaced repetitions. Shaughnessy, Zimmerman, and Underwood (1972) tested this voluntary-attention explanation of the spacing effect by allowing subjects to control the time spent studying each to-be-remembered item. They found that repeated items were given less study time when the repetitions were massed than when they were spaced. Damaging evidence against the voluntary-attention hypothesis, however, was produced by Hintzman, Summers, Eki, and Moore (1975). In Experiment I, they paired some of the repeated items with an incentive tone signaling high payoff for later retention. The incentive tone elevated frequency judgments at all spacings, but the spacing effect was the same in the notone and the tone conditions. In Experiment II, subjects studied some lists aloud by reciting each word three times. Again, this failed to attenuate the spacing effect This paper is based on a dissertation submitted to the U niversity of Texas at Arlington in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the PhD degree. I would like to express my gratitude to James R. Erickson, Ira H. Bernstein, Robert J. Gatchel, James N. Bowen, and Raymond 1. Jackson for support and guidance. Additional thanks are extended to Edward Shoben for reviewing an earlier version of the manuscript, to EllenGorthey, Beth Huggins, Cheryl Buckner, and ElizabethGaasfor assistance in data collection and scoring, and to Betty Bilotta for typing. Requests for reprints should be sent to the author at Applied Science Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 158, Valencia, Pennsylvania 16059.(compared with a silent study condition). The final experiment measured eye fixations to pictures and found no effect of spacing length. The three experiments, then, produced no support for a voluntary-attention ...

Pupil Dilation Co-Varies with Memory Strength of Individual Traces in a Delayed Response Paired-Associate Task

“…Moreover, using pupillary deconvolution techniques [37], [38], it should be possible to deduce proficiency levels from pupil dilations in more typical memory paradigms that are characterized by a faster pace. Interestingly, these results corroborate findings by Magliero [55] who observed effects of recency on pupil dilation when varying the time between repetitions of items in a list that had to be committed to memory. When items were presented for a second time, he found that repetitions that followed the initial presentation at shorter lags (i.e., with 0 or 1 intervening trials) resulted in smaller task-evoked pupillary responses than repetitions at longer lags (i.e., with 4 or 8 intervening trials), providing a link between the retrieval processes reported in this study, and the encoding processes studied by Magliero.…”

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“…Those who reported having paid more attention tended to have learned more from the text. These findings dovetail nicely with those of Magliero (1983) who found that pupil size associated with the second of two repeated items increases as the spacing between presentations increases. Since pupil size is a well-accepted measure of attention and is known to vary directly with amount of processing, this finding also suggests that differences in attention underlie at least some spacing effects.…”

“…Recall that distributed reviews and tests have been found to be more "attention-grabbing" than similar massed events (e.g., Dempster, 1986;Magliero, 1983;Zechmeister and Shaughnessy, 1980). Thus, spaced repetitions are likely to promote student time-on-task, a highly valued classroom behavior.…”

Optimising learning using flashcards: Spacing is more effective than cramming

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