Reminiscence in relation to differential difficulty.

Abstract

Northwestern and Ohio State Universities •Much of the preliminary work upon which this report it bated wai done by W. P. A. workers under the supervision of Miss Juanita Lilliedale. ICO* That is, we are here testing for the validity of association of the dichotomy, S-V, with easiness as shown by double success, RR, as compared with difficulty as shown by double failure, WW. This association is shown to fall within chance limits.

The status of research in reminiscence.

“…Because of the ambiguities involved in the evaluation of apparent reminiscence where review is possible, and because of the lack of convincing proof that casual review does not enhance retention, it seems necessary that this factor be eliminated before a valid finding of reminiscence can be claimed. The definition of the phenomenon given above reflects this conclusion, and many studies, on this basis, are open to criticism (1,14,18,19,20,22,23,25,29,45,53,56,58).…”

“…As examples of the procedure, Luh and Liang (45) used the percentage of reminisced and forgotten items in comparing the immediate and the delayed test; Martin (53) recorded for each 5 the number of items available to reminiscence, i.e., not given on the first recall, and thereafter the number of items reminisced and not reminisced out of this available number; Raffel (59) reports the mean number of words reported for the first time on each recall, as well as the number repeated; Edwards and English (19,23) record the proportions of items which fall in various patterns of right and wrong on two or three successive tests (all of these studies were open to the test-retest error and review).…”

“…Reminiscence has been found with several variations of the method of complete exposure, but the data which might permit comparison with the previously mentioned learning methods are affected by test-retest practice (14,19,20,22,23,25,45,51,59). 11 What might be called an incidental method of learning was employed in Martin's study (53): S performed many simple tasks and later was asked to name them.…”

“…That this is the case is clearly suggested only by the findings of Melton and Stone. Special attention should be paid to the apparent dependence of reminiscence upon what is called the type of learning by English and his associates (18,19,20,22,23,24,25). In their work, 5s studied a prose passage ; retention was measured by a true-false test containing two kinds of items: summary (S, covering the content of a sentence, or several sentences, or even a paragraph) and verbatim (V, based on some exact statement from the text).…”

Reminiscence—reply to Dr. Buxton's critique.

“…Thus, if there has already been reminiscence, rehearsal may help to insure that it shows up in the average without in the least explaining its actual occurrence. 3 The transfer hypothesis advanced by Buxton seems to have somewhat more merit as applied to our data, though here again we should insist upon the difference between explaining and explaining away. Nor do we object in principle to Buxton's argument that our S-items may be more easily helped by transfer than our V-items.…”