The Effect of the Immediate Test on Verbatim and Summary Retention

'Reminiscence' in the studies of Professor English and his associates.

“…In one rather exceptional case (7) such a control group scored nearly as high as experimental S's on the S part of the test. In another (2), the mean S score of the controls (Fig. 1, p. 373) seems at least equal to the score of the experimental groups on the initial test.…”

“…This test usually is of the true-false variety. 2 It contains two types of item. Half are verbatim (V, based on a nearly exact statement from the text) and half are summary (S, based on the content of a sentence or several sentences or even a paragraph).…”

“…Test-retest practice effects.-All the studies thus far reporte are based in the main upon an immediate test and one or more later tests, upon the same group of S's (2,3,4,5,6,7). As Bunch (1) and Gray (10) have pointed out, a legitimate measure of reminiscence is not possible with this procedure because the immediate test acts as additional practice.…”

Reminiscence, substance learning and initial difficulty—a methodological study.

“…This distinction between rote and sense learning was found 253 consistently despite changes in a considerable number of variables. Welborn (7) varied the spacing of readings, Killian (7), the number of readings and the degree of mastery, English and Edwards (4,6), the maturity level of the subjects, the measuring instrument, and the rehearsal element afforded by interpolated tests. In each of these studies retention was measured after various intervals ranging from 10 minutes to 90 days.…”

Reminiscence in relation to differential difficulty.

“…These studies are in terms of measures of central tendency. In a recent report (3) (which also summarizes other studies (1,2,4,5) as they bear on this point) English and Edwards point to the need for a more detailed analysis of the phenomena, having regard to particular responses rather than composite measures; they criticize the use of measures of central tendency in the investigation of reminiscence and forgetting or in any other case where relative differences are in question. Indeed a first analysis of 1,200 individual responses revealed the possibility that the reported trends of the means might be simply a function of differences in initial difficulty between the V-and S-items.…”