The influence of meaningfulness upon intentional and incidental learning of verbal material

Wolk, Stephen

doi:10.3758/bf03197514

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…When given instructions as to what material they are expected to learn, people will learn it more effectively by concentrating on the relevant material and paying less attention to irrelevant material. This effect has been shown empirically with many different types of materials and in many situations (Dawley & Dawley, 1974;Duchastel & Brown, 1974;Kaplan & Rothkopf, 1973;Marton & Sandquist, 1972;Mechanic, 1962;Meunier, Kestner, Meunier, & Ritz, 1974;Wolk, 1974;Wolk & Du Cette, 1974;Postman & Adams, 1957;Zerdy, 1971). If jurors knew what is relevant to their verdict at the beginning of a trial, they would be better able to focus in on relevant evidence as it is being presented, and later remember it.…”

Section: Time Of Presentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Comprehension for Jury Instructions

Sales

Elwork

Alfini³

1977

The Criminal Justice System

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Section: Time Of Presentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Comprehension for Jury Instructions

Sales

Elwork

Alfini³

1977

The Criminal Justice System

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“…For example, McDaniel et al (1994) found that people who were expecting a test were more apt to identify and focus on the important information in a text passage--and, as a consequence, perform better---than those who were not expecting a test. Other studies, though, have shown no performance differences (Hyde, 1973;Hyde & Jenkins, 1969, 1973Johnston & Jenkins, 1971;Wolk, 1974). A number of theorists have suggested that the mere intention to learn, itself, does not influence memory; rather, differences result because the participants use different cognitive operations or strategies (Craik & Tulving, 1975;Craik & Watkins, 1973;Hyde, 1973;Hyde & Jenkins, 1969, 1973Postman, 1964;Till & Jenkins, 1973;Walsh & Jenkins, 1973).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacognitive and control strategies in study-time allocation.

Son¹,

Metcalfe²

2000

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

327

322

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The issue of how people use their metacognitive judgments about what they know and how well they know it to take control over their own learning is of primary concern in this article. The fact that in many situations people have relatively accurate metacognitions is well documented (Brown, 1978;, 1997 Gnmeberg & Monks, 1974; Jacoby, Bjork, & Kelley, 1993;Johnson, 1988;Johnson & Raye, 1981;King, Zechmeister, & Shaughnessy, 1980;Koriat, 1975Koriat, , 1993Koriat, , 1995Koriat, , 1997Koriat, , 1998Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996, 1998Leonesio & Nelson, 1990;Lovelace, 1984; Mazzoni, Cornoldi, Tomat, & Vecchi, 1997;Mazzoni & Nelson, 1995;Metcalfe, 1986aMetcalfe, , 1986b Metcalfe, Schwartz, & Joaqnim, 1993;Metcalfe & Weibe, 1987;Nelson, 1988;Nelson & Dunlosky, 1991Nelson, Leonesio, Landwehr, & Narens, 1986;Schwartz & Metcalfe, 1994;Schwartz & Smith, 1997;Smith, Brown, & Balfour, 1991;Thiede & Dunlosky, 1994; Vesonder & Voss, 1985; Wldner & Smith, 1996;Widner, Smith, & Graziano, 1996). Ease-of-learning judgments (EeLs; Underwood, 1966), feeling-of-knowing judgments (FIGs;Hart, 1965;Nelson, Leonesio, Shimamura, Landwehr, & Narens, 1982), and judgments of difficulty (JODs) or of learning (JOLs; Arbuckle & Cuddy, 1969;Gardiner & Klee, 1976;Groninger, 1979;King et al., 1980;Lovelace, 1984) generally have been shown to predict subsequent memory performance with above-chance accuracy. Having established that Lisa K. Son and Janet Metcalfe, Department of Psychology, Columbia University.This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant 48066. We would like to thank Ozlem Ayduk, Brady Butterfield, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, Jasia Pietrzak, and Lisa Schwartz for their help. We also appreciate the comments of Thomas O. Nelson, Keith Thiede, and an anonymous reviewer on a draft of this article.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lisa K. Son, Department of Psychology, 406 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027. Electronic mail may be sent to son@psych.columbia.edu. people appear to have access to accurate metalmowledge, the question of how they put that knowledge to use is becoming focal.Some theories indicate that metacognitions play a central role in a variety of cognitive tasks, including memory retrieval (Reder, 1987;Reder & Ritter, 1992), initial memory encoding (Metcalfe, 1993), problem solving (Metcalfe, 1986b;Simon & Newell, 1971), and self-directed learning . As was assumed by early researchers such as Flavell (1979) and Flavell and Wellman (1977), these self-reflective processes are crucial in controlling and guiding human cognition (see Metcalfe, 1996, in press, for review). Recently, investigators have begun intensively and systematically to explore the question of primary interest in this article: How do people use these metacognitive judgments to control their study-time allocation and hence to determine what it is that they will learn?Interest in the control functions of people's metacognitions was fostered by a framework for human metacognition forw...

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“…Each of these findings could have been given more individual attention. For example, though it was simply stated as an empirical regularity, deciding whether incidental and intentional learning were basically the same or not once involved a considerable research effort and much theoretical debate (e.g., Postman, 1964;Wolk, 1974).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memorability as a measure of processing: A unit analysis of prose and list learning.

Rubin¹

1985

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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SUMMARYThe percentage of subjects recalling each unit in a list or prose passage is considered as a dependent measure. When the same units are recalled in different tasks, processing is assumed to be the same; when different units are recalled, processing is assumed to be different. Two collections of memory tasks are presented, one for lists and one for prose. The relations found in these two collections are supported by an extensive reanalysis of the existing prose memory literature.The same set of words were learned by 13 different groups of subjects under 13 different conditions. Included were intentional free-recall tasks, incidental free recall following lexical decision, and incidental free recall following ratings of orthographic distinctiveness and emotionality. Although the nine free-recall tasks varied widely with regard to the amount of recall, the relative probability of recall for the words was very similar among the tasks. Imagery encoding and recognition produced relative probabilities of recall that were different from each other and from the free-recall tasks. Similar results were obtained with a prose passage. A story was learned by 13 different groups of subjects under 13 different conditions. Eight free-recall tasks, which varied with respect to incidental or intentional learning, retention interval, and the age of the subjects, produced similar relative probabilities of recall, whereas recognition and prompted recall produced relative probabilities of recall that were different from each other and from the free-recall tasks.A review of the prose literature was undertaken to test the generality of these results. Analysis of variance is the most common statistical procedure in this literature. If the relative probability of recall of units varied across conditions, a units by condition interaction would be expected. For the 12 studies that manipulated retention interval, an average of 21% of the variance was accounted for by the main effect of retention interval, 17% by the main effect of units, and only 2% by the retention interval by units interaction. Similarly, for the 12 studies that varied the age of the subjects, 6% of the variance was accounted for by the main effect of age, 32% by the main effect of units, and only 1% by the interaction of age by units. Moreover, although there was enough statistical power so that the unit main effects, which used the same error term as the interactions, were all significant at the .001 level, only half of the age by units interactions were significant at the .05 level. Unlike studies varying retention interval and the age of the subjects, studies varying the perspective of the reader at encoding often produced interactions larger than their main effects.Similar results were obtained for the list learning and prose studies, suggesting a continuity between these two domains. In particular, the relative probability of recall changed little when retention interval, age of subject, or depth of processing changed in standard ways. This similarity among th...

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The influence of meaningfulness upon intentional and incidental learning of verbal material

Cited by 9 publications

References 11 publications

Improving Comprehension for Jury Instructions

Improving Comprehension for Jury Instructions

Metacognitive and control strategies in study-time allocation.

Memorability as a measure of processing: A unit analysis of prose and list learning.

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