Terms
- 1 hour day
- 10k hours
- act of will
- amount learned
- analogies
- anecdotal evidence
- Aristotle
- artificial selection
- association
- associationism
- Baddeley, Alan
- between-list associations
- blank slate
- body language
- bonds
- CCC (consonant-consonant-consonant)
- classical conditioning
- Clever Hans
- color vision
- common ancestors
- complete memory
- complete this sentence
- contiguity
- contiguous associations
- continuity of species
- contrast
- controls
- correlation
- CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant)
- Darwin, Charles
- Descartes, Rene
- difficulty
- distributed practice
- double-blind study
- dynamic view of earth
- Ebbinghaus, Hermann
- Ebbinghaus’ illusion
- economic theory
- embellished over time
- empiricists
- eugenics
- experience
- feature matching
- forgetting curve
- free will
- Galton, Francis
- healthy body
- higher mental processes
- innate ideas
- intelligence
- involuntary behavior
- involuntary cues
- laws of association
- list length
- Locke, John
- Lyell, Charles
- Mathus, Thomas
- memory
- mental capacity
- mind
- natural selection
- naturalistic observation
- nonsense words
- opposites
- overlearning
- pairings
- Pfunst, Oskar
- Plato
- postural changes
- priming
- recall
- recognition
- reflex
- remember
- repetition
- retrieval
- retrieval cues
- Romanes, George
- savings
- scarce resources
- serial position effect
- similarity
- single-blind study
- sounds
- stimuli
- survival of the fittest
- total time hypothesis
- trained mind
- van Osten, Wilheim
- virtuous character
- voluntary behavior
- wash feet in cold water
- wax tablet
- within-list associations
- witnessed by only one person
- word lists
- word-completion items
- word-completion test
Quiz
1. In philosophy and the early days of psychology, behavior was thought to be result of an:
- action potential
- assimilation
- act of will
- artifact
2. Romames is best known for his use of analogies and
- double-blind studies
- anecdotal evidence
- internal regulation
- artificial selection
3. Aristotle proposed 3 laws of:
- representation
- association
- generation
- correlation
4. A mental connection between two stimuli is a:
- blank slate
- control
- bond
- all of the above
5. Clever Hans “solved” problems by:
- calculating the mathematics accurately
- observing the trainer’s body language
- listening to the crowd
- insight
1. In philosophy and the early days of psychology, behavior was thought to be result of an:
- action potential
- assimilation
- act of will
- artifact
2. Romames is best known for his use of analogies and
- double-blind studies
- anecdotal evidence
- internal regulation
- artificial selection
3. Aristotle proposed 3 laws of:
- representation
- association
- generation
- correlation
4. A mental connection between two stimuli is a:
- blank slate
- control
- bond
- all of the above
5. Clever Hans “solved” problems by:
- calculating the mathematics accurately
- observing the trainer’s body language
- listening to the crowd
- insight
How to learn lists (long and short).
Next time you send out wedding invitations, graduation announcements or holiday cards, you’ll probably use a written list. You won’t try to do it from memory because you know you’re not very good at remembering a long list of information
When you have to remember a long list of things, here is how you do it.
Here are 5 things we’ll cover:
- Before Ebbinghaus
- Things We Already Knew
- Methodology
- Ebbinghaus’ Discoveries
- Distributed Practice
1. Before Ebbinghaus
Aristotle (384-323 BC)
Proposed 3 laws of association
- Similarity
- Contiguity
- Opposites
Descartes (1596-1650)
2 classes of behavior (dualism)
- Voluntary = free will
- Involuntary = reflexes
John Locke (1632-1704)
- No innate ideas (blank slate)
- Empiricism = ideas originate with sensory experience
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
- Hedonism determines voluntary behavior
- Pursue pleasure
- Avoid pain
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
- Combined 2 theories:
- Charles Lyell, the father of geology; dynamic view of Earth
- Thomas Malthus, an economist; struggle to succeed in business is the result of resource scarcity
Francis Galton (1822-1911)
2 major points:
- Intelligence is single factor. Evident in any task
- People vary in intelligence
George Romanes (1848-1894)
- Called himself a disciple & worshiper of Charles Darwin
- Sought to prove (using logic) Darwin’s concept of continuity between humans and animals
- Subjective vs. objective analyses
- Behavior is the ambassador of the mind
- Intelligence is the ability to learn
- Anecdotal evidence
- Analogous
Criticisms of anecdotal evidence
- Events witnessed by only 1 person
- Story embellishment over time
- Coincidence
- Bias to report behaviors that appear intelligent
Clever Hans, the horse
- Hans correctly answered mathematics questions by tapping his foot the correct number of time.
- He could even do fractions!
- September Commission appointed to investigate this genius horse (Pfungst, 1908)
- Was Hans receiving cues from his trainer?
- Commission concluded that no cues were given
- One commission member not satisfied with conclusion
- Conducted test with two conditions:
- Experimenter aware of the correct answer
- Experimenter unaware of the correct answer
- Results:
- Hans was correct when experimenter was aware of answer, overestimated when experimenter was unaware
2. Things We Already Knew
- Difficulty increases with length of list
- Frequent repetitions needed to learn word lists
- Serial position effect: first & last better than middle
3. Methodology
- Used self as subject
- Careful controls
- list of words; one per card
- items kept in order
- used watch (metronome) to set the pace (1 per sec)
- when reached end of list, paused 15 seconds
- At first, used terms of sounds
- Later, used “nonsense words”
- CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant). BOK.
- CCC (consonant-consonant-consonant). BLV.
- Paradigm:
- Day 1: Learn list (16 to 20 items) by repeating list 8, 16, 24, 32, 42, 53, or 64 times
- Day 2: Wait 24 hours, then relearn list to perfect repetition
- Main score was the number of trials taken to relearn the list on Day 2
4. Ebbinghaus’ Discoveries
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
- German psychologist
- Quote: “Psychology has a long past but a short history”
- New findings
- 1. Difficulty and amount learned are not linear. Difficult takes much longer
- 2. Rapid forgetting of lists within first hour (not true of motor skills)
- 3. Distributed practice is best (sessions spaced out over time)
- 4. Within-list associations help. Adjacent associations are best
- 5. Best strategy is overlearning
5. Distributed Practice
Ebbinghaus
Baddeley
- Distributed practice is more efficient
- Not necessarily fastest
- One 1-hour session for 5 days week
- 11 weeks 55 hours
- Two 2-hour sessions for 5 days week
- 4 weeks 80 hours
- Most efficient schedule is one 1-hour session per day
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