Means to measure memory

Means to measure memory

Until recently it was taught that mental faculties could not be studied experimentally therefore no attempt was made to investigate memory by the application of procedure however towards the begining of the present century Ebbing haus a German psychologist demonstrated that memory could be studied experimentaly.

Ebbing haus invented what are called nousense syllables for this on memory. Stanza's of poetry, lit of words and prose passage could be used but had difficulty that is it was likely that some of the subjects had already read them. While others had not and so that the lesson would be more familiar to some and less familiar to other's. In other words the lesson would not be of the same difficulty for all. So Ebbing haus invented the nousouse syllables. The nousense syllable is conducted by combining 2 or 3 consonants with 1 or 2 vowels. For example X ATM since they are not in use, not found in any dictionary, they would be equally unfamiliar to all the subjects. Hence they have been used extensively in experiments on memory.

In the experimental investigation of memory 3 important methods have been used. They are

1. The method of recall and reproduction

2. Re - learning or saving method

3. Recognition method

Recall and reproduction method :

In this method the experimenter gives the subject certain lessons for memorizing the lesson may be a list of nousense syllable, a prose passage or a few stanza's of poetry. The same lesson is given to all the subjects they are then asked to memorize it to a defenite criterian namely one enorless repetition. It means that they have to learn it until they are able to reproduce it once without committing any error the amount of time taken by each subject and the number of repetition required by each are carefully noted. After an interval of time which may be a few minutes or a few hours and few days the subject are asked to recall the lesson and reproduce it either orderly or in writing. It would be found that the subjects would have forgotten the lesson some what and may be able to reproduce it only partially. By noting the amount of member and subtracting it from the amount of original lesson we can calculate the percent of lesson remembered and the percent forgotten.

The method of recall is a useful method which enables us to express in quantitative laws, the extent to which a subject remembers the lesson has memorized but since unable to recall only shows that the subject is unable to recall it completely. It does not indicate precisely to what extent the lesson is forgotten.

The re - learning or saving method :

The relearning method is an improvement over the method of recall. It can measure precisely the amount remembered and the amount forgotten. In the re - learning method the experimenter gives the lesson to the subject for memorizing the lesson may be a list of 25 nousense syllable the subjects are asked to memorize the list to a specified criterian namely until they are able to reproduce the entire list once without error. The number of repetitions required at time taken to memorize the list or carefully note it. After an interval of time which may be a few minutes or hours or days. The experimenter would like to know how much of that lesson the subject has remembered and how much he has forgotten to know this the subject is asked to relearn the lesson until he is able to repeat it once without error, as the subject would have forgotten some amount during that period he would require a few repetitions of the lesson to reach the same criterian but certainly he would need less time repetitions than before the differences between the time and repetitions required for the original learning and time and repetitions required for re - learning will give us the total time and number of repetitions which the subject has saved, this repetition has the memory score.......................read


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