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IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Memory studiesBEFORE
5th century BCE The
ancient Greeks make use of
“mnemonics”—techniques,
such as key words or rhymes,
that aid memory.1582 Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno in The Art
of Memory gives methods for
memorizing, using diagrams
of knowledge and experience.AFTER
1932 Frederick Bartlett says
that every memory is a blend
of knowledge and inference.1949 Donald Hebb, in The
Organization of Behavior,
describes how learning results
from stimulated brain cells
linking up into “assemblies.”1960 US psychologist Leo
Postman finds that new
learning can interfere with
previous learning, causing
“retroactive interference.”24 HOURS AFTER
L E A R N I N G S O M E T H I N G ,
W E F O R G E T
T W O - T H I R D S O F I T
HERMANN EBBINGHAUS (1850–1909)
Ebbinghaus’s
memory
experiments
showed that......forgetting is
most rapid within the
first nine hours....items forgotten can be
relearned faster than new
ones learned for the first time....material that
is studied
beyond
mastery
(over-learned) is
remembered
longer....meaningful
things are
remembered
for about ten
times longer
than random,
meaningless
things....items toward the
beginning and end of
a series are most easily
remembered....repeated learning sessions
over a longer interval of
time improves memory
retention on any subject.