LESSON VI COMPLEX LEARNING AND LANGUAGE
Grammar
(a) The Participle
(b) The Absolute Participial Construction
(c) -ed and its functions
Active Vocabulary
1. achieve, v , achievement, n ,
2. anxiety, n , ,
anxious, adj , ; , ,
3. attitude, 1. 2.
4. constant, adj , constant, , . , constancy, ,
5. convergent, adj , ; ~ thinking -
convergence,
6. cramming, ( ) cram, v
7. desire, ()
desire, v ; , desirable, adj
8. distribute, v
distribution, 1. 2. . distributive, adj
9. divergent, adj 1. 2. . ; ~ thinking
divergence, divergency 1. , 2. .
10. effort, n 1. 2. ; to make an ~ ,
, 11 excite, v 1 , 2. , ; to ~ interest (curiosity, envy) (, ) excitement, ,
12. external, ^'
13. feature, 1. , ; ,
2. pi.
14. internal, adj
15. latent, adj , ; ~ learning latency, ,
16. manifest, v , ; ; to ~ desire to do smth. -.
manifest, adj , , ; ~ truth (error) () manifestation, ;
17. occasional,
occasion, 1. 2. ,
3. 4. , ,
18. partial, ^/
19. similar, ad/, similarity, ,
20. skill, ; ; ; to acquire ~
skillful, adj , ;
21. transfer, , ; transfer, v , ; transference, 1. ; ; ~ from one school to another 2. .
Text
COMPLEX LEARNING AND LANGUAGE
The basic principle of learning is reinforcement. When the student or learner does something that leads to success he is much more likely to repeat it; when he fails, he is not likely to repeat it. The reinforcements do not necessarily have to occur every time the pupil responds. Occasional, or partial, reinforcement can be sometimes more effective than constant reinforcement. The reinforcement can be either reward or avoidance of punishment. It is preferable to learn under the incentive of rewards rather than the threat of punishments.
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Some degree of motivation is also essential for efficient learning. Human beings can sometimes acquire knowledge without deliberate effort, but the results are limited. This type of learning, which occurs without intention or obvious cause, is called latent learning. One definition of it is: any learning which is not immediately manifested in performance.
The only way we can be sure that learning has taken place is if it is manifested in performance. The performance is brought forth usually under the offer of some sort of reward which the individual is motivated to acquire. So, we may say that we learn better if we want or need to learn.
Many different kinds of conditions of motivation affect the way we learn. If we are trying to teach someone a lesson, his desire to learn will enhance his achievement; but too much motivation can lead to extreme anxiety and excitement which will actually interfere with the learning process. Moderate, not intense desire is needed. External rewards such as marks for classroom work in a school, will be effective only if they are what the student wants. Not only must the reward be desired, but the material to be learned must also have meaning.
Another important condition, especially in the development of skills, is distribution. Distribution of learning and practice allows the material or skill to be much better assimilated. Just as excessive motivation interferes with success, so does over-concentrated practice. Study and learning for examinations, for example, should be spread over the entire term and not crammed into the few days before the test. This is not to say that cramming will be ineffective. The performance upon which the student is evaluated is the one he delivers on the examination day. Yi cramm'mgYie'ipsYtim!iortnat 6ay, lYienYte sYioiYi6 do it. If, however, he wants to retain the material and make a more permanent gain in learning, then the learning should be acquired over a longer period.
Transfer of training is another very important concept; what has been learned in one situation can be used in other situations. A person who has learned to drive one model of car is normally able to drive another model. This enhanced learning experience is called positive transfer. Yet, at the same time, interference may also occur. This interference in effective performance, called negative transfer, is accentuated by the similarity in situation.
Complex learning is a process of many associations in knowledge, skills, and attitudes. We must also be able to generalize from these associations and apply them in new situations. This process is called convergent or deductive thinking.
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We learn to think and solve problems by both convergent (deductive) and divergent (inductive) thinking.
The most important single feature of complex human learning is language. Languages are made up of signs and symbols, and these must be learned in the same way as other things are learned. Once they have been learned then they and the way the brain associates them directly influence our further learning
(L.S. Skurnik, F. George, Psychology for Everyman. Penguin Books, 1972, pp. 37 -41)
Exercises
I. Transcribe the following words and practise them for pronunciation:
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partial, threat, anxiety, actually, external, accentuate, convergent, divergent
II. Read the following adjectives with the suffix -ous. Mind the pronunciation of the suffix, translate the words into Russian, wherever possible name the words from which the given adjectives are derived:
nervous, various, obvious, curious, serious, famous, tremendous, spontaneous, conscious, monotonous, simultaneous, dangerous, desirous.
III. Translate the following sentences and word combinations into Russian. (The exercise is to be done orally):
occasional reinforcement; occasional repetition; occasional presentation;
partial learning; partial remembering; constant error; a constant number; constant reinforcement; to make an effort to memorize a poem; to make an effort to achieve a goal; to make an effort to get a reward;
the transfer of meaning; the transfer from internal to external speech;
cause of one's anxiety; he fell ill because of constant anxiety; anxiety influenced his performance;
to excite interest; to excite desire; he was excited before the experiment; a cause of excitement;
desire to enter the University;desire to be free and independent; desire to get a reward; desire to achieve a goal; what do you desire? 1 desired to be left alone;
external (internal) factors; external (internal) influence; external (internal) development;
to acquire new skills; practical skills; to form new skills;
to distribute equipment; to distribute food among the animals; 1 can't account for this distribution; to affect the distribution of water;
similar objects; similar living conditions; similar distribution; similar skills; similar habits; similarity of behaviour; similarity of tastes;
children's attitude to parents; one's attitude to work; one's attitude to society; I have a negative attitude to him; they have a similar attitude to work;
the characteristic features of a natural language; features of one's temperament; features of one's character;
manifestation of interest; manifestation of anxiety; manifestation of desire; to manifest awareness of the environment; to manifest some change in behaviour.
Translate the following sentences from Russian into English using the active vocabulary:
1. , . 2. . 3. . 4. . 5. . 6. . 7. . 8. , ?. " . . , . 12. , , , . 13. . 14. . 15. . 16. . 17. . 18. , . 19. . 20. -, . 21. . 22. . 23.
. 24. . 25. . 26. . 27. , , . 28. , . 29. , . 30. , . 31. . 32. , . 33. . 34. , . 35. . 36. , . 37. . 38. ? 39. . 40. 13 , , . 41. . 42. . 43. . 44. ? 45. .
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V. Choose the right word from the box and insert it into one of the following sentences:
similarity, effort, anxiety, feature, achievement, external, skills
1. The mother in a state of high... about her son's illness took him to a hospital. 2. Some child psychologists perceived a... in the early behaviour of animals and the human infant. 3. A great deal of thought may be required in learning..., but in the end the behaviour patterns become largely automatic. 4.... were made to control the process. 5. Philosophic materialism interprets consciousness as a reflection of the... world. 6. There is a strong association between ageing and many kinds of intellectual....
VI. Form Participle I, Active and Passive, of the following verbs: write, report, reinforce, recommend, influence
VII. Form Perfect Participle I, Active and Passive, of the following verbs: ask, reward, read, refer, make
VIII. In the following sentences find all the participles, define their forms and functions. Translate the sentences into Russian:
1. It was noted that even at the age of six the children were able to organize their performance in a variety of perceptual and motor tests, directing their energies towards efficient performance, working away independently and experiencing delight when succeeded. 2. The least developed area of human gerontology concerns motivation and personality. 3. The procedure recommended is to select the one best test to measure each factor. 4. The percentage of material retained varies according to the type of measurement of retention. 5. This approach is concerned with the effect of continuous performance on the efficiency in the performance being studied. 6. Often the behaviour being observed in the experimental situation is isolated and out of context and may differ from similar behaviour in an actual life situation. 7. Every individual coming to a psychological clinic or being seen and treated by a psychologist should have a careful physical examination by a doctor. 8. Five and ten years later we may repeat our measurements using the same tests.
iX. In the following sentences find the Absolute Participial Construction and translate the sentences into Russian:
1. Man being a very complex organism, many sciences are concerned with his investigation. 2. Experiments being performed under carefully controlled conditions, behaviour of experimental animals may not be characteristic of their behaviour outside the laboratory. 3. Scientists having been able to discover specialization of different nerve fibres, a great deal is to be learned about the nature of nerve messages. 4. This was done for obtaining additional data, the operations not being shown here. 5. Werner's results appear to demonstrate that even the black disk on a white ground can be made invisible, the whole black area being obliterated and the colour stimulation being nullified, if the contour is not given enough time to develop in perception. 6. Scientific measurement may either be direct, the response itself being measured, or indirect, the measurement being of the stimulus used to obtain a specific response. 7. A given individual may have many personalities, one of them being central and, perhaps, explaining the others. 8. Hoppe's experiments were characterized by a certain degree of informality, the conclusions being based on the subjects' spontaneous remarks concerning their reactions to the various situations.
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X. Change the first three sentences of Ex. IX so as to use a clause instead of the Absolute Participial Construction. Follow the pattern:
The exams being over, we went to our University sports camp.= As soon as* the exams were over we went to our University sports camp.
introduce the clause with such conjuctions as since, as, though, because, etc.
XI. Define the functions of -ed forms in the following sentences. Translate the sentences into Russian:
1. The blind adult, for so long reliant on his other senses, will have acquired a highly complex tactile and auditory perceptual world which may interfere with his newly acquired visual world. 2. In the general law of retention, how does the percentage retained depend upon the time since practice ceased? 3. Each trial was followed by a 2-minute rest interval. 4. The conditions which retard or accelerate the rate of learning, the factors which are necessary for its successful completion, the order in which certain parts of a task are mastered these and other similar questions can be answered, at least in part, by the use of experimental methods already examined. 5. Such methods of research have advantages when applied to human thinking. 6. The environmental world, as perceived, consists in large part of objects or things. 7. These observations are analyzed statistically to give an objective picture of the individual and his relationship to others in the situation observed. 8. A large variety of forms and patterns of maze have been employed in experimental studies of motor learning. 9. The animal is placed in a quiet room so that he will not be affected by uncontrolled or distracting stimuli. 10. The techniques employed have varied. 11. The papers received deal with a great variety of problems. 12. Theories also predict events not yet tested.
XII. Compare the meaning of any and its derivatives in statements and interrogative sentences:
1. Can anything be learned when there is no motivation at all? 2. Anyone who has tried to memorize a lengthy poem has been aware of the way in which items mastered momentarily can slip away. 3. Is there anyway of discovering differences between laboratory and extra-Iabo- ratory thinking? 4. In any theory of personality the dynamics of behaviour is a topic of major concern. 5. Any discussion of personality begins with some definition of the term. 6. Theory testing is an important element in the growth and development of any science.
XIII. Make up fifteen questions based on the text.
XIV. Prepare a dialogue on the topic of complex learning. The following may serve you as a guideline:
We acquire knowledge by means of learning, don't we?
What is the basic principle of learning?
That's right. What kinds of reinforcement do you know?
Which of them is more effective, to your mind, and why do you think so?
In my opinion, it's only a part of an answer to the question. We should also mention... And what do you mean by latent learning?
I quite agree with you that in case of latent learning the results are limited. There are many factors which influence the efficiency with which we master some new material...
I think that proper distribution of the material to be learned is also very important.
Of course. So, as a rule I prepare for exams... And what about you?
We seem to know at least some laws of efficient learning. If we could apply and follow them I am sure our University achievements would be much better.
XV. Speak on the topic: Complex Learning and Language.
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XVI. Read the following text, retell it and say if, in your opinion, there are age limits to efficient learning of a primary language and a foreign language. Give examples from scientific literature if you can.
In 1967 a book called "Biological Foundations of Language" was published by the Harvard neuropsychologist Eric Lenneberg.
Chapter 4 of the book presented what has since been called the critical period hypothesis. It suggested that the brain is able to learn a primary language during a certain early period, and not later on, and it
proposed physiological explanations of why this might be so. Lenneberg's innovation lay in those explanations; the idea itself has been around for a while.
Nikolas Tinbergen who was an ethologist had discovered that he could train baby ducks to follow him around if he trained them at a certain period. That was ducks. In humans, Piaget did his lifelong study about what ages children develop certain capacities. The theory is as old as Saint Augustine,- who realized it in an intuitive way back in A.D. 600 when he said, "Give me a child until he is six, and I'll give you a Catholic for life". Augustine was wrong. It takes till twelve. According to Lenneberg, the child's ability to learn its mother tongue effectively ends at the onset of sexuality.
(After Genie by Russ Rymer. N.Y., 1993, pp. 84 -85)
XVII. Translate the following text from Russian into English.
, . , . , . .
. , -- . , . .
LESSON VII
MEMORY AND THINKING
Grammar
(a) The Gerund
(b) -ing and its functions
(c) The construction of the type the longer the better
Active Vocabulary
1. capacity, n 1. 2. , ; storage ~
2. connotive, adj ; ~ meaning
connotation, n , ,
connote, v
3. efficiency, 1. , 2. , 3.
efficient, adj ,
4. event, 1. 2.
5. frequency, frequent, ^/
6. generation, generate, v
7. image,
imagine, v , imagination, imagery, , imaginary, ,
8. involve, v I. ; 2. , 3. to be involved (in) ; involvement, ,
9. item, , ; ()
10. pattern, n 1. , , 2. 3. , 4. ,
11. recall, v , , recall, ,
12. recency,
recent, adj ,
13. remind, v (smb. of smth.) (-. -.)
14. represent, v ;
representation, 1. ; 2. ; 3.
15. retention, 1. 2. . ,
retain, v 1. 2. 3.
16. retrieve, v , retrieval,
17. scan, v
store, v , ( )
18. storage, 1. () 2.
19. value, 1. 2. ; , value, v 1. 2. , valuable, adj ,
Text
MEMORY AND THINKING
Human memory and learning are intimately related since the development of an association between a stimulus and response requires some sort of retention. Some of our associations, such as conditioned reflexes, are not at the conscious, but at the spinal level of association, although possibly they are 'remembered' there also. For most of the behaviour which distinguishes humans from animals (that is thinking and communicating through language) memory is located in the centre of the nervous system on cortex of the brain. We can think of memory as analogous to some sort of filing cabinet system. Information received through the senses is stored and utilized as needed, within the limits of storage capacity and the personal efficiency for 'searching the files'. (Without this retention process there could be no learned behaviour). Our storage capacity seems to be an inflexible individual characteristic, but the efficiency with which the information is retrieved is a function of a number of influences. Three of these influences, which are general features in memory, are frequency, recency, and value.
Frequency refers, everything else being equal, to the tendency to remember those experiences which have happened most often. Experiences or events that occur infrequently are not remembered well. It is also clear that, everything else being equal, we remember the more recent events in contrast to those that occurred in earlier times.
Learning also influences our ability to recall our past experiences. When the learning takes place, how well is the material mastered? How frequently do the lessons occur, and what are the personal priorities we attach to the lessons? All these factors affect the extent to which we can' demonstrate our retention of information.
Thinking must, like memory, be inferred from public behaviour. Thinking is another so-called 'mental' activity, involving the manipulation of symbols, signs, concepts, or ideas, which are symbolically represented. Thinking is a process which is closely bound up with language.
To continue with the filing analogy, thinking is the term used to describe the various ways in which the information in storage is retrieved, scanned, examined, combined, and rearranged. We do not actually examine the objects (memories) on 'file', but we may sometimes refer to the verbal description of the remembered events. Memory, learning, thinking, and language are all intimately related processes. So far is this the case that a word may remind you of other words and conjure up images, whereas a perception may conjure up images and also remind you of a linguistic description.
Two types of thinking, i.e. convergent and divergent thinking, are processes of association between stimuli and responses which arc acceptable according to different criteria. We may also make associations among ideas or experiences. When we are faced with a problem that we wish to solve we usually resort to convergent thinking, depending on our memory to bring forth the best answer that can serve as a solution. If this effort is unrewarding we may resort to trial-and-error or perhaps use a hypothesis as a result of insight, i.e. we may be able to assemble our previous experiences in a new way so that we understand the relationships required to solve the task. Our thinking process like many of the actions we perform, is very likely to become habitual and standardized. Most people find it very difficult to change their pattern of thinking, especially if their methods have previously been rewarding.
Through language we understand and communicate the symbols and concepts that we learn. The words in our language are learned initially by association with the objects or events they represent (extension), but we also acquire meaning of words through their relationship to other words and symbols. They are usually clear-cut labels and have only one meaning. The second class of symbols are connotive symbols, and they mark the way we
intend to make people think about these things. Words like 'good', 'happy', 'worthwhile', are some of the connotive-type words used valuatively.
The essential link between thinking and language, we must repeat, comes about because we learn a great deal by description. We read about the experiences of others, of their verbal representations of other objects and ideas. We think by internal manipulation of language, and the very fact that we are able to associate a name successfully with an object is clear evidence that our memory stores both the name and a symbolic representation of the thing.
Let us look at just one piece of experiment on linguistic behaviour. Our vocabulary is composed of tens of thousands of words, including a great number of adjectives. We can use adjectives to qualify objects with such words as 'good', 'clean', 'large' and so on. Research has shown that our basic connotive vocabulary can be reduced to the three broad types of adjectives that most people use to describe their environment. The fundamental adjective types are:
Evaluation: i.e. good... bad Potency: i.e. strong... weak Activity: i.e. active... passive These three pairs of adjectives are the basic meanings that we seem to apply to many of the objects we perceive, learn, and think about. The whole field of relationship of symbols and language is the communication process by which human knowledge is recorded and developed. Language makes it possible for each generation to learn for itself what other generations had learned earlier. Knowledge is cumulative, otherwise each generation would have to learn for itself, for example, all of the principles of science. Cognition is the mental process by which we learn, think, and remember, and we use language to describe and understand the world around us.
(L.S. Skurnik, F. George. Psychology for Everyman. Penguin Books, 1972, pp. 46 -49)
Exercises
I. Transcribe the following words and practise them for pronunciation:
intimately, analogous, equal, conjure, label, spinal, efficiency, infer, criteria, habitual, connotive, valuatively.
II. Name adjectives from which the following nouns are formed:
awareness, newness, greenness, quickness, sleepiness, bigness, blindness, blackness, usefulness, seriousness, unexpectedness, darkness, nervousness, correctness
III. Form adjectives with the suffixes -ful and -less from the following nouns and translate them into Russian:
care, use, doubt, help, fear, need
IV. Translate the following sentences and word combinations into Russian. (The exercise is to be done orally):
to retain information; to retain knowledge; to retain the exciting news; the mechanism of retention;
to store facts; to store data; the brain is the place where a great deal of information is stored; storage capacity;
to have good intellectual capacities; our memory has a great storage capacity;
efficiency in performance; efficiency in memorizing facts and figures;
recent events; a recent trial; a recent experiment; to value one 's views; to value one 's opinion; valuable facts; valuable data; valuable information; information value;
historical events; recent events; to remember better frequent and recent events;
to involve new data; to involve one's consciousness, to involve one's memory; to involve thinking;
the image of the world around us; the image of a concept; image memory; a visual image;
to study the pattern of one's behaviour; to influence one's pattern of thinking; to depend on the pattern of memorizing new data; the pattern of movement;
the younger generation; the older generation; several generations of experimental animals.
V. Translate the following sentences from Russian into English using the active vocabulary:
1. . 2. . 3. . 4. . 5. . 6. , . 7. . 8. . 9. . 10. . 11. 12. . 13. . 14. . 15. . 16. . 17. , . 18. , . 19. . 20. , , . 21. XV111 . 22. . 23. , . 24. . 25. , , , . 26. . 27. , .. 28. . 29. . 30. 31. . 32. .
VI. Choose the right word from the box and insert it into one of the following sentences:
to retain, to involve, pattern, frequency, conscious, consciousness,
capacity
*
1. The elementary form of... amongst animals is sensory...
2. Learning a skill may... many errors. 3. For most people maximum intellectual... in the biological sense is somewhere between the ages of 15 and 25. 4. This behaviour in the main takes the form of the specific... of activity in response to specific stimulation termed reflexes. 5. At the opposite pole is behaviour in which individual is clearly... of a definite end or goal towards the attainment of which his actions arc directed. 6. He... these responses unchanged throughout life.
7. Attempts to make contact with other children increase in... with age, although contacts are usually short-lived until three years and upwards.
'II. In the following sentences find the Gerund, define its forms and functors, translate the sentences into Russian:
1. Psychologists measure intelligence by observing a person's performance in a set of standard tests. 2. Measurements of perceptual and motor skills, or even personality, attitudes and motivation might give useful data for predicting age-changes. 3. We are all familiar with the experience of being urged or driven to behave in certain ways to achieve certain ends. 4. During the past 25 years psychologists have taken more seriously the possibility of constructing mathematical models for the description of mental phenomena. 5. Easier tasks, if they are of the right sort, stand a greater chance of being solved by insight. 6. The subject was first tested by being handed pencil and paper and told to make a written reproduction of what he had learned. 7. Changing the food used as a stimulus will produce divergent results in the same animals. 8. We cannot understand the nature of measurements without knowing about the properties of mathematics. 9. Without being conditioned human beings soon learn that the dinner bell is a signal for dinner and will respond to it by going to the dining room. 10. Being punished can be preferable to being ignored. 11. The fact does not prevent our using this experimental technique.
/III. Translate the following sentences and analyze all the -ing forms in them (the Gerund, the Participle I, the Verbal Noun):
1. The subject will be tested individually by being given simple problems to solve. 2. The essential of this procedure is the placing of some sort of barrier between the subject and the goal he is trying to reach. 3. Learning occurs as a result of experience, but while this experience occurs, forgetting is also going on. 4. There are many approaches to the achieving of these results. 5> Here we shall discuss independent variables which are commonly recognized as playing a role in laboratory experiments on learning. 6. In humans there is evidence for the beginnings of form perception within the first weeks of life. 7. A number of experiments have shown that it is possible to control eating by stimulation or cutting off certain parts of the brain. 8. We have been developing the theory that the needs which Operate in the determination of the level of aspirations continue to exert their influence upon later performance. 9. They study the learning ability of animals by offering rewards such as food for correct solution of problems. 10. Growing older means being able to utilize earlier experience. 11. We turn now to observing variations among individuals in the same direction. 12. It is usually supposed that at birth the first action to appear is the reflex gasp for air, followed by crying. 13. In most psychological experiments on thinking, the methods employed are adaptations of procedures first used in studying other psychological activities. 14. For the beginner, choosing a problem is often one of the most difficult steps in designing an experiment. 15. Most sciences are busy answering the question Why?. 16. Knowing and understanding may play an important role in survival. 17. Without trying to determine the direction of the discussion we shall mention the problems touched upon in the papers presented. 18. We are far from having all the answers yet. 19. One way of doing it is to measure the degree of punishment which the animal accepts in satisfying his drive. 20. Pairing a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned one will eventually result in the conditioned stimulus becoming effective.
IX. Translate the following sentences paying special attention to the italicized expressions:
1. The higherthe level of scale, the more we can do with the numbers we obtain in measurement. 2. The greater the proportion of similar reactions, the nearer they are on the scale, and the smaller the proportion of similar reactions, the farther apart they are. 3. The greater the age difference between the child subject and the experimenter, the more difficult is for the experimenter to understand the child's feelings. 4. The less complex the subjects, the easier it is to carry out a scientifically valid experiment.
X. Answer the following questions based on the text:
1. What is human memory closely connected with?
2. What is human memory based on?
3. Where is memory located?
4. What is the quantity of information stored in our memory limited by?
5. Is storage capacity the same for every individual?
6. What are general features in memory?
7. What is meant by the term 'frequency'?
8. What do we remember better, the more recent events or the events that occurred earlier?
9. What does the term 'value' refer to?
10. What is thinking?
11. What is thinking closely bound up with?
12. How do we understand and communicate the symbols and concepts that we learn?
13. Why is language so important for human beings?
XI. Prepare a dialogue between two students, one of whom majors in psychology, while the other majors in history. The following may serve you as a guideline for your dialogue:
Since you major in psychology, I hope you'll be able to help me. The thing is, I must remember numerous facts and figures and I find it too difficult. I'm afraid there is something wrong with my memory. Besides, the trouble is that though I can memorize learning material fairly quickly, I forget it as quickly. Why so?
I see. So there is long-term and short-term memory. What should be done to retain the material studied and make a more permanent gain in learning?
How much material can be remembered and stored in our memory? Are there any limits to our storage capacity?
I've noticed that I remember material better if I feel emotionally interested in it.
I see. But I still don't understand why some people remember things better than others. Can I improve my memory?
Thanks a lot for the interesting information. You must be a very good student.
XII. Read the following text about Herman Ebbinghaus and be ready to speak about his contribution to psychology:
Ebbinghaus (1850 1909), a contemporary and countryman of Weber and Fechner, began the scientific study of memory processes. Prior to Ebbinghaus' work, many philosophers and psychologists had said that such a complicated mental process as memory could never be studied empirically. As a mental event, memory could not be brought into the laboratory for study. Fortunately, Ebbinghaus did not pay much attention to these earlier attitudes. He decided to learn how he himself learned and how he retained what he learned, and in line with this aim he developed the memory drum and the nonsense syllable (qux, kun, mes). The memory drum is a device that presents nonsense syllables to a subject one at a time. Ebbinghaus made up a list of nonsense syllables and presented them to himself in a memory drum. He counted the number of times that he had to see and pronounce the syllables in order to learn them. Then he left the
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task for varying periods of time and later relearned the syllables. Naturally, he found it easier to learn the list the second time, and he used the percentage "saved" (the second time over the first as his retention measure.
Ebbinghaus believed, as did Weber and Fechner, that he was getting at the relationship between physical events and mental events. But again we can see that Ebbinghaus' mental event was purely behaviour. It was the number of nonsense syllables that he could recite after a period of time.
Ebbinghaus' technique and procedures remain important in learning today, and he is historically important because he went into the laboratory to study a phenomenon that had hitherto been considered mental.
XIII. Speak on the following topics:
1. Memory and its general features
2. Experiments on memory you know of
3. Thinking, types of thinking
4. Language and thinking, language as a means of communication
XIV. Translate the following text:
, .
: , , . .
.
. . , . :
1. ,, -;
2. ;
3. , .
LESSON VIII
