Private Speech: Maintenance Rehearsal

What is maintenance rehearsal?

1. Explain how private speech (talking to yourself) can act as maintenance rehearsal.

Go to the web site, follow the on-line instructions and complete the on-line experiments.

2. How many numbers did you correctly recall in Experiment 1 (silent retention interval)?
3. How many numbers did you correctly recall in Experiment 2 (sentence read during the retention interval)?
4. How many numbers did you correctly recall in Experiment 3 (distracting numbers read during the retention interval)?

Many people find the sentence and (especially) the extraneous numbers disrupt their memory for the to-be-remembered digits. The web site suggests that retroactive interference is responsible for the decline in recall.

5. What is retroactive interference? How might it affect your ability to recall the digits?

Come up with another reason why the sentence and (especially) the extraneous numbers might hurt people's ability to recall the digits (hint: how do these affect a person's ability to use private speech for maintenance rehearsal).

6. What do you think would happen to your ability to recall the digits if you were required to recite the alphabet before you were asked to recall the digits? Try it.
7. Redo experiment 1 and recite the alphabet right before you try and recall the digits. What happened? Why?

Droodles

Follow the on-screen instructions.

1. How many Droodles did you recall correctly when the pictures had meaningless names (e.g., Teaf)?

Click on "try more droodles" and try another round.

2. How many Droodles did you recall correctly when they had meaningful names?
3. Most people recall Droodles better when they have meaningful names. Why do you think this is? (Hint: make sure you consider elaborative rehearsal, dual-coding theory, and deeper levels of processing).

I Know What You're Thinking!

Complete the on-line exercise. Review the section in your textbook on Associative Networks and memory and the discussion of prototypes. Given that more typical category examples (e.g., robin) require lower levels of spreading activation and less typical category examples (e.g., ostrich) require more activation to "come to mind" explain how the activity works.