Massen Cristina, Vaterrodt-Plünnecke Bianca
University of Bonn, Germany.
Memory. 2006 Feb;14(2):189-96. doi: 10.1080/09658210544000042.
The success of many mnemonic techniques, such as the method of loci, is based on the use of specific well-known anchors, which are mentally combined with to-be-learned items and subsequently facilitate their retrieval. In our studies we intended to answer the question of whether the repeated application of the method of loci may result in proactive interference effects, as might be expected due to the applied association of items with the same loci each time the method is used. To this end, we manipulated list similarity in a typical proactive interference design and compared the method of loci with the link method and the rehearsal method, which do not involve the use of a specified set of anchors. Our results replicate those from other studies, which have shown that the use of a mnemonic technique leads to superior recall of list items compared to a simple rehearsal strategy. We were further able to show that the repeated learning of items from different categories results in moderate practice effects over three list-learning trials, whereas this effect is superimposed by an effect of proactive interference if different lists are composed of items from the same category. However, this effect of proactive interference was not increased for the method of loci, and we discuss this finding with regard to its practical implications.
许多记忆术的成功，如位置记忆法，是基于使用特定的知名锚点，这些锚点在心理上与要学习的项目相结合，随后便于它们的检索。在我们的研究中，我们试图回答这样一个问题：位置记忆法的重复应用是否可能导致前摄干扰效应，就像每次使用该方法时将项目与相同的位置进行关联所预期的那样。为此，我们在一个典型的前摄干扰设计中操纵列表相似性，并将位置记忆法与不涉及使用特定一组锚点的链接法和复述法进行比较。我们的结果重复了其他研究的结果，这些研究表明，与简单的复述策略相比，使用记忆术能更好地回忆列表项目。我们还能够表明，在三次列表学习试验中，对来自不同类别的项目进行重复学习会产生适度的练习效应，而如果不同的列表由来自同一类别的项目组成，这种效应会被前摄干扰效应叠加。然而，位置记忆法的前摄干扰效应并没有增加，我们将讨论这一发现的实际意义。
