Wammes Jeffrey D, Meade Melissa E, Fernandes Myra A
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, N2L 3G1 Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, N2L 3G1 Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2017 Sep;179:104-113. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.07.008.
Traditionally, students adopt the strategy of taking written notes when attending a class or learning from a textbook in educational settings. Informed by previous work showing that learning by doing improves memory performance, we examined whether drawing to-be-remembered definitions from university textbooks would improve later memory, relative to a more typical strategy of rote transcription. Participants were asked to either write out the definition, or to draw a picture representative of the definition. Results indicated that drawing, relative to verbatim writing, conferred a reliable memorial benefit that was robust, even when participants' preexisting familiarity with the terms was included as a covariate (in Experiment 1) or when the to-be-remembered terms and definitions were fictitious, thus removing the influence of familiarity (in Experiment 2). We reasoned that drawing likely facilitates retention at least in part because at encoding, participants must retain and elaborate upon information regarding the meaning of the definition, to translate it into a new form (a picture). This is not the case when participants write out the definitions verbatim. In Experiment 3 we showed that paraphrasing during encoding, which, like drawing and in contrast with verbatim writing, requires self-generated elaboration, led to memory performance that was comparable to drawing. Taken together, results suggest that drawing is a powerful tool which improves memory, and that drawing produces a similar level of retention as does paraphrasing. This suggests that elaborative encoding plays a critical role in the memorial benefit that drawing confers to memory for definitions of academic terms.
传统上，在教育环境中，学生上课或阅读教科书时会采用记笔记的策略。鉴于之前的研究表明动手学习能提高记忆表现，我们探究了相对于更典型的死记硬背抄写策略，从大学教科书中画出需要记忆的定义是否会提高后续记忆。参与者被要求要么写出定义，要么画出代表该定义的图片。结果表明，与逐字书写相比，画图能带来可靠的记忆优势，这种优势很显著，即使在实验1中将参与者对术语的已有熟悉程度作为协变量纳入分析，或者在实验2中把要记忆的术语和定义设为虚构，从而消除熟悉度的影响时也是如此。我们推断，画图可能至少在一定程度上促进了记忆保持，因为在编码时，参与者必须保留并详细阐述有关定义含义的信息，以便将其转化为一种新形式（一幅图）。而当参与者逐字写出定义时情况并非如此。在实验3中，我们表明编码时进行意译，与画图一样（与逐字书写不同）需要自我生成详细阐述，这导致的记忆表现与画图相当。综合来看，结果表明画图是一种提高记忆的有力工具，而且画图产生的记忆保持水平与意译相似。这表明精细编码在画图给学术术语定义记忆带来的记忆优势中起着关键作用。
