94 



DISCOVERY 



in which the most difficult parts receive more frequent 

 repetitions than the others. 



This is only one way in which remembering can be 

 improved by the use of better ways of learning. I will 

 mention a few others without discussing them in 

 great detail. That the deliberate intention to remem- 

 ber is a vital factor in effective learning is a fact which 

 has forced itself on the notice of experimenters on 

 memory ; but it is so widely believed outside the 

 laboratory that we need not dwell on it. It has also 

 been proved that a given number of repetitions of the 

 material to be learned spread over a considerable 

 length of time is more effective than the same num- 

 ber crowded together. This is one reason for the 

 superiority of the whole over the part method, for it 

 is clear that this condition is better fulfilled in the 

 former method. Moreover, it must not be forgotten 

 that autosuggestion is a factor which may influence 

 the effectiveness of our remembering. Confidence that 

 we shall succeed in retaining what we are trying to 

 learn is the best condition for successful retention, 

 while an attitude of doubt and distrust of the powers 

 of our memory tends to make retention unsatisfactory. 

 Probably it icould be no exaggeration to say that, every 

 time a person remarks that he has a memory like a 

 sieve, he is knocking one more hole through its bottom. 



It was mentioned earlier that one direction in which 

 we might look for possible improvements in remem- 

 bering was in the employment of mental imagery. 

 This is a problem which will take us further into the 

 field of modern psychological interest. Unless they 

 have been interested in psychology, few people will be 

 found to have any idea of the enormous difference 

 between tlie minds of various people in their content 

 of imagery. It is easy and natural to assume that 

 other people think and imagine in much the same way 

 as we do. That this is not the case was proved first 

 by Francis Galton, who questioned a large number of 

 people about the power they had of representing 

 pictures of things before their mind's eye. In this 

 power of visualisation, or the employment of visual 

 imagery, he found astonishingly wide variations. 

 Some persons stated that they could see things in this 

 way as vividly and distinctly as they could see things 

 which were really present. Others (particularly, 

 Galton noticed, scientific men) denied that they had 

 any such power themselves, and refused to believe 

 that other people had. As a result of his researches, 

 Galton came to the conclusion that people could be 

 divided into three classes : the visiles, who had such 

 imaginary representations of things seen ; the audiles, 

 who had imaginary representations of sounds ; and the 

 motiles, who had imaginary representations of move- 

 ments. Later research has, on the whole, confirmed 

 Gallon's conclusions, although it has shown that their 



explanation is not so simple as he was led to suppose. 

 In particular, it has been shown that people generally 

 differ in the kind of imagery they use in imaging 

 words and in imaging actual things. It has also been 

 shown that people are by no means constant even in 

 the kind of imagery they use for actual objects. This 

 may vary with the nature of the object. At the same 

 time, it is found to be true that most persons use one 

 kind of imagery more readily than others. If we say, 

 for example, that a person is of the concrete visual and 

 verbal auditory type, we mean that he habitually 

 images actual things by means of pictures, while he 

 images words by their sound. 



These differences come out very clearly in memory 

 experiments. If we study the methods by which 

 different people learn nonsense syllables — the ordinary 

 material for memory experiments — we shall find that 

 a few of them recall the syllables by forming a visual 

 picture. We discover that this is the way they are 

 learning when we find that they tend to mistake words 

 which look alike. We find also that they can repro- 

 duce the syllables backwards as easily as they can in 

 their correct order, a very difficult task for people who 

 learn by any other method. Others use auditory 

 images. These learn most easily if the syllables are 

 read to them, or if they may read them aloud. They 

 tend to mistake letters which sound alike, and their 

 learning is generally seriously disturbed by an external 

 noise which would not disturb the visualiser at all. 

 Most commonly of all, we find persons who learn the 

 syllables by means of motor imagery. These pro- 

 nounce the syllables to themselves, and recall them 

 by the feeling of the movements of mouth and tongue 

 which are necessary in order to say them. These find 

 learning easiest if they are allowed to read the syllables 

 aloud, though this is not necessary. On the other 

 hand, their learning is always seriously disturbed if 

 they are compelled to perform some action, such as 

 whistling or rapid swallowing, which prevents them 

 from making the muscular movements of pronouncing 

 the words. 



In most tasks various kinds of imagery may be used, 

 though they are not all equally efficient. It is obvious 

 that the visualiser is at an advantage in remembering 

 visual impressions, the person with auditory imagery 

 in remembering sounds. Even in the memorising of 

 nonsense syllables, there are characteristic differences 

 between the performances of people with different 

 kinds of imagery. The person using visual imagery 

 in such learning is found to be slower but to be more 

 accurate in his reproduction and to be more certain 

 than the person who uses the more common auditory- 

 motor method of learning nonsense syllables. 



These facts show how important is the question of 

 whether any method of training can make it easier for 



