Let's Explore our Memory: Elaborative Rehearsal and the Tip of Tongue Phenomenon.

The reason why some methods of encoding are better than others for remembering later might be because of retrieval cues. We've talked about it in our blog-isodes: organizing things helps, breaking them into chunks (which is like organizing) helps, and thinking about them more deeply(deeper processing) helps too.

Source

But why?

Some might believe that these better ways of encoding help us store information more easily. Maybe they do. But their main job is to make it simpler for us to find the information later when we need it.

The secret to good encoding is to provide means for later retrieval. We know this from looking at two types of practice. First, there's maintenance rehearsal which we've discussed in previous blog-isodes, where you just hold info in your short-term memory without really working with it. But there's another kind called elaborative rehearsal, which is way more effective.

This is just a fancy way to talk about how we sort out the stuff we want to remember. We can organize it, break it down into smaller parts(chunks), or connect it to other things we already know. All of these tricks help us store info better. But the real power of this method is that it makes it easier for us to remember the stuff later on.

If the subject is asked to recall, say, a list of words, then any one of these words that comes to mind will help him to retrieve more of the others. In addition, whatever else he saw and thought about at the time of rehearsal will also be connected to some of the items and may later serve as a retrieval cue .

For example, In ancient times, all roads led to Rome, so travelers could always find their way there. Similarly, with elaborative rehearsal, each time you think about something related, it creates another way to remember the material later. The more of these connections you have, the easier it is to remember.

Supporting data comes from a research where the level of elaboration was adjusted. Sentences containing one missing word were given to the subjects. A few of these were really basic, like "He cooked the." Others, like "The great bird swooped down and carried off the struggling," were more complex.

The goal assigned to the subjects was to determine if a target word (chicken, for example) could fit within the sentence frame. The subjects were (unexpectedly) asked to recollect as many of the target words as they could after sixty of these trials.

According to the elaboration rehearsal theory, memory improved with increasingly complicated phrase structures. More and better retrieval routes were probably constructed by the broader encoding circumstances.

Most researchers believe that remembering(Retrieval) generally starts with something inside us(an internal process) called memory search. Usually, this happens without us realizing it and really fast, like when we quickly answer a question like, "Who was the first U.S. president named Abraham?" But sometimes, we notice this process happening as we consciously dig through our memories until we remember exactly who did what to whom a long time ago.

In a study linked to this conscious memory search process, participants were asked to try remembering the names of their high school classmates after a long time, like from four to nineteen years later. To check if they remembered correctly, researchers looked at their high school yearbooks.

At first, the participants remembered quite a few names in the first few minutes of trying. Then, they said they couldn't remember any more. But the researchers encouraged them to keep trying, so they did, for ten sessions lasting an hour each. As they kept trying, they surprised themselves by remembering more and more names, until they finally remembered about a third of the names from a class of 300.

As the subjects tried to remember, they were told to talk what they were thinking. Their words matched the idea of looking for something physical. It was like they were searching for a real object, checking different memory spots one after another. They didn't just randomly try, but it seemed like they had planned ways to search for what they were trying to remember based on well-formulat3d search strategies.

For instance, they mentally went through their different classes, clubs, and teams, or looked at mental images to find another person they could try to remember:

"It's like I'm thinking of typical situations and then looking at the people involved in them. Like in P.E. class, there was... um... Gary Booth. And Karl Brist... Um... I can think of things like dances. I guess then I usually think of... girls... Like Cindy Shup, Judy Foss, and Sharon Ellis... I mean, it's like I can see a picture of the high school dance..."

Of course, searching doesn't always work. Some names we forget never come back, no matter how much we try. But sometimes, we get to a halfway point where we almost remember something but not completely. When this happens, it feels like the memory we're looking for is on the "tip of the tongue," but we can't quite get it out. There's no better way to describe this feeling than that.

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William James: Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein, but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately to negate them. They do not fit into its mold. And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps.

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There's proof that the "tip-of-the-tongue" feeling described by James shows how close we actually were in our memory search, like we were really "getting warm," even though we couldn't quite remember the exact word. In one study, college students were given the definitions of unusual English words like apse, sampan, and cloaca.

They were asked to give the words that matched these definitions. The researchers were interested in times when the students couldn't remember the word but felt like they were about to remember it.

Whenever this happened, they were asked to make some guesses about what the target word sounded like. These guesses turned out to be closely related to the target. When the word was said to be on the tip of the tongue, its first letter was guessed correctly over 50 percent of the time. Similar results were found when they tried to guess the number of syllables.

When they were asked to give other words that sounded like the target, they usually picked ones that were similar in sound. For example, when given the definition "a small Chinese boat" and the correct answer being "sampan," participants who said they almost remembered but not quite, suggested sound-alikes such as Saipan, Sain, Cheyenne, and sarong.

The Bus Stops Here for today:

Long right?

But I hope you enjoyed it?

Thank you for joining me in today's blog-isode. As always, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this topic or any of my blogs. It's a pleasure to connect with you, and I always strive to ensure my readers feel the same way. I'll see you tomorrow in the next Blog-isode. Stay safe.

References and links:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022537166800403#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%9Ctip%20of%20the%20tongue%E2%80%9D%20(TOT)%20phenomenon%20is,try%20to%20recall%20the%20words.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/elaborative-rehearsal-a-better-way-to-memorize-98694

https://helpfulprofessor.com/elaborative-rehearsal-examples/

https://www.verywellmind.com/lethologica-tip-of-the-tongue-phenomenon-4154947#:~:text=The%20tip%2Dof%2Dthe%2Dtongue%20phenomenon%20or%20lethologica%20is,just%20outside%20of%20mental%20reach.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7500633/

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