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Authors: Benedict Carey
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idea— reinstatement , they called it—to facts, to what the Estonian psychologist Endel Tulving called “semantic memories.”
The idea seems far-fetched. Who on earth remembers what was playing through the headphones when he or she learned the definition of an isosceles triangle, or an ionic bond, or the role of Viola in Twelfth Night ? And when Godden and Baddeley dreamed up their experiment, the evidence for reinstatement was shabby at best. In one previous experiment, for example, participants tried to memorize word lists they heard through earphones while standing with their heads inside a box containing multicolored flashing lights (two dropped out due to nausea). In another, subjects studied nonsensesyllables while strapped to a board, which tipped on an axis like a teeter-totter, asin some cruel school yard prank.
The reinstatement seemed to facilitate better memory but Godden and Baddeley weren’t convinced. They wanted to test-drive reinstatement theory in an environment that was unusual but found in nature, not created by imaginative psychologists. So they had a group of eighteen scuba divers study a list of thirty-six words while submergedtwenty feet underwater. The researchers split the divers into two groups. An hour later, one group took a test on the words on dry land, while the others strapped on their equipment and took the test back down under, using a waterproof mike to communicate with those on land doing the scoring. The results indeed depended strongly on test location. The divers who took the test underwater did better than those who took it on land, remembering about 30 percent more words. That’s a lot, and the two psychologists concluded that, “recall is better if the environment of theoriginal learning is reinstated.”
Maybe the bubbles streaming past the diving mask acted as a cue, accentuating the vowels in the studied words. Maybe it was the rhythmic bellows of the breath in the mouthpiece, or the weight of the tank, plus the sight of swarming nudibranchs. Or the fact that those semantic memories became part of an episodic one (learning while diving). Perhaps all of the above. Reinstatement seemed to work, anyway—for underwater learning.
The Oban experiment lent comfort and encouragement to what would become a somewhat haphazard exploration of the influence of context on memory. The study materials in these experiments were almost always word lists, or word pairs, and the tests were usually on free recall. In one investigation, for example, people who studied a list of nonsense syllables on blue-gray cards remembered 20 percent more of them on a later test when the test cards were also blue-gray (as opposed to, say, red). In another, students who got exam questions from the same instructor who taught the material did 10 percent better than getting themfrom a neutral test proctor.
A psychologist named Steven M. Smith performed some of the most interesting experiments in this area, and it’s worth looking at one of his in detail to see how scientists measure and think aboutso-called contextual cues. In 1985 Smith, at Texas A&M University, convened a group of fifty-four Psych 101 students—psychologists’ standard guinea pigs—and had them study a list of forty words. He divided the students into three groups. One group studied in silence. Another had a jazz number, Milt Jackson’s “People Make the World Go Around,” playing in the background. The third had Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 24 in C Minor. The music was on when the subjects arrived in their assigned rooms, and they had no reason to believe it was relevant to the experiment. They spent ten minutes memorizing, and left.
The students returned to the study room two days later and, without warning, they were given a test to see how many words they could freely recall. This time, Smith changed the tune for many of them. He subdivided the three groups. Some who’d studied to jazz took the test with jazz again;
The idea seems far-fetched. Who on earth remembers what was playing through the headphones when he or she learned the definition of an isosceles triangle, or an ionic bond, or the role of Viola in Twelfth Night ? And when Godden and Baddeley dreamed up their experiment, the evidence for reinstatement was shabby at best. In one previous experiment, for example, participants tried to memorize word lists they heard through earphones while standing with their heads inside a box containing multicolored flashing lights (two dropped out due to nausea). In another, subjects studied nonsensesyllables while strapped to a board, which tipped on an axis like a teeter-totter, asin some cruel school yard prank.
The reinstatement seemed to facilitate better memory but Godden and Baddeley weren’t convinced. They wanted to test-drive reinstatement theory in an environment that was unusual but found in nature, not created by imaginative psychologists. So they had a group of eighteen scuba divers study a list of thirty-six words while submergedtwenty feet underwater. The researchers split the divers into two groups. An hour later, one group took a test on the words on dry land, while the others strapped on their equipment and took the test back down under, using a waterproof mike to communicate with those on land doing the scoring. The results indeed depended strongly on test location. The divers who took the test underwater did better than those who took it on land, remembering about 30 percent more words. That’s a lot, and the two psychologists concluded that, “recall is better if the environment of theoriginal learning is reinstated.”
Maybe the bubbles streaming past the diving mask acted as a cue, accentuating the vowels in the studied words. Maybe it was the rhythmic bellows of the breath in the mouthpiece, or the weight of the tank, plus the sight of swarming nudibranchs. Or the fact that those semantic memories became part of an episodic one (learning while diving). Perhaps all of the above. Reinstatement seemed to work, anyway—for underwater learning.
The Oban experiment lent comfort and encouragement to what would become a somewhat haphazard exploration of the influence of context on memory. The study materials in these experiments were almost always word lists, or word pairs, and the tests were usually on free recall. In one investigation, for example, people who studied a list of nonsense syllables on blue-gray cards remembered 20 percent more of them on a later test when the test cards were also blue-gray (as opposed to, say, red). In another, students who got exam questions from the same instructor who taught the material did 10 percent better than getting themfrom a neutral test proctor.
A psychologist named Steven M. Smith performed some of the most interesting experiments in this area, and it’s worth looking at one of his in detail to see how scientists measure and think aboutso-called contextual cues. In 1985 Smith, at Texas A&M University, convened a group of fifty-four Psych 101 students—psychologists’ standard guinea pigs—and had them study a list of forty words. He divided the students into three groups. One group studied in silence. Another had a jazz number, Milt Jackson’s “People Make the World Go Around,” playing in the background. The third had Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 24 in C Minor. The music was on when the subjects arrived in their assigned rooms, and they had no reason to believe it was relevant to the experiment. They spent ten minutes memorizing, and left.
The students returned to the study room two days later and, without warning, they were given a test to see how many words they could freely recall. This time, Smith changed the tune for many of them. He subdivided the three groups. Some who’d studied to jazz took the test with jazz again;
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