Memory and problem solving

Abstract

The experiments reported in this study were made to investigate the developmental trends of memory ability and to examine the effects of presentational conditions and instructions in serial memory tasks.
A number of series of digits and the nonsense words of two syllables (Umemoto, T., et all., Association value and meaningfulness of two syllable nonsense words,Jap. J. Psychol.,1955, vol.26, No.3, 148-155) were used to construct the experimental tasks.
The subjects were obtained from the third and the fifth graders in several elementary schools and the first and the third graders in a junior high school.
The main conclusions were as follows:
1) A certain procedure of data analysis produced the following result; the immediate memory apan had a relatively stable range, as suggested by Miller (Miller, G. A.,“The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information.”Psychol. Rev.,1956, 63, 81-79). However, the nature of the tasks and the degree of learning could affect the memory span. Consequently, it is likely to be of little importance to explore the limit in learning of such tasks. It is rather thought to be more important to pursue from a developmental point of view the learning process to reach a given level and the subsequent changes.
2) The present experiment demonstrated that improvement of performance could be found if the learning materials were presented in such a way as to facilitate the subjects' prediction. Therefore we can not regard our subjects as passive acceptors of stimuli, only with rote memory ability. It is rather reasonable for us to regard them as positive information processors responding with a given set.
3) Remembering and thinking in serial tasks could be made easier by strengthening the meaningfulness of learning materials and the interrelationships among dimensions of the materials. The instructions in order to suggest some solutions to the subjects were revealed to give some positive effects.