Does Verbal Elaboration and Rehearsal Improve Memory - Assignment Example

Introduction: There are various theories, including rethinking interference theory, dual representation theory, reversal theory and verbal overshadowing theory a vast research is done in relation to the improvement of memory by elaborating different things verbally or in words and by rehearsal, however this paper will discuss the topic in reference to the Verbal overshadowing theory and research only. Verbal Overshadowing: Verbal shadowing is the mutilation, alteration or a change in the capability of a person to acknowledge, identify or recognize as a result of generating a verbal description, explanation or elaboration. Verbal overshadowing has been demonstrated to occur in several domains of perceptual proficiency mainly including voice, smell, taste and face recognition and also includes the recognition of different events. Some of which are discussed below and are proven by the related experiments carried out in the field of research related to the verbal overshadowing. For the purpose to know the effect of overshadowing in voice recognition, two experiments were carried out including 169 people who participated to examine the effects of verbal overshadowing on the memory of remembering the voice. Their own voice race and the others was examined and the over all results shown that the strong own-race is favored than the superior own-race voice recognition without any verbal overshadowing shown by the experiment. Verbal overshadowing has a stronger effect shown by another experiment. Cognitive style was foretelling in both the experiments, proving that verbal overshadowing has a great impact on the recognition of holistic, which here means own, and analytical, which here means others ,voices. And finally, we can say that the overshadowing strongly affects the process of voice recognition (Rosen, 2006). A theory in face recognition: This is the memory research with an applied focus and a lot of work is done in this line of research to find the relation between the facial description and the facial recognition. Two psychologists, Schooler and Engstler-Schooler, in the early 1990's, found that when people give the detailed description of a strange face the later recognition of that face is weakened. This is especially appropriate for eyewitness demonstrations. The fundamental findings of this research were targeted to know that the similarity between the target and the distracter affects the phenomenon of verbal overshadowing, and so this helped in making the theory stronger (Rosen, 2006). This was, truly, the test-set similarity and to manipulate this, faces of various people were blended together by the use of one of the well-known techniques, termed morphology techniques. In the conclusion, we would like to clarify that when the test-set similarities were high, the verbal overshadowing was found but when there were a lesser range of similarities, there was no evident of the effect of the verbal overshadowing. This can be easily concluded that replication of the emergence of the verbal overshadowing effect greatly and directly depends on test-set similarities (Rosen, 2006). Brown and Lloyd Jones, in 2002, used a new multiple presentation model, to show that by describing a single face, the recognition of a number of both faces and cars are exploited. Another experiment proved that if a car and a face are described then it later disturbs the memory to retrieve the recognition of those faces and cars, by blending them altogether in the mind and so the person gets confused. We interpret these results in a transfer-inappropriate retrieval framework. They, Brown and Lloyd Jones, have done the work which provides the information about the important aspects of verbal overshadowing and helps in reshaping the discussed theory (Vargios, 2007). Verbal overshadowing is a reliable phenomena but the verbal reporting of visualization of the memory of a particular face interrupts with the subsequent visual recognition of that particular face. Moreover, an ability of an individual to describe a face does not mean that he also has the ability to recognize a face. The processes that govern face description and face identification are different from each other. Verbal overshadowing effect (VOE) is used to examine this description-identification relationship that how can be a face described and to what extent the particular face can be recognized by the people (Vargios, 2007). There are many factors that effect the line-up constructions and fairness evaluation, line-up similarity and nominal size, instructions for the witnesses, factors of line-up presentation, and applications of computerized administrations of the verbal overshadowing effect in the case of face description and recognition. By verbalizing the facial memory, the role played by the recognition criterion in the verbal overshadowing effect (VOE) was known (Vargios, 2007). In order to reach the same goal, three experiments were carried out in three simple steps which include very firstly, some people witnessed an incident and secondly the performer was described verbally to some other people and then finally the results of identification and recognition were attempted which means that those other persons were asked to identify the face later. As a result of which, it is finally concluded that the recognition criterion can be changed by VOE i.e. verbal overshadowing effect rather than a changed processing style or modification of the fundamental memory outline. Computational modeling of the data was applied to confirm this conclusion (Vargios, 2007). The most important thing is that it has great implications and some positive effects for the methods and procedures applied and used by the law enforcement officials who have to extract the information from eyewitnesses to crime scenes and situations whose mission, target and goal is the recognition of that particular face of criminal usually (Vargios, 2007). The verbal overshadowing effect happens in which domain-specific perceptual professionals exceed the verbal professionals. The experiment, here, was carried out among the three different categories of wine tasting persons, among which one of them was none-wine drinker, second was untrained-wine drinker and the third and the last was trained wine drinker. They were made to taste the red wine and then they were engaged in verbalization or an unrelated verbalization to that red wine and then they were finally asked to identify or recognize the same wine among the three different foils of the wines (Baddeley, 1997). According to the results observed and interpreted, the untrained wine drinkers exploited the recognition sense of wine because of the verbalization. Therefore, here also, the verbal elaboration exploited the memory and thus the later recognition of the taste of the wine. The conclusion was concluded with reference to the perceptual and verbal skills, which are reformed differentially before becoming an expert (Baddeley, 1997). Recognition and identification of the odors related to the wine as a function of domain-specific expertise was searched and investigated. In order to reach the goal of information related to the olfactory threshold, an experiment was done on the 11 wine experts and wine novices. They were allowed to smell the wine, and some were allowed to have conversations related to the wine and some were not allowed to do the same, and were later asked to identify the wine among several wines (Baddeley, 1997). Furthermore, finally the wine experts were able to recognize the wines from their smell with the help of their sense of olfaction and to check their olfactory thresholds. But the verbalized people had the impaired recognition and so they were unable to identify the wine through the smell. Here, also, the verbalization exploited the sense of recognization (Baddeley, 1997). An experiment , carried out between enacted and non-enacted people ,means that some people waved their hands in different actions and in which some of them were allowed to say something and the remaining people were not allowed to do so ,also revealed that during the enacted and non-enacted events ,the people were verbalized and in the end the enacted people with verbalization shown that the later recognition and identification process was impaired and so the memory is, of the people who were involved in verbalization (Valsiner & Connolly, 2003). There are two theories that are proposed for the verbal overshadowing and are as follows; Interference based theory Processing shift theory Among many factors, which influence memory formation and later retrieval, rehearsal and elaboration is the main. Rehearsal happens when a person tries to repeat and repeat the same information and keeps it in his short-term memory. While, elaboration occurs when the information to be stored is related to the other environmental elements and links, which is then embedded in the larger context or the environment rich in information. Memory is sometimes improved by the memory aids. For example, if unrelated word pairs are asked to remember, like dog-chair, then the person may repeat the words several times to keep them in his mind (rehearsal), and he may think about the dog jumping up and down on the chair (elaboration) (Morris & Becker, 2005). Generally, the stories that are described according to a cause and effect sequence are considered more effective memory aids then the visual imagery ones. For example, if the statement, Mary helped her brother in buying a chair, is asked to remember ,then the person may elaborate the statement in this way that Mary was an interior decorator who is expert in buying furniture ,and Mary’s brother John wanted to buy a particular reading chair for his lovely wife for her birthday but was not sure about his choice ,therefore he asked Mary to help him out in buying that particular chair for him and so on (Morris & Becker, 2005). This elaboration will obviously create the problem in separating out the actual or original and the elaborated story in the mind. Actual or original information would be tagged otherwise the elaboration would definitely create the confusion in-between easily, at the time of retrieval. And to avoid the confusion, the tag would be used to separate the memories related to the original and the elaborated stories (Morris & Becker, 2005). The effectiveness of the procedure either rehearsal or elaboration, solely, depends on the use they are going to be put. Bjork, in 1975, performed an experiment to show the various ways to use these two procedures. Due to his studies, the procedures of rehearsal and elaboration are further subdivided into two more categories; free recall memory and the recognition memory. Finally, it was concluded from his results that sometimes long-term recall performance and sometimes long-term recognition performance are produced in a better manner due to the elaboration of different things (Levin, 2004). Elaboration appears to be efficient in promoting the long-term memories formation. A propositional network model refers to a proposition that links to several propositions and among which anyone of them can be easily used and acts to enhance the original item activation. But an isolated representation could not be directed to be activated indirectly, but only with the direct means. Schemas which include scripts can be a way of activation or can act as the aid in memory formation process (Levin, 2004). Owens, Bower and Black, in 1979, had researched for the same, and finally suggested that it is a fact and truth of nature. According to them the retention is improved when short descriptions are embedded in the larger contexts which are usually present in the scripts. Another fact related to the same story is that the persons, who have some related script knowledge about a particular matter, are likely to recall and recognize things or the same particular matter more easily than the persons who have no knowledge about them; suggested by Chiesi, Spilich and Voss, in 1979.These three psychologists carried out the experiment involving some persons having the knowledge about the baseball and some told stories about the baseball ,they were able to recall their memory more efficiently than the persons who had no knowledge about the baseball (Levin, 2004). Elaboration can cause confusion about the information with its later elaboration or detailed description or script elements that were not present originally. This simply means that people are absolutely able to remember the things or events which have never happened in the actual world, that’s the way how the human memory works (Rosen, 2006). Sometimes people are so confused about the source of memory that they remember things as being part of the whole story while recalling those particular things from the scripts related to those stories. This whole situation is termed as a source error (later testimony versus personal observation) and it happens when the information related to the recalled information is not stored properly and this cause of the said situation is termed as poor source monitoring. When there is a stronger source monitoring ,the situations in which people are asked to remember the source explicitly for later testing or when there is a quality or feature very prominent and can be noticed easily ,the people are not reliable to such confusions as much (Rosen, 2006). Memory can be adversely affected due to these diverted influences, which are well documented. Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues including Miller and Burns, in 1978,worked on an entirely different and a very interesting situation, in which some people were allowed to view an incidents, then the misleading information about the same event was given to them or we can say that the incident was later described to them verbally and then they were asked to tell about the same event, they told all the characterizations of that misleadingly informed event and not about the event they have seen with their own eyes. People are so confused that they mix up various concepts together nonexistent broken glasses and tape recorders, a clean-shaven man as having a mustache and straight hair as curly,Loftus and Ketcham,in 1991,discovered this all (Vargios, 2007). It is generally, strongly believed that the memory performance is gradually improved by verbal elaboration or explaining anything in detail. If the appearance of previously seen visual object is described then the subsequent performance to recognize that particular visual object is impaired or exploited. Memory verbalization overshadows but the original visual memory is not exploited. Thus, a visual memory verbalization generates a verbally biased memory representation which interferes with the original visual memory applications (Miller, 2007). It is well known that talking through a problem solves it but sometimes verbalization has its negative impacts on the situation like when one’s thought processes is described or judgments is analyzed, the performance of recognization is impaired. Another experiment to know the exact position of the same fact was carried out, including two types of participants, one of those types was allowed to think aloud and the other was not. The results show that the participants who were allowed to think aloud retrieved surface matches more than that of the true analogies, more than the participants who were not allowed to think aloud and did not verbalize their thoughts (Miller, 2007). Like everything else in the field of science and research, these effects of verbal elaboration and verbal overshadowing also show the positive and negative both aspects on the human psychology and memory and thus the response towards many things and perceptions in the life, of the world. Overall, we conclude that the verbal overshadowing overshadows the things or objects previously described, at the time of recognition and thus usually, in most of the cases, exploit the memory. Works Cited: Baddeley, A. D. (1997). Human Memory: Theory And Practice. Psychology Press. Levin, D. T. (2004). Thinking and Seeing: Visual Metacognition in Adults and Children. The MIT Press. Miller, S. A. (2007). Developmental Research Methods. Sage Publications Morris, R. G. and Becker, J. T. (2005). Cognitive Neuropsychology of Alzheimer's Disease. Oxford University Press. Rosen, D. T. (2006). Trends in Experimental Psychology Research. Nova Science Publishers. Valsiner, J. and Connolly, K. J. (2003). Handbook of Developmental Psychology. SAGE Publications Vargios, E. M. (2007). Educational Psychology Research Focus. Nova Science Publishers. Read More

This was, truly, the test-set similarity and to manipulate this, faces of various people were blended together by the use of one of the well-known techniques, termed morphology techniques. In the conclusion, we would like to clarify that when the test-set similarities were high, the verbal overshadowing was found but when there were a lesser range of similarities, there was no evident of the effect of the verbal overshadowing. This can be easily concluded that replication of the emergence of the verbal overshadowing effect greatly and directly depends on test-set similarities (Rosen, 2006).

Brown and Lloyd Jones, in 2002, used a new multiple presentation model, to show that by describing a single face, the recognition of a number of both faces and cars are exploited. Another experiment proved that if a car and a face are described then it later disturbs the memory to retrieve the recognition of those faces and cars, by blending them altogether in the mind and so the person gets confused. We interpret these results in a transfer-inappropriate retrieval framework. They, Brown and Lloyd Jones, have done the work which provides the information about the important aspects of verbal overshadowing and helps in reshaping the discussed theory (Vargios, 2007).

Verbal overshadowing is a reliable phenomena but the verbal reporting of visualization of the memory of a particular face interrupts with the subsequent visual recognition of that particular face. Moreover, an ability of an individual to describe a face does not mean that he also has the ability to recognize a face. The processes that govern face description and face identification are different from each other. Verbal overshadowing effect (VOE) is used to examine this description-identification relationship that how can be a face described and to what extent the particular face can be recognized by the people (Vargios, 2007).

There are many factors that effect the line-up constructions and fairness evaluation, line-up similarity and nominal size, instructions for the witnesses, factors of line-up presentation, and applications of computerized administrations of the verbal overshadowing effect in the case of face description and recognition. By verbalizing the facial memory, the role played by the recognition criterion in the verbal overshadowing effect (VOE) was known (Vargios, 2007). In order to reach the same goal, three experiments were carried out in three simple steps which include very firstly, some people witnessed an incident and secondly the performer was described verbally to some other people and then finally the results of identification and recognition were attempted which means that those other persons were asked to identify the face later.

As a result of which, it is finally concluded that the recognition criterion can be changed by VOE i.e. verbal overshadowing effect rather than a changed processing style or modification of the fundamental memory outline. Computational modeling of the data was applied to confirm this conclusion (Vargios, 2007). The most important thing is that it has great implications and some positive effects for the methods and procedures applied and used by the law enforcement officials who have to extract the information from eyewitnesses to crime scenes and situations whose mission, target and goal is the recognition of that particular face of criminal usually (Vargios, 2007).

The verbal overshadowing effect happens in which domain-specific perceptual professionals exceed the verbal professionals. The experiment, here, was carried out among the three different categories of wine tasting persons, among which one of them was none-wine drinker, second was untrained-wine drinker and the third and the last was trained wine drinker. They were made to taste the red wine and then they were engaged in verbalization or an unrelated verbalization to that red wine and then they were finally asked to identify or recognize the same wine among the three different foils of the wines (Baddeley, 1997).

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