Experts have long believed that memorization, essential for success in life, takes "effort." But now, Tufts psychology professor Sal Soraci thinks there are more specific ingredients.
Soraci is working to "uncover the memory mechanisms" behind effort. In earlier publications, Soraci and his colleagues discovered that subjects recalled sentences better if they experienced a sudden "insight" as to their meaning - a phenomenon they termed the "aha" effect. Now, Soraci's group has identified the electrical impulses behind the "aha" effect, demonstrating that it can be studied in the laboratory.
"Effort won't help you in 'aha' contexts," Soraci said. "Sometimes, generating multiple alternatives to provide multiple perspectives is critical to enhance learning and memory."
The effect has also caught the attention of the press. The Boston Globe featured an in-depth article about Soraci's work, and Soraci was recently interviewed by NECN. Soraci may also appear on ABC's Good Morning America in the near future.
Soraci and other scientists realized that the "aha" effect is somewhat counterintuitive because it suggests that initial confusion, followed by realization, may be helpful to learning. In order to test the "aha" effect, they devised a controlled experiment.
Imagine being asked to make sense of this sentence: "The clothes were ruined because the sign vanished." Your mind races to find the connection. How were the clothes ruined? What is this sign? How does it stop the clothes from becoming ruined? When you are given the missing clue, "wet paint," a wave of understanding washes over you. But, if the clue is presented before the nonsensical sentence, no memory advantage was found. Soraci's work shows that these moments of clarity facilitate memorization of sentences and their subsequent recall. The term "effort" was beginning to snap into focus, but the team didn't stop here.
Recently, attention has been focused on understanding why the "aha" effect makes memory longer lasting. Soraci and others proposed that as the subjects read the solutions to the nonsensical sentences, their brains recreated the scenario using the new information. This regeneration, they hypothesized, led to increased retention. If this were the case, it would help to resolve longstanding debates about the nature of learning. Plato, along with the 20th-century American philosopher and educator John Dewey, believed that learning was an active process that requires challenge and stimulation. Conversely, the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giovanni Vico posited that because mathematics and language were human inventions, they were easier for humans to understand and remember than natural world phenomena.
As another test of the hypothesis that active learning aids memorization, Soraci and collaborators presented subjects with fill-in-the-blank exercises, such as "S-EAKER." They were then given hints to direct them toward a particular solution. Some subjects, for instance, received "S-EAKER: A tennis shoe" while others were given "S-EAKER: Not part of a stereo set." Individuals given the latter cue tended to remember the word better, presumably because mental activity was stirred in the rejection of the incorrect response.
Additionally, they found that the more varied and interesting the hints, the better subjects were able to remember the words. For instance, subjects presented with "B-X-R: A stocky dog; a canine" were unable to recall "boxer" as consistently as were subjects presented with "B-X-R: A stocky dog. A prizefighter." Reminding subjects of the multiple meanings of "boxer" induced a stronger memory.
Amanda DiFiore, a graduate student who collaborates with Soraci, has discovered that about 400 milliseconds after the key word ("wet paint") is presented, subjects experience a sharp brain spike called an N400. Although the N400 is well known to other scientists, DiFiore discovered that it was coming from a more frontal section of the brain. This new insight may improve scientists' understanding of learning, and aid the study of learning in the laboratory.
According to Soraci, the impact of this work reaches far beyond the lab, and teachers should incorporate "aha" moments into their lesson plans. For instance, to teach the theory of evolution, Soraci suggests that students be given the same tools that Darwin had to work with. The Globe quotes Dorothy Leonard, a Harvard professor of business administration, as saying, "The pressure is to provide answers, to provide lists, but if [Soraci's] research is correct, [students] will not remember them as long if you don't design in time to be confused and struggling."
A number of other Tufts professors have collaborated with Soraci in his research, including Richard Chechile, Kent Portley, Steve Cohne, and Shirver Center professor Michael Carlin.
