OF RECITATION IN MEMORIZING (from Gates)

Material studied 16 nonsense syllables 5 short biographies,
totalling about 170 words

Per cent, remembered Per cent. remembered

immediately after 4 hours immediately after 4 hours

All time devoted
to reading 35 15 35 16

1/5 of time devoted
to recitation 50 26 37 19

2/5 of time devoted
to recitation 54 28 41 25

3/5 of time devoted
to recitation 57 37 42 26

4/5 of time devoted
to recitation 74 48 42 26

The time devoted to study was in all cases 9 minutes, and this time
was divided between reading and recitation in different proportions
as stated in the first column at the left. Reading down the next
column, {340} we find that when nonsense syllables were studied and
the test was conducted immediately after the close of the study
period, 35 per cent. were remembered when all the study time had
been devoted to reading, 50 per cent, when the last 1/5 of the study
time had been devoted to recitation, 54 per cent when the last 2/5
of the time had been devoted to recitation; and so on. The next
column shows the per cents. remembered four hours after the study
period. Each subject in these experiments had before him a sheet of
paper containing the lesson to be studied, and he simply read it
till the experimenter gave a signal to recite, after which the
subject recited the lesson to himself as well as he could, prompting
himself from the paper as often as necessary, and proceeded, thus
till the end of the study period. The subjects in these particular
experiments were eighth grade children; adult subjects gave the same
general results.

Three facts stand out from the table: (1) Reading down the columns, we
see that recitation was always an advantage. (2) The advantage was
more marked in the test conducted four hours after study than in the
test immediately following the study. To be sure, there is always a
falling off from the immediate to the later test; there is bound to be
some forgetting when the lesson has been studied for so short a time
as here; but the forgetting proceeds more slowly after recitation