An investigation of a combined method of teaching recall in the basic speech course

Purpose of the study: This investigation was designed to find if there were significant differences and relationships by sex, word count, and error between the experimental group who received instruction in the combined method of recall and the control group who did not. Procedures: The experimenter chose a post recall test and a transfer design to find out whether students who received combined memory training and students who received no memory training varied other than by chance on recall of prose passages. The null hypothesis was that there was no difference other than chance between the two groups in recall of prose passages. The independent variable was the combined method of memory training composed of lectures, practice with the oral prompting technique, and memory enrichment exercises, the dependent variable was recall on Recall Tests 1 and 2. In order to test for possible differences between experimental and control groups, the passages were rehearsed by both groups using the oral prompting technique. Both groups wrote from memory all that they could recall of the passages during Recall Tests 1 and 2. The author analyzed each subject’s papers for word count and error scores. Findings: All scores were assessed to answer four questions. (1) Were there any differences other than chance between the 10 classes? There were differences by sections indicating that sections were not random samples of the population of 131 Speech classes. The factor of sections confounded the study of the other variables. (2) Can chance account for the differences? There were no significant differences by treatment and interaction between the control and experimental groups except chance. Chance could not account for the differences between scores of men and women in the categories of word count and error count. Women made significantly fewer errors and recalled significantly more words than men. (3) Did the oral prompting technique produce improvement on a recall test? The oral prompting technique did not produce improvement on Recall Tests 1 and 2. (4) Were there relationships between the variables? The correlations in the experimental groups were the following: Word count 1 scores correlated positively with word count 2 scores and negatively with error 2 scores. Word count 2 scores correlated negatively with error 1 scores. Error 1 scores correlated negatively with error 2 scores. The control group produced the following correlations: Word count 1 scores correlated positively with word count 2 scores and negatively with error 1 scores and error 2 scores. Word count 2 scores correlated negatively with error 1 scores. Summary: The results indicated that a positive transfer of learning did not occur. The lack of significant differences between the control and experimental groups in Recall Test 1 and 2 were explained by chance. Perhaps confounding of differences by sections, confounding of recall and relearning in the experimental group, proactive inhibition, and previous word familiarity in the experimental group caused the transfer of learning not to reach significance. The small increase in word count scores by control and experimental groups may have represented an increase in adapting to taking recall tests, not an increase in learning how to memorize. Overlap of familiarity with words in the recall tests may account for part of the increase in scores for the subjects.