Class demonstration 3: Meaning enhances recall

In this demonstration, Mr. Anthony prepared a set of twenty words on sheets of paper which have either the letter A or B on it. Then he asked us to memorize the words that he will show to us for a few seconds. However, he also asked us to do the following: if the sheet of paper has a letter A on it, count the syllables, and state whether the words have pleasant or unpleasant meaning if the word B was written on the sheet of paper. The hypothesis of this demonstration was that people would remember the words with the letter B on it better than ones with A.

The result was the following:

· We have a bimodal distribution with the modes at 15 and 10
· The range of the data was 10, spreading from 10-20
· 3 people remembered more A words than B
· 4 people had the equal amount of A and B memorized
· 9 people remembered more B words than A
· The average of the class was at 15-16 words

This shows that by giving meaning to the words, it is easier for us to encode them to long term memory compared to the words that we did not give meaning to. Moreover, I have used mnemonic device to help me memorize all the words, which is highly effective in this demonstration since I was able to recall all 20 of the words. So it can be concluded that in addition to giving meaning to the words, making stories and associating the words with other mnemonic devices also improve our memory on vocabulary.