過度練習對習后記憶效果之影響

An Experimental Study of the Effect of Overpractice on Retention

張春興(Chun-Hsing Chang) ； 劉鴻香(Hung-Hsiang Liu)

《心理與教育》 1期 (1967/04) Pp. 113-125

https://doi.org/10.29811/PE.196704.0008

並列摘要

The purpose of this study was to investigate: (1) the relationship between the number of times of writing practice of a new word.list and retention; and (2) the effect of overpractice of writing on retention.
166 first graders participated as subjects. On the basis of their marks for Chinese in the previous semester they were divided into four groups of approximately equal proficiency in Chinese. The material for practice was a list of 6 Chinese characters. After the subjects had understood the meaning of these words the groups were assigned the following different numbers of times of writing practice on three successive days:
First day Second day Third day Total
Group A 3 1 1 5
Group B 5 3 2 10
Group C 8 4 3 15
Group D 10 10 10 30
Tests for retention were given as follows:
Each day of practice, one test was given after 10 minutes of the last practice;• and a test was given on each of the 7th, 14th, and 48th days after the end of the total practice; i. e., 6 tests in all. The reproduction method was used for measuring retention.
The results are summarized as follows:
1. The scores of different groups obtained in the first three tests tended to be higher in groups having a greater number of practices. There were gradual improve. ments from Group A to Group D. The improvements between Groups I), C, and B, however, were less significant than Group B and A.
2. The scores for retention after 7 and 14 day intervals indicated that the Group A was significantly behind Group B, C, and D; but none of the differences between Group B, C, and D, were significant. It would seem that the practices over 10 times had no lasting effects.
3. The scores for retention after a 48 day interval indicated that Group B was significantly ahead of Group A; but no siginificant differences were found in other comparisions.
4. The numbers of subjects in different groups who achieved perfect reproduction in the first test increased with the increase of times of practice. But, for these subjects, the increase in overpractice did not show its expected effects on retention in the later tests. No significant difference in power of retention was found between the subjects in Group A, who had only 2 times of overpractice and those in other groups with more times of practice. These findings are significant for school learning in two aspects: (1) Adaptation of instruction to suit the individual student should be emphasized in order to make individual abilities reach his 100 percent learning point; (2) when this point has been reached, it is merely necessary to do overpractice in order to reduce forgetting. The overpractice should be arranged in the manner of periodical reviews using the words in meaningful sentences rather than merely doing intensive meaningless copying.