Essentials of Learning for Instruction: Acquisition Phase

Acquisition Phase Once the external situation has been attended to and perceived, the act of learning can proceed. The phase of acquisition includes what we have called the essential incident of learning—the moment in time at which some newly formed entity is entered into the short-term memory, later to be further transformed into a "persisting state" in long-term memory. Coding. What remains temporarily in the short-term memory, however, is apparently not the same as what has been directly perceived. There is a transformation of the perceived entity into a form which is most readily storable. This important process is called coding. The existence of this process is revealed by studies which show that, generally speaking, what is remembered is almost never exactly the same as the original stimulation that gave rise to the learning. The material presented is sometimes distorted in certain ways, sometimes simplified or "regularized," and sometimes embellished. What is stored, as the result of an act of learning, is apparently not an exact representation or "mental picture" of what was seen or heard. A number of instances of the coding process can be found in reports on studies of learning. For example, when individuals in a laboratory experiment were asked to learn the shapes of simple figures and later asked to draw them, their reproductions showed a number of kinds of alterations tending to make the figures simpler and more symmetrical. The changes in the figures presumably occurred when they were coded by the learners, each in a somewhat different way. Coding for long-term storage. Still other kinds of transformations of material occur when the information enters long-term memory. In this case, the coding may be said to serve the purpose of making whatever is learned more highly memorable. Greater retention may occur when stimuli are grouped in certain ways, classified under previously learned concepts, or simplified as principles. For instance, the series 1491625364964 may be coded by a rule pertaining to squares of numbers, which can readily be seen if the numbers are grouped: 1 4 9 16 25 36 49. An example of coding comes from a study in which sixth grade children were asked to learn twenty pairs of words (like BEE-DOG, STICK-COW). They first studied the total list, and later were asked to repeat the second word when given the first. For half of the children, the words were presented as part of a sentence containing a verb, as "The STICK hurts the COW." For the other half, the same words were presented as part of a conjunctive phrase, such as "the STICK or the COW." The sentence form was found to be considerably more effective as a means of coding than was the phrase. During two "test-trials," each following a "study-trial," the children who studied the words in sentences recalled the second word correctly 54 percent of the time. Those children who studied the words in phrases, however, recalled correctly only 34 percent of the time. It was known from a previous investigation that single words can best be learned when embedded in a larger string of words forming a phrase or sentence. This study went on to explore the effectiveness of different kinds of syntax as coding devices. Still other studies have demonstrated that pictures suggesting visual images as means of coding can be highly effective for learning. The process of coding can be influenced externally as we have seen in the previous example. Another experiment showed that externally suggested coding can also influence the learning of figure shapes. In this study, learners were shown twelve different figures like those in the center of, which they were later to reproduce by drawing. Just before each figure was exposed, the experimenter said, "The next figure resembles eyeglasses" to one set of learners, whereas he said "The next figure resembles a dumbbell" to another set of learners; and so on for the remaining figures. The reproductions drawn by the learners clearly indicate the effect of these verbal communications on the coding process. While it is possible for coding procedures to be suggested externally, it should be borne in mind that the learner may use his own schemes, which may be quite idiosyncratic, and that these often are more effective than others which are supplied for him. In many instances of learning, encouraging the learner to encode (i.e., using a coding scheme), in whatever manner he chooses, may be the best procedure.

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