Effects of rote versus gist strategy on the verbatim retention of theatrical scripts

Abstract

AbstractThe research reported here investigated the relative efficiency of rote and gist strategies in the learning of theatrical scripts. Two conditions (rote and gist) and two subject populations (professional actors and psychology students) were used in both immediate and delayed testing. A new scoring scheme to determine accuracy of recall was devised using strict, moderately strict, and lenient measures of accuracy. The primary finding was that a gist strategy led to better literal recall even for material that needed to be remembered verbatim. However, while recall was approximately equal for actors and students in the gist condition, actors' performance was less depressed by the constraints of the rote condition which minimized the possibility of processing for meaning. Post‐test statements of subjects' strategies were analyzed for commonalities. Actors and students in the gist condition pursued similar strategies but with different goals and different emphases. Statements by subjects in the rote condition revealed attempts by actors but not by students to relate speeches currently being repeated to antecedent material.