Ordinary College Students Research Articles

Novices, Apprentices, and Mnemonists: Acquiring Expertise with the Phonetic Mnemonic

Three kinds of participants can be identified in research with the phonetic mnemonic—novices, apprentices, and mnemonists, and most research has involved novices. Two experiments investigated whether ordinary college students using the phonetic mnemonic could duplicate two feats of Luria's memorist identified as S: memorizing a 20-digit matrix in 40 seconds, and memorizing a 50-digit matrix in 3 minutes. Experiment 1 was a large-n study in which novices were provided with phonetic keywords along with the matrices; nearly half of the students successfully memorized each matrix with no errors in recall. Experiment 2 was a small-n study in which apprentices were not given the keywords with the matrices; three of the four students also successfully memorized each matrix with perfect recall. The results suggest that ordinary college students are capable of acquiring a level of skilled memory that rivals the abilities that appear to be innate or idiosyncratic in memorists and mnemonists, and that additional research with mnemonic apprentices might be beneficial. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

シナリオ・テストについて

TAT has two defects: one is the difficulty of using it in groups and the other is the limitation of the materials which makes it difficult to select proper ones case by case.In order to eliminate those two defects just mentioned above, this Scenario-Test is devised and its method is to use words, instead of pictures, as the materials to stimulate fantasies of subjects.Scenario-Test in this report is mainly for mental hygiene of university students and has five themes: (1) Relationship of a subject with his parents (required characters: Person A and A's parents), (2) relationship with his associates (required characters: Person A and one of his associates), (3) relationship with the opposite sex (required characters: Person A, a male and Person B, a female), (4) relationship with his superiors (required characters: Person A and his superior), (5) afflictions and self-image (required characters: a Person with affliction).This report consists of two parts. The first is the results of comparison between the data of this test and other ones including TAT, SCT and the Inquiry of life history, as fundamental data. The second part is the summarized report of this test taken by ordinary university students.(1) 98 students of some nurses' training school taken up as materials were devided into two groups. A group of them consisted of 50 members, and took this test, TAT with 10 original cards chosen according to the same way as that in a Osaka University, and the Inquiry of life history. 48 members belonging to B group took this test, SCT and the Inquiry of life history. The result indicates that Scenario-Test is more similar to TAT than to SCT and that it has a high possibility to project the considerably deep image of the subjects.(2) The papers of Scenario-Test taken by 1062 Osaka University freshmen who entered the university in 1960 were collected at the comparatively high rate of 91.2%. From those, 272 male students who showed less rejections in the test were arbitrarily picked up as the subject of study to determine the standard of interpretation. These materials, classified into each story, were devided into items such as length of the sentences, construction of the stories, setting up of the heroes, theme of the stories, and mode of the characters' personal interrelationship, with the explanation of characteristics on each item.

The conduction velocity of the ulnar nerve and the spinal reflex time measured by means of the H wave in average adults and athletes.

An attempt was made to ascertain whether physical exercise might cause increase of the conduction velocity of the nerve fibers in young adults. Experiments were carried out on 32 university student athletes and 6 professional athletes with controls of 30 ordinary university students. The ages of these subjects ranged from 20 to 36 years. For the purpose of measuring the conduction velocity of the ulnar nerve, square wave stimulation of 0.5 msec. duration was applied to the ulnar nerve at the axilla, elbow and wrist, and evoked myograms were picked up from the hypothenar eminence muscles. The spinal reflex time was measured as the latency of the H wave which was recorded from the gastrocnemius muscle by stimulating the posterior tibial nerve at the popliteal fossa. Room temperature was carefully kept at 30°C during the experiments. (1) The average maximum conduction velocities of ulnar nerve fibers were 67.0±2.5 meters per second in the forearm and 67.6±2.6 meters per second in the upper arm in the control group and 66.5±2.3 meters per second in the forearm and 67.2±2.6 meters per second in the upper arm in the athletes group. It was noticeable that any significant differences were recognizable neither between the data of the forearm and upper arm in the two groups nor between those obtained in the athletes group and the control group. (2) No significant difference as to the spinal reflex time and the spinal reflex index was seen between the two groups, judging from the patterns of their distribution depicted in the graphs. The spinal reflex index is an index which corresponds to the mean conduction velocity of the impulse over the reflex arc. (3) Distinct individual differences in the maximum conduction velocity of ulnar nerve fibers were observed in both groups. However, no factor was found which might be related to the individual differences from the viewpoint of anthropometric measurements and skillfulness in sport. From these results, it may be said that no kind of physical exercise increases in the conduction velocity of the nerve fibers in young adults.

The Value of Useless Studies

IT is rather surprising that Prof. Ayrton should indulge in covert sneers at Universities for devoting themselves to useless studies. It certainly ill becomes one whose life is bound up with electrical science, which is of such recent growth that nobody can pretend to forget how it owes its origin to those who studied it while useless. If Universities do not study useless subjects, who will? Once a subject becomes useful, it may very well be left to schools and technical colleges, to patent-mongers, and the trade. Mr. Bury is, on the other hand, mistaken in two respects. That a subject is useless is hardly worth considering as a recommendation for its being made compulsory on students. There are too many useless subjects for that. The great objection to compulsory Greek is that it is the principal stumbling-stone in the way of any literature being studied by ordinary University students. The Bible produced very little effect until it was read in translations; and the danger of a pagan revival, if ancient literature were studied without the obstruction of difficult languages, is the best reason for insisting on these languages in a Christian University. The second mistake of Mr. Bury is that it is any part of the business of a Universtiy to teach. Universities should certainly give facilities for students to learn. It is the business of the students to learn. If they are so ill prepared that they have not acquired the art of learning, they should go to a college or school or private teachers, and get taught; for teaching is the business of these institutions and persons. The business of Universities is to advance culture and knowledge, and to afford students an opportunity of learning how to do this. Prof. Ayrton, by omission rather than by commission, seems utterly unable to appreciate the value of literature for its own sake. How can all this fierce toil he extols so justly advance a lot of savages?