I gave myself 2 min to write everything I could remember, and my results were: - 3 normal - 6 with blanks I used to think that I had a good memory but I quickly got humbled by some people here in the comments lol; but it's cool cause i get to steak their techniques now.
Words without blanks = 10 Words with blanks = 7 Like a lot of the other viewers, I pictured a few little visual stories/scenes in my head, so I remembered the words that I grouped together. I missed a few words while thinking, so I think my outcome was because of that. Love your videos! They're always thought-provoking and fun.
This proves his point, we weren't just reading. I did struggle at the speed to rearrange thoughts, after I had visualised a mountain goat sitting in the corner of a mountain peak, with a party hat on, writing a journal. I came back into the zone to see a person picking cotton with dollar bills, but then lost it again. It takes practice.
I actually remembered 9 of 15 words with blanks and 12 of 15 words without blanks, but I think it was because I was setting up a scene in my head and for the words with blanks I had less time to firmly secure them, since my head had to procure their meaning first.
14/15 = No Blanks. 9/15 = With Blanks. I used to have horrible memory - tried to improve it with some methods from Nelson Dellis' advice when Wired interviewed him. It absolutely helped! But I also think that's why my results were different than expected for this experiment. I was remembering the entire list - in order - by visualizing each of the words in my memory rooms, but the words that had blanks were so hard to think of and then place in the correct area in that short of time with how fast the list went by. Slightly slower and I think I could have got all 30 in order with that memory trick. Only "Person" and "Industry" seem tough with this method. Still proud of my results cause I never would have done that well before in my life.
Words with blanks: 11 Words without blanks: 11 I think the reason these are exactly the same is because of my memorization strategy. I decided to pair together adjacent words to create a single "image", and then tried to memorize the whole image. So the first one was "MOUNTAIN PARTY" and I imagined people partying on a mountain. The ones I forgot were "SUGAR SEASON", "MATERIAL WATER", and "PICTURE MACHINE" (I feel bad for forgetting a simple image of a camera, oops). Anyways, since the words alternated between having blanks and not blanks, and I remembered the words in pairs, it was only natural that I would get the same score for both.
I used the same technique but it didn't work as well for me: I only got 7-7. "Material water" was the image of picking up and moving a sheet of water around as if it were fabric. For picture machine I thought of a printer, rather than a camera!
Makes sense, when studying I prefer to watch videos because it allows me to pause, think, sometimes go back, and form actual mental ties compared to a regular class where it’s “try to catch everything all at once” (also I have ADHD so this allows me to digest information with my short attention span) I also find I have to say whatever is being said in my head so I can process and think about it in my head
Same. Writing down the things in my head, after saying them, before I forget... Is the trickiest part. Writing though. Very important as I often forget what I was thinking as the thought progresses lol
I have ADHD as well. I wish I could have had videos in school, but now I use them all the time. I do pause as well and think or let my brain catch up. Writing helps me tremendously but taking notes during a class hinders my ability to listen. Listening and writing at the same time becomes very stressful for me.
I'm exactly the same! I have the commentary running slightly delayed in my head as I "relisten" to it, and pause and rewind. I do that with movies too which drives my wife nuts! 😂
@@vibesmom Yep, I tend to watch the video through first, then rerun it at 2x to take notes on the 2nd pass. Can't listen and write at the same time 😃and I have to pause to let the old noggin "catch up" too.
4 words with blanks and 2 works without blanks that I remember! I think that’s decently good for me! I’m always so bad at these due to cognitive reasons but remembering the words with blanks was so much easier!
This is the primary reason for taking notes during a lecture or while reading a textbook. The simple act of writing down the material and reading what you just wrote adds 2 additional instances of the information in your brain and makes it "stick" better.
I was jealous of folks who could take lecture notes, I never figured out how to. Every time I tried I would get lost in the notetaking and realize I had completely stopped actually listening to the lecture.
Route memorization is the progressive model and works for some things ( i.e vocabulary, basic math facts) but doesn't prepare the student to learn new things. The Aristotillian method, where a student is challenged with a question and forced to generate their own answers are far more beneficial to the student.
You can thank "No child left behind" for that. Poor little black kids were assumed to be not capable of learning, just memorization. So in order to give them a diploma, and make it "fair", they catered to, what they thought was, the lowest common denominator.
Words without blanks: 4 Words with blanks: 5 I honestly performed pretty subpar on this test from what I expected. I've actually done some testing on this and my recall improves absurdly by the second repetition of the words. Funny that the generatve effect didn't happen to me. I usually picture the words mentally when I'm trying to memorise them, and the gaps just made it harder to visualise them in time for the following word
That's what I do too and the gaps really through me off twice. I lost the plot and had to start another story twice. I forgot how the last story started and couldn't recall any words from it. I got 8-8
it was especially cruel that most letters were not vowel. Those are usually much easier to replace. But I guess thats part of the generation effect? :D
Words with blanks: 11 Words without blanks: 11 Looks like I'm not the only one - I used a mnemonic technique to string together word associations so I was focused more on the meanings of the words. On a mountain there was a party where in the corner was an animal writing a journal etc. By the way, I love that you have a Go board in the background of your videos! Maybe you can do a Go learning video? :D
I've just finished a master's in Applied Linguistics, which is largely about how to teach a language and how people effectively learn languages. (In anglophone countries, at minimum, it's focused on English) With this video alone (and the mention of other videos and the impression of general content of your channel) you have gained a subscriber.
Words without blanks: 7 Words with blanks: 6 I noticed myself experiencing a few things (biases?) during the test: Early words in the sequence stuck slightly better, (coincidentally?) gaining more points for "without blanks". Some words sparked an involuntary reaction or association to something else, like "industry" and "railroad", I caught myself thinking those weren't words I was expecting for this kind of test. And associations, I remembered "master" first, which helped me to remember "teacher", likewise with "money" helping me remember "dollar". I don't get the feeling I'd have remembered those otherwise. Interesting video and topic, thank you!
I found blank words easier to remember since there was a process of retention in filling it in that made it more salient. I didn’t finish the video though because I don’t wanna spoil the ending yet
Words with blanks: 8 Words without blanks: 3 And all those without blanks were right at the start of the test. Granted, I wasn’t exactly in the right headspace for such a test, but either way, it does seem to be easier to remember the words at the beginning of the test compared to those at the end.
I didn’t try very hard to remember the words so I got: Words without blanks: 1 Words with blanks: 8 Also I want to add that I do something like technique all the time to remember produce codes while working. I’ll read the code, type it in for my customer, then after I finish with the customer before I start with my next customer I try to type the same code to see if I can remember it essentially forcing myself to fill in blanks. Then when I see the item again next time I try to type it in before I look it up even if I don’t think I remember it. Also for me it’s far easier to remember if I’ve seen or read something before than to recite what I’ve seen or read without prompting. So if something is labeled slightly different in different contexts I’ll be unlikely to realize it’s the same thing, but even if I’ve seen something once if I’m shown it again I will recognize it and might even be able to fill in more information if I’ve seen more details than has been provided this time.
I got 4 with blanks and 5 without But like some other users, I used the storytelling trick to remember some. My story was that I was away from college where I was learning to be a doctor, and that I was journalling the journeyy, and later I would write a letter to my mother
I didn't even know the storytelling trick was a thing! I was imagining a party on top of a mountain with a bunch of persons in the corner drinking water looking down at the valley through the window It got messy when I tried to incorporate circles and doctors
I recalled exactly four with blanks and five without. Eerie. However, I did remember similar words, because the image decayed. Xb I remembered "train" instead of "railroad" and "business" instead of "industry."
I'm a teacher.. and I LOVE this. THis gives us evidence that CLOZE reading is a good idea. I remembered 4 words with blanks, and 3 without blanks THe words I remembered are tied either to me, personally, or the 'story' I began to construct about a party on a mountain, and writing a journal about it...
Did your story go off the rails about the time you were just a moster writing your journal in the corner of a party on a mountain remembering when you said you'd be a doctor? I wonder if I really stopped to say 'what kind of experiment is this' or if that's what my brain wanted to shift to due to being overloaded. Seeing Master at the end was a kicker though, guess I didn't really enjoy college much
HA... thank you... My story never went off the rails... not according to my own imagination's definition of 'going off the rails'. People used to shake their heads at me and say "good thing you don't do drugs'... and "We would NOT want to play golf with you, because you'd be over there imagining some butterfly's journey instead of knowing it was your go..." This is the trick: You NEVER go 'off the rails' if you are not aware there are rails. @@timothyshires967
I’m a student helicopter pilot and the amount of information I need to retain is overwhelming while I’m trying to learn a hands on skill. So this really helps a lot. Thank you so much. I’m subscribed and looking back now.
Words without blanks: 10 Words with blanks: 10 I got into a rhythm of remembering and repeating pairs of words (“sugar season”) and clustering words by associating their meanings (“mountain valley”, “party animal”)
Fascinating, I’m sure you’d appreciate this if you didn’t already know. If you want to remember something on the spot, write it out in the air. You’ll remember it so much better When you write a note often times you’ll remember without looking at the paper. Because the act of writing burns it in your brain.
I remembered 10 with out blanks and 7 with blanks, i think having blanks made it take longer for me get the word and put it into my mental narrative which made it less likely for me to solidify it into my mental story. I think this effect typically works typically because the missing letters is unique and interesting which focuses attention to the word.
If you are using a memory technique like a mental story then you generated something for every word. So it totally messes with the underlying idea they are testing.
That last section reminds me of "visualising success" experiment where people got better at things by just imagining their practice. If I recall, the group that did both imagined practice and physical practice outperformed all other groups, though I don't recall if it was significantly.
With blanks: 8 Without blanks: 13 This was an interesting experiment! I used the story memory technique during this test and got stumped when the words with blanks came up since I'm also trying to recall the story I just made up 😅
Your choice of words actually shows a more interesting effect to me - the fact that "everyone" agrees that the word at 2:13 is the one you show at 6:07 even though there are two reasonably common words (and one uncommon one) that fit the pattern. That's not the only one, though, the word at 1:52 has two more obscure words that fit the pattern, for example. As someone that does crosswords I'm used to thinking of words to fit letter patterns, but I can't be the only one to have spotted this.
Yes, I put blanks in there pretty arbitrarily - should've really had someone looking over my shoulder so I didn't mess it up! Someone mentioned "perron" as an alternative to person (comes from French?), which I had never heard of before. I love masher as an alternative too.
I cant wait for the video on encoding techniques! I also wanted to compliment you on how well made your videos are, surely you will blow up if you keep it up!
Words with blanks: 10 Words without blanks: 10 I turned it into a story. In the moments where the story was well formed, it didn’t matter if the word had a blank or not. In the middle, I got lost, and I missed all the words, then at the end I picked the story back up, and I remembered all the words from that time again.
I'm really looking forward to your video on the different encoding strategies. I found this one quite fascinating and to see it actually work. Recently, I've been using 'Draw it', 'Imagery', 'Make a sentence out of it' to expand my vocabulary in French. I did the experiment wrong by getting up to grab a drink immediately after the words flashed on the screen, but still remembered more generated words than not.
I got 5 of the blanks and 9 of the normal written words. I had a similar experience to another commented where at the beginning I could make a coherent story out of the words but then got overwhelmed near the latter half and gave up lmao. EDIT: Also I think I struggled with the blanks more so because I couldn't figure out what they spelt rather than an inability to remember them
Hi Dr Keep. As a later in life college student I enjoyed what you had to say. I was amazed at how many more words I remembered with blanks. No Blanks: 4 With Blanks 8.
10/10 for me -- recalled 2/3 of each, and kicked myself a little over not taking long enough 'cuz I think I could've gotten more if I'd stopped longer. (I used the image walk technique to get the majority of them, and it fell apart when I had trouble imagining pictures for a couple words a little over halfway in.) Also, this is making me wonder just how much this effect plays into my ADHD brain when it comes to studying familiar texts -- specifically, I gloss over texts/notes in English, I'm so used to skimming fast and I forget most of what I read, but if I read the text in Spanish or have my notes in kanji or Toki Pona or mental ASL or the like then I do better. There's a level of slowing my brain down to focus on the content instead of just going "yup, I know those words, let's move on."
As a former teacher, I knew where this was going as soon a you demonstrated the different types of words (despite never having heard of the experiment or the researcher). My results skewed slightly against the generation effect (8 complete words, 7 incomplete), which I suppose is proof of the researcher's findings.
7 without blanks 8 with blanks I made a "line on a map" journey starting from nearby mountains, party at friends' house, water at lake where i was with my mother, our dogs as animals, picture frame hanging on the wall of a building near a window, and had a sharp drop-off of remembered words remembered as the journey started getting too convoluted.
My Adhd kicked in hard. I remembered the last 6 words in order because I accidentally made a story out of them (the teacher, a gentleman, gazed out the window of the building, looking down upon the valley and the woman there within) However, I promptly forgot all of the previous words that I was convinced I would remember at the time.
Oh well... Apparently I've suffered an "anti-generation" effect, because I remembered Words with blanks: 1 Words without blanks: 13 Either I am a statistical outlier or my experience with language learning (I speak 4 languages and am learning the next one) messed me up, ha. Hey your content is awesome, keep it going Benjamin!
I remembered basically the same of both 😅 To be fair, I used a memory technique... the words with blanks that I did not remember were the ones I could not generate in time to put them into the story 😬
11 with blanks, 11 without blanks. I did the same thing as some other commenters, trying to create a scene into which I placed the words. This made me mis-remember some things (I recalled "factory" in the place of "building"), but was fairly effective.
Words without blanks: 7 Words with blanks: 7 I was also doing the visualization trick, and stumbled where I couldn't produce the next visual quickly enough.
w/o blanks: 11 w/ blanks: 11 I visualized a story/journey like many other folks I was kind of vexed with myself that I put down "professor" instead of "teacher" 😅(would've increased one of the counts by 1!) This was a super fun video! I, too, am excited for your encoding strategy video! Cheers!
This foundation is so much important to understand and well use for investment pitch. Most of the pitch dosen't generate or stimulate enough adrenalin and dopamin or serotonin in the body of listeners because speaker's interest are not creating any generated memory system in their brains or lack of sense of participation in the particular pitch or meeting.
Words without blanks: 8 Words with blanks: 8 (though I remembered one of these with the blanks, but couldn't figure out the word) I just happened to use a memory palace/story for 12 of the words (5 w/ blanks, 7 wo) and only 5 words after I stopped making a story (4 w/blanks, 1 wo) I stopped because it was getting too complicated to make an easy story with the time given with the flashing words. So, what I find interesting is that I was definitely remembering the words with blanks when using no other strategy, but use of a memory palace/building a story with the words did seem to nullify this effect. Very interesting video :)
10 without blanks, 11 with blanks Im pretty proud of myself. My strategy was to develop a story about a college frat party on a hill with master doctors (they weren’t drinking water, their mothers would not be proud) while one person was in the corner writing journals and letters, etc
What I remembered, in order of how I remembered them. [4 completed words, 8 non-completed words] 2. College 1. Mountain 2. Party 1. Animal 2. Corner 1. Journal 2. Money 2. Woman 1. Teacher 2. Industry 2. Water 2. Railroad I noticed something fishy with the math problem and recited what I could in-between each problem. Still forgot words though that I had down, such as "Doctor"
Words with blanks: 10 Words without blanks: 10 I also used a visualisation technique, by imagining a mountain with a college party and a doctor standing in the corner etc etc...
So I have to play with the knowledge to retain them. I should actively engage with the knowledge. Writing a summary like this also counts as actively engaging with the knowledge, if and only if, I am not just writing exactly as what I've heard or read.
With blanks: 0, without blanks: 1. Only got the very first one. I guess my brain was expecting multiple choice? Or maybe was too busy trying to figure out what effect the blanks were supposed to have on the results, and distracted by the ones with blanks that I couldn’t find a word match for… To be fair though I’ve always sucked at just memorizing a random set of words. Even trying to remember them immediately, many of them are already gone. Throwing the grade school math problem in the middle where I was using words like “duh, that’s just 10x +1x, there’s no ‘special trick’ to tacking on a zero and adding two digits!” surely didn’t help with remembering other words. 😂
Words without blanks: 6 Words with blanks: 11 I used a strategy where I tried to generate an image using all of the words (something I’ve heard about before but never practiced using) and place the words within the image somehow. I started off with a mountain and a green field in front of it which I populated with other things, eventually pulling out and framing everything to remember “picture”, and so on. I’m surprised that the word counts were so different between the two types despite the fact that I used an image-based memorization strategy, super interesting
7 with blanks 8 without blanks I counted the fact that I mentally recorded "le_te_" as "Lenten" instead of letter ... but it was definitely an experience knowing /there's probably a more common word I'm missing.../ and realizing this mental record-scratch would guarantee Lenten-or-whatever would get remembered. Thanks for the video!
So for me, I was not good at remembering many words, truth be told. I did genuinely remember one more word with blanks than without blanks. But the ones without blanks that I remembered always came before the ones with blanks that I’d remember, because I was quick to make a connection between 2 consecutive words; like thinking of a “referral” for DOCTOR and LETTER; thinking of a “political summit” for MOUNTAIN and PARTY; thinking of a “corporate presentation” for MEETING and INDUSTRY etc. Another thing is that most of the things that I did remember were all from the beginning, because after a while I‘d heavily lose the attention, and I became quite careless about not only reading them but also conjuring an image in my mind.
Words without blanks: 14 Words with Blanks: 13 Except, I didn't get the word letter, but I remembered the given letters and blanks exactly so i gave it to myself.
Can’t wait to see your project on the list of encoding strategies! I teach science at a co-op and am always looking for ways to increase student retention and independent learning!
6 with and 6 without - with visualizing story. What surprised me though is that I only knew for sure two of them had blanks and where those blanks were because they took more effort to figure out. The easier ones I remembered as not having any blanks. And one word I remembered from a slide on a previous video.
words with blanks: 14 words without blanks: 9 I tried to memorize it by creating a story, and when I was checking which words I got right looking at few words also reminded me of other words I forgot to write down.
I remmebered: Words without blanks: 10 Words with blanks: 5 I converted the words I learned into icons and turned it into a story because they were objects.
four words without blanks, eleven with them. The blanks also helped since english is not my native language, so some words just looked EXTREMELY like something in my mother tongue and I had to try HARD to figure it out. I literally just remembered "letter" the moment i wrotw it down because right in that instant i understood that it wasnt portuguese for "milk"
5 words with blanks, 3 words without blanks. i found changing the strategy throughout to be very stressful... and my focus went to not remembering anything but figuring out what the blanks were. i wasn't able to guess them all either.
Total words 8 Words without blanks 3 Words with blanks 5 mountain, party, journal, college, corner, animal, industry, water. 3|5 Notice that most of the words were at the beginning of the list. 2 disclaimers: I'm not a native english speaker, and in my day to day life i try to arrange everything so i don't have to remember anything by myself (calendar, to-do lists, etc).
I tallied my results differently but: The Ones I Got - [x] Animal - [x] College - [x] Railroad - [x] Corner - [x] Mountain - [x] Meeting - [x] Season - [x] Money - [x] Machine - [x] Party - [x] Sugar Missed (No Blanks) - [ ] Journal - [ ] Doctor - [ ] Material - [ ] Mother - [ ] Picture - [ ] Circle - [ ] Cotton - [ ] Dollar - [ ] Teacher - [ ] Window - [ ] Valley Missed (Blanks) - [ ] Letter - [ ] Industry - [ ] Water - [ ] Master I figured this would be the case since the blanks provide another encoding possibility. I definitely also half-heartedly gave up on trying really hard to encode the information into a story about halfway so that definitely contributed to the pool I got wrong.
Words without blanks: 13 Words with blanks: 13 I used the visualising/story method, e.g party on a mountain in a corner there was an animal who went to college and was a doctor with a letter about sugar etc.
Words with blanks: 9 Words without blanks: 11 Like many others, I automatically started creating a story, and the blanky words made the process harder, because I got distracted from the story to figure out the words.
Words without blanks: 11 Words with blanks: 7 I was interrupted for a few seconds by my sister, maybe it messed thing up a little, but overall I think it was an interesting experiment and numbers are pretty good!
11 without 4 with blanks As non-native speaker, tired before bed at 1 a.m. I found the test boring and didn't felt motivated to try and fill the gaps. It was visually boring and so i stoped trying. The math i knew... so that was autopilot. If i would be to take the test again (which i wont) i would probably feel motivated to beat my own record.. so i would try more.
8 sets of paired words remembered. but I generated images of two word sets. a mountainside party, with a study corner, at an animal college, with a gentleman teacher, and a valley girl (woman), money dollar and railroad circle, I just remembered. mother master is not appropriate lol
This might be of interest: I was pretty aware going into that experiment that the idea was going to be that the blanked letter words should stick with me more. And my result had me actually remember more of the non blanked words.
7 with blanks, 12 without. Words without blanks I could think of an associated idea, instead of wasting time guessing which letters are missing (I went with MASHER instead of MASTER and counted it as remembered: since I realized it has multiple solutions it was novel and easy to recall). Note that memory is not learning, and a single study isn't sufficient for some of these conclusions. But what's really important to take away from the video is the conclusion: reflect on your own thinking patterns and try out many different strategies to learn about yourself and what system might work best for you.
Word without blanks: 4, word with blanks: 10. I really didn't expect to remember more of the words with blanks than the complete words. I even remembered sea_on exactly as it is, because I was stumped about what sort of word it was! That was amusing.
Reading translated literature also induces generation effect. Especially when the book in question is part of a series with established canon and the translators change between books.
I remembered: 13 words without blanks (out of 15) and 12 words with blanks (out of 15). However, I feel that my results might be biased, since I've worked with these kinds of list-remembering-tasks before, and my strategy is to build a mental weird panorama of the words on the list as they come. This is somewhat like the Roman Room-technique, I think it's called, or sometimes Mental Palace, I think. The words came by a little too quick to efficiently encode all of them in my panorama, hence the sub-optimal score. However, what's usually important with this strategy is how salient a word is (or how salient you can make it in a short time in your mind) - generic concepts can be harder to remember than specific objects in this way. While I think this concept of forcing the reader to engage minimally with the read passages is interesting as a way to teach them to interact mentally with what they are reading to aid retention - I think the general point of that, namely interacting mentally with what you are taking in, is what one should be aiming for. And as the quoted passage from the test said, knowledge is the lowest form of cognitive learning. Understanding and critically evaluating information is more important.
Another fun fact about encoding, apparently actors, dancers, and athletes are capable of improving on physical tasks just by thinking about doing it. Anyone can, but they are proficient at it, specially actors and dancers, since they're used to learning and assimilating instructions on the fly. The process is kinda like "acting out" whatever you want to do in your mind, but you need a lot of awareness about how your body works in order to actually learn anything.
10 without blanks, 11 with blanks. (almost 12 with blanks...wrote man instead of gentleman). Got interrupted halfway through and broke my concentration. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a dream tonight about a partying dog on a mountain who stole away for a moment in the corner of a room of a cabin to write in a journal about his recent accomplishment of becoming a doctor and receiving a letter grade of A. Only to end up working in an industrial plant where raw materials are forged with water cooling techniques where a worker cut their hand on a circular saw only to realize it was the dog's master.
Without blanks - 6 With blanks - 4 I think this is because the first handful I remembered using a mnemonic device which I ended up abandoning, and most of those first ones had no blanks.
7 without blanks 8 with blanks It was extremely interesting. I used to use generation as an encoding strategy intuitively when I was younger. It was quite annoying for other people lol, but I always tried to guess what the end of their sentence would be (saying it at loud unfortunately). It was a period where my memory of conversations with people was way sharper than it is now. I wonder how much it was related, but I'm sure it was a piece of the puzzle.
Full words: 11 Words with blanks: 10 PS: I used the story memory device to picture everything at once, But the fact that It was such a small minority of words with blanks, but yet nearly equal does tend to say that thinking about a word with blanks makes you more likely to remember it.
words without blanks: 4 words with blanks: 2 I did this after waking up in the middle of the night so probably worse than I'd usually do, and I honestly gave up halfway through, but worth recording I think
Words without blanks = 7 Words with blanks = 5 I'm not a native English speaker, and I wasn't able to find the word for some of the items with the blanks. This added more stress, which resulted in suddenly struggling to remember words. I tried to remember the worsd by linking them together by a story or a visual setting, but because on some words with blanks it took so much time/brain power to find what the word was, I didn't have enough time to add the word to the story/give it a position in the setting.
Without blanks: 9 With blanks: 4 I was putting the words together to make scenes as I went and when I encountered blanks I spent most of the time decoding the word instead of incorporating it into the scene.
5 without blanks 10 with blanks I didn't so much do a 'story' as much as I slotted words into 'themes/topics' - industry's affiliates being probably the biggest one that I retained.
I gave myself 2 min to write everything I could remember, and my results were:
- 3 normal
- 6 with blanks
I used to think that I had a good memory but I quickly got humbled by some people here in the comments lol; but it's cool cause i get to steak their techniques now.
Words without blanks = 10
Words with blanks = 7
Like a lot of the other viewers, I pictured a few little visual stories/scenes in my head, so I remembered the words that I grouped together. I missed a few words while thinking, so I think my outcome was because of that.
Love your videos! They're always thought-provoking and fun.
yo exact same experience here
I did the same thing. The exact same results
Same here
Saame
This proves his point, we weren't just reading. I did struggle at the speed to rearrange thoughts, after I had visualised a mountain goat sitting in the corner of a mountain peak, with a party hat on, writing a journal. I came back into the zone to see a person picking cotton with dollar bills, but then lost it again. It takes practice.
I actually remembered 9 of 15 words with blanks and 12 of 15 words without blanks, but I think it was because I was setting up a scene in my head and for the words with blanks I had less time to firmly secure them, since my head had to procure their meaning first.
Yeah I feel like the blanks gave me less time to create the mental images, so I didn't remember as many with blanks either.
I created a scene as well yet remembered twice as many words with blanks than without.
This was my experience, too.
That’s what I was doing 😅 a journaling party on a mountain with doctor moms
14/15 = No Blanks. 9/15 = With Blanks. I used to have horrible memory - tried to improve it with some methods from Nelson Dellis' advice when Wired interviewed him. It absolutely helped! But I also think that's why my results were different than expected for this experiment. I was remembering the entire list - in order - by visualizing each of the words in my memory rooms, but the words that had blanks were so hard to think of and then place in the correct area in that short of time with how fast the list went by. Slightly slower and I think I could have got all 30 in order with that memory trick. Only "Person" and "Industry" seem tough with this method.
Still proud of my results cause I never would have done that well before in my life.
Words with blanks: 11
Words without blanks: 11
I think the reason these are exactly the same is because of my memorization strategy. I decided to pair together adjacent words to create a single "image", and then tried to memorize the whole image. So the first one was "MOUNTAIN PARTY" and I imagined people partying on a mountain. The ones I forgot were "SUGAR SEASON", "MATERIAL WATER", and "PICTURE MACHINE" (I feel bad for forgetting a simple image of a camera, oops). Anyways, since the words alternated between having blanks and not blanks, and I remembered the words in pairs, it was only natural that I would get the same score for both.
I took a similar approach got 8-8
I used the same technique but it didn't work as well for me: I only got 7-7. "Material water" was the image of picking up and moving a sheet of water around as if it were fabric. For picture machine I thought of a printer, rather than a camera!
Woahh that's so clever of you, noted!
I had equal numbers also. I paired similar words or opposing words. Doctor-college. Or Mountain-Valley.
I did the same thing and when I paired cotton person I just pictured African Americans
Makes sense, when studying I prefer to watch videos because it allows me to pause, think, sometimes go back, and form actual mental ties compared to a regular class where it’s “try to catch everything all at once” (also I have ADHD so this allows me to digest information with my short attention span) I also find I have to say whatever is being said in my head so I can process and think about it in my head
Same. Writing down the things in my head, after saying them, before I forget... Is the trickiest part. Writing though. Very important as I often forget what I was thinking as the thought progresses lol
I have ADHD as well. I wish I could have had videos in school, but now I use them all the time. I do pause as well and think or let my brain catch up. Writing helps me tremendously but taking notes during a class hinders my ability to listen. Listening and writing at the same time becomes very stressful for me.
I'm exactly the same! I have the commentary running slightly delayed in my head as I "relisten" to it, and pause and rewind. I do that with movies too which drives my wife nuts! 😂
@@vibesmom Yep, I tend to watch the video through first, then rerun it at 2x to take notes on the 2nd pass. Can't listen and write at the same time 😃and I have to pause to let the old noggin "catch up" too.
@@vibesmom I'M JUST PAST 80 YOA AND NOW I'M FINDING OUT HOW MY HEAD WORKS! THANKS SO MUCH FOR SHARING... IT WILL CHANGE MY LIFE. YES
4 words with blanks and 2 works without blanks that I remember! I think that’s decently good for me! I’m always so bad at these due to cognitive reasons but remembering the words with blanks was so much easier!
3 without blanks , 8 with blanks. That’s kinda cool, didn’t expect that!
This is the primary reason for taking notes during a lecture or while reading a textbook. The simple act of writing down the material and reading what you just wrote adds 2 additional instances of the information in your brain and makes it "stick" better.
I was jealous of folks who could take lecture notes, I never figured out how to. Every time I tried I would get lost in the notetaking and realize I had completely stopped actually listening to the lecture.
@@katrinkarose175 YES ! ALL MY LIFE! MANY THANKS TO A KINDRED SPIRIT!
@@katrinkarose175 i learned how to write without looking at the page.
this is one of the things that is missing from our "Just memorize what I told you to and spit it back up later" schools
Route memorization is the progressive model and works for some things ( i.e vocabulary, basic math facts) but doesn't prepare the student to learn new things.
The Aristotillian method, where a student is challenged with a question and forced to generate their own answers are far more beneficial to the student.
You can thank "No child left behind" for that. Poor little black kids were assumed to be not capable of learning, just memorization. So in order to give them a diploma, and make it "fair", they catered to, what they thought was, the lowest common denominator.
🤫🤭🤐 ikr
7 with blanks. 1 without.
Quite surprising :)
Train your brain in every way
Words without blanks: 4
Words with blanks: 5
I honestly performed pretty subpar on this test from what I expected. I've actually done some testing on this and my recall improves absurdly by the second repetition of the words. Funny that the generatve effect didn't happen to me. I usually picture the words mentally when I'm trying to memorise them, and the gaps just made it harder to visualise them in time for the following word
That's what I do too and the gaps really through me off twice. I lost the plot and had to start another story twice. I forgot how the last story started and couldn't recall any words from it. I got 8-8
I feel you brother
Dont worry I got one of each. After the math question I just forgot the words.
it was especially cruel that most letters were not vowel. Those are usually much easier to replace. But I guess thats part of the generation effect? :D
Words with blanks: 11
Words without blanks: 11
Looks like I'm not the only one - I used a mnemonic technique to string together word associations so I was focused more on the meanings of the words. On a mountain there was a party where in the corner was an animal writing a journal etc. By the way, I love that you have a Go board in the background of your videos! Maybe you can do a Go learning video? :D
I've just finished a master's in Applied Linguistics, which is largely about how to teach a language and how people effectively learn languages. (In anglophone countries, at minimum, it's focused on English) With this video alone (and the mention of other videos and the impression of general content of your channel) you have gained a subscriber.
Words without blanks: 7
Words with blanks: 6
I noticed myself experiencing a few things (biases?) during the test: Early words in the sequence stuck slightly better, (coincidentally?) gaining more points for "without blanks". Some words sparked an involuntary reaction or association to something else, like "industry" and "railroad", I caught myself thinking those weren't words I was expecting for this kind of test. And associations, I remembered "master" first, which helped me to remember "teacher", likewise with "money" helping me remember "dollar". I don't get the feeling I'd have remembered those otherwise.
Interesting video and topic, thank you!
I found blank words easier to remember since there was a process of retention in filling it in that made it more salient. I didn’t finish the video though because I don’t wanna spoil the ending yet
Words with blanks: 8
Words without blanks: 3
And all those without blanks were right at the start of the test. Granted, I wasn’t exactly in the right headspace for such a test, but either way, it does seem to be easier to remember the words at the beginning of the test compared to those at the end.
I didn’t try very hard to remember the words so I got:
Words without blanks: 1
Words with blanks: 8
Also I want to add that I do something like technique all the time to remember produce codes while working. I’ll read the code, type it in for my customer, then after I finish with the customer before I start with my next customer I try to type the same code to see if I can remember it essentially forcing myself to fill in blanks. Then when I see the item again next time I try to type it in before I look it up even if I don’t think I remember it.
Also for me it’s far easier to remember if I’ve seen or read something before than to recite what I’ve seen or read without prompting. So if something is labeled slightly different in different contexts I’ll be unlikely to realize it’s the same thing, but even if I’ve seen something once if I’m shown it again I will recognize it and might even be able to fill in more information if I’ve seen more details than has been provided this time.
I got 4 with blanks and 5 without
But like some other users, I used the storytelling trick to remember some.
My story was that I was away from college where I was learning to be a doctor, and that I was journalling the journeyy, and later I would write a letter to my mother
I didn't even know the storytelling trick was a thing! I was imagining a party on top of a mountain with a bunch of persons in the corner drinking water looking down at the valley through the window
It got messy when I tried to incorporate circles and doctors
I recalled exactly four with blanks and five without. Eerie. However, I did remember similar words, because the image decayed. Xb I remembered "train" instead of "railroad" and "business" instead of "industry."
I'm a teacher.. and I LOVE this. THis gives us evidence that CLOZE reading is a good idea.
I remembered 4 words with blanks, and 3 without blanks
THe words I remembered are tied either to me, personally, or the 'story' I began to construct about a party on a mountain, and writing a journal about it...
Did your story go off the rails about the time you were just a moster writing your journal in the corner of a party on a mountain remembering when you said you'd be a doctor? I wonder if I really stopped to say 'what kind of experiment is this' or if that's what my brain wanted to shift to due to being overloaded. Seeing Master at the end was a kicker though, guess I didn't really enjoy college much
HA... thank you... My story never went off the rails... not according to my own imagination's definition of 'going off the rails'.
People used to shake their heads at me and say "good thing you don't do drugs'...
and "We would NOT want to play golf with you, because you'd be over there imagining some butterfly's journey instead of knowing it was your go..."
This is the trick: You NEVER go 'off the rails' if you are not aware there are rails.
@@timothyshires967
My brain just wanted to write a story, I suppose....@@timothyshires967
I’m a student helicopter pilot and the amount of information I need to retain is overwhelming while I’m trying to learn a hands on skill. So this really helps a lot. Thank you so much. I’m subscribed and looking back now.
I always love watching your videos, Doc!
Results: 3 (blanks) & 2 (w/o)
Words without blanks: 10
Words with blanks: 10
I got into a rhythm of remembering and repeating pairs of words (“sugar season”) and clustering words by associating their meanings (“mountain valley”, “party animal”)
Fascinating, I’m sure you’d appreciate this if you didn’t already know.
If you want to remember something on the spot, write it out in the air. You’ll remember it so much better
When you write a note often times you’ll remember without looking at the paper. Because the act of writing burns it in your brain.
I remembered 10 with out blanks and 7 with blanks, i think having blanks made it take longer for me get the word and put it into my mental narrative which made it less likely for me to solidify it into my mental story. I think this effect typically works typically because the missing letters is unique and interesting which focuses attention to the word.
I think implementing a strategy (like creating a story in one's head as you presumably did) messes with the experiment.
If you are using a memory technique like a mental story then you generated something for every word. So it totally messes with the underlying idea they are testing.
That last section reminds me of "visualising success" experiment where people got better at things by just imagining their practice.
If I recall, the group that did both imagined practice and physical practice outperformed all other groups, though I don't recall if it was significantly.
With blanks: 8
Without blanks: 13
This was an interesting experiment! I used the story memory technique during this test and got stumped when the words with blanks came up since I'm also trying to recall the story I just made up 😅
Your choice of words actually shows a more interesting effect to me - the fact that "everyone" agrees that the word at 2:13 is the one you show at 6:07 even though there are two reasonably common words (and one uncommon one) that fit the pattern. That's not the only one, though, the word at 1:52 has two more obscure words that fit the pattern, for example.
As someone that does crosswords I'm used to thinking of words to fit letter patterns, but I can't be the only one to have spotted this.
These are the best kind of observers
The first thing I thought of was masher, not master.
not sure which words that point to, but as a pdh student there were 2 words in the beginning i could easily remember
Yes, I put blanks in there pretty arbitrarily - should've really had someone looking over my shoulder so I didn't mess it up! Someone mentioned "perron" as an alternative to person (comes from French?), which I had never heard of before. I love masher as an alternative too.
I cant wait for the video on encoding techniques! I also wanted to compliment you on how well made your videos are, surely you will blow up if you keep it up!
Words with blanks: 10
Words without blanks: 10
I turned it into a story. In the moments where the story was well formed, it didn’t matter if the word had a blank or not. In the middle, I got lost, and I missed all the words, then at the end I picked the story back up, and I remembered all the words from that time again.
My results: 1 word without blank , 5 words with blank. I am really ashamed that I did so poorly..
I'm really looking forward to your video on the different encoding strategies. I found this one quite fascinating and to see it actually work. Recently, I've been using 'Draw it', 'Imagery', 'Make a sentence out of it' to expand my vocabulary in French.
I did the experiment wrong by getting up to grab a drink immediately after the words flashed on the screen, but still remembered more generated words than not.
Fair warning: I have several other videos that will come out first. But I'm looking forward to it, too. Still doing some research on it!
2 without blanks, 8 with blanks
This was soooooo interesting! Great video
I got 5 of the blanks and 9 of the normal written words. I had a similar experience to another commented where at the beginning I could make a coherent story out of the words but then got overwhelmed near the latter half and gave up lmao.
EDIT: Also I think I struggled with the blanks more so because I couldn't figure out what they spelt rather than an inability to remember them
Hi Dr Keep. As a later in life college student I enjoyed what you had to say. I was amazed at how many more words I remembered with blanks. No Blanks: 4 With Blanks 8.
10/10 for me -- recalled 2/3 of each, and kicked myself a little over not taking long enough 'cuz I think I could've gotten more if I'd stopped longer. (I used the image walk technique to get the majority of them, and it fell apart when I had trouble imagining pictures for a couple words a little over halfway in.)
Also, this is making me wonder just how much this effect plays into my ADHD brain when it comes to studying familiar texts -- specifically, I gloss over texts/notes in English, I'm so used to skimming fast and I forget most of what I read, but if I read the text in Spanish or have my notes in kanji or Toki Pona or mental ASL or the like then I do better. There's a level of slowing my brain down to focus on the content instead of just going "yup, I know those words, let's move on."
As a former teacher, I knew where this was going as soon a you demonstrated the different types of words (despite never having heard of the experiment or the researcher).
My results skewed slightly against the generation effect (8 complete words, 7 incomplete), which I suppose is proof of the researcher's findings.
7 without blanks
8 with blanks
I made a "line on a map" journey starting from nearby mountains, party at friends' house, water at lake where i was with my mother, our dogs as animals, picture frame hanging on the wall of a building near a window, and had a sharp drop-off of remembered words remembered as the journey started getting too convoluted.
My Adhd kicked in hard. I remembered the last 6 words in order because I accidentally made a story out of them (the teacher, a gentleman, gazed out the window of the building, looking down upon the valley and the woman there within) However, I promptly forgot all of the previous words that I was convinced I would remember at the time.
Words with blanks: 6
Words without blanks : 6
Making a story out of the words is probably one of the most effective ways to remember them.
With blanks: 10
Without blanks: 5
Very interesting and informative video! 🎉
Oh well... Apparently I've suffered an "anti-generation" effect, because I remembered
Words with blanks: 1
Words without blanks: 13
Either I am a statistical outlier or my experience with language learning (I speak 4 languages and am learning the next one) messed me up, ha.
Hey your content is awesome, keep it going Benjamin!
Thanks! I'll do a follow-up video where I talk more about where variation in the results probably comes from.
3 without blanks, 6 with blanks. That's amazing!
I remembered basically the same of both 😅
To be fair, I used a memory technique... the words with blanks that I did not remember were the ones I could not generate in time to put them into the story 😬
11 with blanks, 11 without blanks. I did the same thing as some other commenters, trying to create a scene into which I placed the words. This made me mis-remember some things (I recalled "factory" in the place of "building"), but was fairly effective.
"Bjork" sounds like an insult. "Wow, don't be such a Bjork."
Words without blanks: 7
Words with blanks: 7
I was also doing the visualization trick, and stumbled where I couldn't produce the next visual quickly enough.
w/o blanks: 11
w/ blanks: 11
I visualized a story/journey like many other folks
I was kind of vexed with myself that I put down "professor" instead of "teacher" 😅(would've increased one of the counts by 1!)
This was a super fun video!
I, too, am excited for your encoding strategy video! Cheers!
This foundation is so much important to understand and well use for investment pitch. Most of the pitch dosen't generate or stimulate enough adrenalin and dopamin or serotonin in the body of listeners because speaker's interest are not creating any generated memory system in their brains or lack of sense of participation in the particular pitch or meeting.
Words without blanks = 8
Words with blanks = 12
I did start making a story for the word I saw but then stopped mid way, this was very fun!
Words without blanks: 8
Words with blanks: 8 (though I remembered one of these with the blanks, but couldn't figure out the word)
I just happened to use a memory palace/story for 12 of the words (5 w/ blanks, 7 wo)
and only 5 words after I stopped making a story (4 w/blanks, 1 wo)
I stopped because it was getting too complicated to make an easy story with the time given with the flashing words.
So, what I find interesting is that I was definitely remembering the words with blanks when using no other strategy, but use of a memory palace/building a story with the words did seem to nullify this effect. Very interesting video :)
10 without blanks, 11 with blanks
Im pretty proud of myself. My strategy was to develop a story about a college frat party on a hill with master doctors (they weren’t drinking water, their mothers would not be proud) while one person was in the corner writing journals and letters, etc
What I remembered, in order of how I remembered them. [4 completed words, 8 non-completed words]
2. College
1. Mountain
2. Party
1. Animal
2. Corner
1. Journal
2. Money
2. Woman
1. Teacher
2. Industry
2. Water
2. Railroad
I noticed something fishy with the math problem and recited what I could in-between each problem. Still forgot words though that I had down, such as "Doctor"
Words with blanks: 10
Words without blanks: 10
I also used a visualisation technique, by imagining a mountain with a college party and a doctor standing in the corner etc etc...
So I have to play with the knowledge to retain them. I should actively engage with the knowledge. Writing a summary like this also counts as actively engaging with the knowledge, if and only if, I am not just writing exactly as what I've heard or read.
With blanks: 0, without blanks: 1. Only got the very first one. I guess my brain was expecting multiple choice? Or maybe was too busy trying to figure out what effect the blanks were supposed to have on the results, and distracted by the ones with blanks that I couldn’t find a word match for…
To be fair though I’ve always sucked at just memorizing a random set of words. Even trying to remember them immediately, many of them are already gone. Throwing the grade school math problem in the middle where I was using words like “duh, that’s just 10x +1x, there’s no ‘special trick’ to tacking on a zero and adding two digits!” surely didn’t help with remembering other words. 😂
Without blanks:- 9
With blanks :- 10
I was using this technique in which I make up a scenario in my head as words were appearing.
Words with blanks: 3
Words without blanks: 2
Was obviously a bit distracted, but still wanted to give you the real numbers for your analysis!
6 with blanks and 3 without. This blew my mind! But it makes complete sense.
Nah, I remembered 3 words without blanks and 1 with blanks. Bombed the test either way 😂
10 without blanks, 12 with blanks. Very interesting!
words without blanks: 1
words with blanks: 3
I have some noise from a tv, I hope this is why I could remember just this much
Words without blanks: 6
Words with blanks: 11
I used a strategy where I tried to generate an image using all of the words (something I’ve heard about before but never practiced using) and place the words within the image somehow. I started off with a mountain and a green field in front of it which I populated with other things, eventually pulling out and framing everything to remember “picture”, and so on. I’m surprised that the word counts were so different between the two types despite the fact that I used an image-based memorization strategy, super interesting
7 with blanks
8 without blanks
I counted the fact that I mentally recorded "le_te_" as "Lenten" instead of letter ... but it was definitely an experience knowing /there's probably a more common word I'm missing.../ and realizing this mental record-scratch would guarantee Lenten-or-whatever would get remembered. Thanks for the video!
So for me, I was not good at remembering many words, truth be told. I did genuinely remember one more word with blanks than without blanks. But the ones without blanks that I remembered always came before the ones with blanks that I’d remember, because I was quick to make a connection between 2 consecutive words; like thinking of a “referral” for DOCTOR and LETTER; thinking of a “political summit” for MOUNTAIN and PARTY; thinking of a “corporate presentation” for MEETING and INDUSTRY etc. Another thing is that most of the things that I did remember were all from the beginning, because after a while I‘d heavily lose the attention, and I became quite careless about not only reading them but also conjuring an image in my mind.
Total words: 17
Words with blanks: 8
Words without blanks: 8
Words that where never there: 1 (Remembered Valley instead of Alley)
Words without blanks: 14
Words with Blanks: 13
Except, I didn't get the word letter, but I remembered the given letters and blanks exactly so i gave it to myself.
Can’t wait to see your project on the list of encoding strategies! I teach science at a co-op and am always looking for ways to increase student retention and independent learning!
6 with and 6 without - with visualizing story.
What surprised me though is that I only knew for sure two of them had blanks and where those blanks were because they took more effort to figure out. The easier ones I remembered as not having any blanks. And one word I remembered from a slide on a previous video.
words with blanks: 14
words without blanks: 9
I tried to memorize it by creating a story, and when I was checking which words I got right looking at few words also reminded me of other words I forgot to write down.
I remmebered:
Words without blanks: 10
Words with blanks: 5
I converted the words I learned into icons and turned it into a story because they were objects.
four words without blanks, eleven with them. The blanks also helped since english is not my native language, so some words just looked EXTREMELY like something in my mother tongue and I had to try HARD to figure it out. I literally just remembered "letter" the moment i wrotw it down because right in that instant i understood that it wasnt portuguese for "milk"
5 words with blanks, 3 words without blanks. i found changing the strategy throughout to be very stressful... and my focus went to not remembering anything but figuring out what the blanks were. i wasn't able to guess them all either.
Total words 8
Words without blanks 3
Words with blanks 5
mountain, party, journal, college, corner, animal, industry, water. 3|5
Notice that most of the words were at the beginning of the list.
2 disclaimers: I'm not a native english speaker, and in my day to day life i try to arrange everything so i don't have to remember anything by myself (calendar, to-do lists, etc).
I tallied my results differently but:
The Ones I Got
- [x] Animal
- [x] College
- [x] Railroad
- [x] Corner
- [x] Mountain
- [x] Meeting
- [x] Season
- [x] Money
- [x] Machine
- [x] Party
- [x] Sugar
Missed (No Blanks)
- [ ] Journal
- [ ] Doctor
- [ ] Material
- [ ] Mother
- [ ] Picture
- [ ] Circle
- [ ] Cotton
- [ ] Dollar
- [ ] Teacher
- [ ] Window
- [ ] Valley
Missed (Blanks)
- [ ] Letter
- [ ] Industry
- [ ] Water
- [ ] Master
I figured this would be the case since the blanks provide another encoding possibility. I definitely also half-heartedly gave up on trying really hard to encode the information into a story about halfway so that definitely contributed to the pool I got wrong.
Words without blanks: 6
Words with blanks: 9
I remembered 6 words without blanks and 7 words with blanks.
9 without blanks
6 with blanks
As an aspiring teacher, I found this video quite interesting.
Words without blanks: 13
Words with blanks: 13
I used the visualising/story method, e.g party on a mountain in a corner there was an animal who went to college and was a doctor with a letter about sugar etc.
Words with blanks: 9
Words without blanks: 11
Like many others, I automatically started creating a story, and the blanky words made the process harder, because I got distracted from the story to figure out the words.
Words without blanks: 11
Words with blanks: 7
I was interrupted for a few seconds by my sister, maybe it messed thing up a little, but overall I think it was an interesting experiment and numbers are pretty good!
Words without blanks: 3
Words with blanks: 2
Words which weren't actually on the list: 2.
I am having a serious off-day.
11 without
4 with blanks
As non-native speaker, tired before bed at 1 a.m. I found the test boring and didn't felt motivated to try and fill the gaps. It was visually boring and so i stoped trying. The math i knew... so that was autopilot. If i would be to take the test again (which i wont) i would probably feel motivated to beat my own record.. so i would try more.
8 sets of paired words remembered. but I generated images of two word sets. a mountainside party, with a study corner, at an animal college, with a gentleman teacher, and a valley girl (woman), money dollar and railroad circle, I just remembered. mother master is not appropriate lol
This might be of interest: I was pretty aware going into that experiment that the idea was going to be that the blanked letter words should stick with me more. And my result had me actually remember more of the non blanked words.
2 and 2
exactly 2 of each
mind you I'm still loopy from the anesthesia and oxy. this is among first TH-cam videos I'm watching after surgery
7 with blanks, 12 without. Words without blanks I could think of an associated idea, instead of wasting time guessing which letters are missing (I went with MASHER instead of MASTER and counted it as remembered: since I realized it has multiple solutions it was novel and easy to recall).
Note that memory is not learning, and a single study isn't sufficient for some of these conclusions. But what's really important to take away from the video is the conclusion: reflect on your own thinking patterns and try out many different strategies to learn about yourself and what system might work best for you.
Word without blanks: 4,
word with blanks: 10.
I really didn't expect to remember more of the words with blanks than the complete words. I even remembered sea_on exactly as it is, because I was stumped about what sort of word it was! That was amusing.
Reading translated literature also induces generation effect. Especially when the book in question is part of a series with established canon and the translators change between books.
I remembered:
13 words without blanks (out of 15) and
12 words with blanks (out of 15).
However, I feel that my results might be biased, since I've worked with these kinds of list-remembering-tasks before, and my strategy is to build a mental weird panorama of the words on the list as they come. This is somewhat like the Roman Room-technique, I think it's called, or sometimes Mental Palace, I think. The words came by a little too quick to efficiently encode all of them in my panorama, hence the sub-optimal score.
However, what's usually important with this strategy is how salient a word is (or how salient you can make it in a short time in your mind) - generic concepts can be harder to remember than specific objects in this way.
While I think this concept of forcing the reader to engage minimally with the read passages is interesting as a way to teach them to interact mentally with what they are reading to aid retention - I think the general point of that, namely interacting mentally with what you are taking in, is what one should be aiming for. And as the quoted passage from the test said, knowledge is the lowest form of cognitive learning. Understanding and critically evaluating information is more important.
Another fun fact about encoding, apparently actors, dancers, and athletes are capable of improving on physical tasks just by thinking about doing it. Anyone can, but they are proficient at it, specially actors and dancers, since they're used to learning and assimilating instructions on the fly.
The process is kinda like "acting out" whatever you want to do in your mind, but you need a lot of awareness about how your body works in order to actually learn anything.
10 without blanks, 11 with blanks. (almost 12 with blanks...wrote man instead of gentleman). Got interrupted halfway through and broke my concentration. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a dream tonight about a partying dog on a mountain who stole away for a moment in the corner of a room of a cabin to write in a journal about his recent accomplishment of becoming a doctor and receiving a letter grade of A. Only to end up working in an industrial plant where raw materials are forged with water cooling techniques where a worker cut their hand on a circular saw only to realize it was the dog's master.
Without blanks - 6
With blanks - 4
I think this is because the first handful I remembered using a mnemonic device which I ended up abandoning, and most of those first ones had no blanks.
Words without blank: 13 (miss 2)
Words with blank: 14 (miss 1)
Words without Blanks: 4
Words with Blanks: 7
I tried pairing the words together so that remembering one gave me a better chance to remember the other.
7 without blanks
8 with blanks
It was extremely interesting. I used to use generation as an encoding strategy intuitively when I was younger. It was quite annoying for other people lol, but I always tried to guess what the end of their sentence would be (saying it at loud unfortunately). It was a period where my memory of conversations with people was way sharper than it is now. I wonder how much it was related, but I'm sure it was a piece of the puzzle.
Full words: 11
Words with blanks: 10
PS: I used the story memory device to picture everything at once, But the fact that It was such a small minority of words with blanks, but yet nearly equal does tend to say that thinking about a word with blanks makes you more likely to remember it.
words without blanks: 4
words with blanks: 2
I did this after waking up in the middle of the night so probably worse than I'd usually do, and I honestly gave up halfway through, but worth recording I think
words with blanks - 3
words without blanks - 5
I do have ADHD and struggled to stay focused in the middle of the task too.
Words without blanks = 7
Words with blanks = 5
I'm not a native English speaker, and I wasn't able to find the word for some of the items with the blanks. This added more stress, which resulted in suddenly struggling to remember words. I tried to remember the worsd by linking them together by a story or a visual setting, but because on some words with blanks it took so much time/brain power to find what the word was, I didn't have enough time to add the word to the story/give it a position in the setting.
Without blanks: 9
With blanks: 4
I was putting the words together to make scenes as I went and when I encountered blanks I spent most of the time decoding the word instead of incorporating it into the scene.
5 without blanks
10 with blanks
I didn't so much do a 'story' as much as I slotted words into 'themes/topics' - industry's affiliates being probably the biggest one that I retained.
Without Blanks: 4
With blanks: 6
Not my best go at memorisation but the effect is still apparent to a small degree
5 without blanks
6 with blanks
it helped me to come up with a story, i realized that some words were related, and those helped me recall
whoops, realized i watched on 2x speed hehe