The Experiment That Teaches People How To Learn

[@bledlbledlbledl]

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

[@joshfloyd7755]

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.

[@fredtaylor9792]

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.

[@seeexy]

🤫🤭🤐 ikr

[@marcosflaviosilva]

7 with blanks. 1 without. Quite surprising :)

[@AdrianTschubarov]

Train your brain in every way

[@amiscc03o524]

Words with blanks: 11 Words without blanks: 10 Idk if this is a common problem among native english speakers too, but as someone for who english is a second language, i didn't have enough time to figure out what some of the words with blanks were, so ofc i missed those. Thanks for this video and channel, really amazing stuff!!

[@inconnu4961]

This was the benefit of being a native english-speaker; most of the words were very basic, so it became intuitive to fill in the blanks of those words. Its simply an enormous amount of familiarity with those words and maybe a famous little game show (based on this concept) that helped many of us out! Did you get hung up on the word 'building'?

[@jonasrayet9369]

yeah railroad looked fucking crazy I was thinking like ratrotd

[@earthsmightiestdorks]

oddly enough me (not native but very fluent in english) not being able to figure out per_on was person for the longest time was what made me remember it so fast 🤣 i even wrote it down as per_on when counting and only when I saw the full list that it clicked lol

[@scoobydoobies]

Native here, ~3 words with blanks were completely incomprehensible to me. So I just approximated, e.g. I guessed "audited" instead of "industry"

[@bryangrounds9341]

I'm a native English speaker. I also couldn't figure out several of the words with blanks.

[@swarnadeepsaha7686]

I had a weird experience with the experiment. I tried to visualize a story while looking at the words, and hence because I was "generating" a story in my head already, I remembered almost same number of words with and without blanks. Words with blanks: 11 Words without blanks: 10

[@TheDemoraI]

I did the same thing and experienced something similar.

[@avimir8805]

Some pro tactics here)))

[@Ibukisenpai]

I remembered 7 without blanks and 8 with blanks using the same tecnique, interesting! What I also experienced is that 2 of the words with blanks (season and person) I completely messed them up because I generated the words beacon and perron (which is a Dutch word that means platform xd) so yeah, I don't know if I can count them as remembered words.

[@Vamavid]

That was my strategy as well

[@ghosthunter0950]

Yeah, I feel like it wasn't the intention so I stopped doing that half way around the word doctor and from then on it was very obvious that most of the words I remembered had blanks in them.

[@KeithHanlan]

My three daughters did French immersion where "dictée" ("spelling and vocabulary") remains part of the curriculum for much longer than the typical English teaching curriculum. I taught then to write the words but also vocalize the spelling and the word itself. This greatly aided their encoding success. I would also make up mnemonics on the spot for them and this also seemed to help. In later years, including university, they would make up their own mnemonics and ask me to listen to them study - even in subjects where I had no experience. Bjork's observations jibe very well with my own experience - a conscious awareness of encoding process helped. Very interesting to see the clinical support!

[@Hiruban]

10 without blanks 8 with blanks I also did the story "trick" but like others, the words with blanks in them actually handicapped me multiple times to the creation of my story : maybe creating a story is enough to "engage" with the words and the blanks became a problem because I didn't have the time to both fill the blanks and create the story before a new word came along. It could be because I'm not a native english speaker, although listening and reading in english became an everyday thing for me since several years now) Finally, depending on the blanks my mind easily resolved them or not (for exemple : "gentleman" was easy, but "letter" was hard and I didn't even found "master") but it doesn't seem like I only remembered "easy" or "hard" words since easy words like "Water" or "Money" or hard words like "Season" escaped me. Great experiment !

[@bsweatt715]

The story method- This is what I did also. I got an even 8 for both. I thought adhd kicked in and i got bored with making the story. But maybe it was actually the blanks tripped up my flow. Our story engagement works as well as the blanks for people who just focused on words That makes so much sense!

[@exanimo6906]

I had the same score (10 without blanks, 8 with blanks), trying the same visualization method with the same reasoning (I couldn't incorporate blank words fast enough to remember them). The only difference is that I am a native English speaker

[@matthewnitz8367]

Story method as well, I got 8 and 7, so this definitely seems pretty consistent.

[@prashasti598]

Exactly what happened with me! 11 without and 13 with blanks. I'm not a native English speaker either. I had an animal college major as the protagonist, his life from college to setting up an industry to saving a cotton person from a train. i may come back to this video to finish the plot 😂

[@whoisme1669]

+

[@guy1234u]

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.

[@industrialgoose4756]

Its also worth noting that many of the words in the list had a very clear connections to the next word in the list, creating a lot of chains of words. By remember one such word, several other words that followed will also come to mind as a result. Id be willing to wager that those words chains also had a similar effect on test takers as the words with blanks, since your brain is interacting with them actively, just like the ones with the blanks.

[@MerryLeafField]

Yes, it was easy to make a story with them. Party on a mountain.

[@grmpkt]

@@MerryLeafField or doctor went to college

[@IrethAmandil]

​@@MerryLeafField Or the journal about the mountain party 🥳 ✍️

[@ryanrodriguez7664]

I started to feel a little amused when I saw "Cotton", "Railroad", and "Master" near each other.

[@GeorgeDCowley]

Not as many as I expected.

[@asdasadsdasds8862]

I did this experiment as a non-native speaker and my results are actually contrary to the expected. Without blanks: 13, with blanks: 12. Curiously enough, I constructed words of my native language within the blanks (perdon instead of person) and maybe that altered the results. It could be interesting to study how language construction alters memory and retrieval. Thanks for the video, very insightful.

[@venteanbiscuits8802]

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.

[@SpicyGregPowers]

yo exact same experience here

[@ecavalcantes]

Same here

[@fizzywizzylemonsqueezy1774]

Saame

[@brendanh8193]

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.

[@robinhodson9890]

I just kept embellishing attending a college with an alpine view: It seemed to be the common theme. I also remembered Orange and Lecture, which weren't there.

[@StephenBrasel]

5 without blanks 8 with blanks. I also tried the journey technique, remembering each word as a piece of a journey, but got sidetracked by the words with blanks, which I wasn't expecting and threw me off a bit. I just missed an appointment to determine whether I have learning and attention problems, so I'm also interested in this upcoming video on the different types of encoding.

[@yeetdatcodeboi]

I was trying the journey tech as well and actually appreciated the pairs of blank/non blanks but I was simply not prepared for that many words :smile:

[@julieanderson100]

same

[@tyeshepherd]

I used the journey technique also - really surprised me how many I could recall as I usually tell myself that I have a bad memory.

[@smizles]

ADHD FTW!!! Lol I only remembered 1 complete word, but I remembered 6 of the incomplete words! Who needs to create a fictional story when I'm too busy figuring out the world's problems and engineering solutions 😅 (

[@zmaj12321]

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.

[@Bunny501]

I took a similar approach got 8-8

[@jayy7754]

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!

[@Nick-mq6iq]

Woahh that's so clever of you, noted!

[@erdossuitcase7667]

I had equal numbers also. I paired similar words or opposing words. Doctor-college. Or Mountain-Valley.

[@GunsandGuitars69]

I did the same thing and when I paired cotton person I just pictured African Americans

[@spydar05]

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.

[@christianmccarty8052]

2 without blanks, 6 with blanks. I have diagnosed adult ADHD and based on these results I am *extremely* interested in that video about alternate encoding strategy.

[@cailynschneider4318]

3 with words and 7 with blanks I have ADHD and was wondering about the same thing

[@jadejago7664]

Me too. I can't wait for the video so we'll subscribe.

[@dezmodium]

I have ADHD and I only remembered only 1 of each. Ugh.

[@ninjykun]

I remembered a couple words because they talked to each other. Like mountain/valley and person/woman. Overall got, 3 without blanks, 5 with blanks. I also have ADHD

[@paigerasmussen5212]

I have ADHD and got 13/9. I used the imagination strategy; There was a college party for new doctors where they danced in a circle on a mountain and took a train that went through cotton fields to get there...

[@hellomello258]

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.

[@kanefrieden8419]

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.

[@cjkaon]

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.

[@floof3167]

I created a scene as well yet remembered twice as many words with blanks than without.

[@lynettes2796]

This was my experience, too.

[@NotesNNotes]

That’s what I was doing 😅 a journaling party on a mountain with doctor moms

[@Jamelith]

1 whole word, 5 with blanks. I appreciated this. I feel like I have difficulty with remembering. I’ve subscribed and look forward to future vids.

[@thelc5492]

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

[@l0lan00b3]

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

[@vibesmom]

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.

[@theexorcist666]

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! 😂

[@theexorcist666]

@@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.

[@georgedunkelberg5004]

@@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

[@Kimberly34584]

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!

[@benjaminkeep]

Hey everyone! Thanks for participating. Here's the link to the follow-up video analyzing some of the early results: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bX-apXyDbNh8rrc UPDATE: data from Sep 26 (or so). I kind of gave up on data entry after a while. All told, I entered 2081 results down, skipping any comments where it wasn't immediately clear what the result was. We still have about the same effect as earlier, though the effect size has been shrinking as time has gone on. As I discussed in a comment to the follow-up video, there's likely some reporting bias and I made some methodological choices that likely lowered the effect.Anyhow, here are the results: Number of people who remembered more generated words: 1095 Number of people who remembered the same in both conditions: 318 Number of people who remembered more read words: 668 A paired t-test yields a mean difference of .64 (so a little more than half a word better in the generate condition), p-value

[@user-zu1ix3yq2w]

I think some words might be easier to visualize (as well as be easier to pair with other words in story). Mountain is a big "visual" for me, and a valley is very closely related to mountains.

[@ytbvdshrtnr]

"I didn't know whether people would be into it or not." Oh for sure. I once made a spreadsheet out of thousands of KZbin comments (under a video that shows a psychology trick that's supposed to make 98% of people respond in the same way when prompted), so that I could see what the stats came out to: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eZulZn-aqidqp_L1a81C6BB7Nw2dXmKaA_qb8t-_iT0/edit?usp=sharing kzbin.info/www/bejne/a4LKY2eFbZtnoqs&lc=UgjJfRhp3fAYf3gCoAEC

[@danielvanstaden8247]

@@user-zu1ix3yq2w Same here, when he said mountain I imagined people in a building on a mountain, aka a castle, although I forgot the word building and remembered the visualiztion of the castle, even though I didn't write down building. When I saw valley at the end I connected it to the side of the mountain.

[@sabtkjr.3329]

W/O 4 W 5

[@sadrien]

@@danielvanstaden8247 I got all the words I related to people on a train on the rail road but forgot to list the mountain that was also in the same mental image... even though I remembered the valley. The words later in a visualization seem easier to remember probably because they are connected to others.

[@acblaze3116]

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.

[@Ash.Phoenix]

Thank you again for yet another phenomenal video! Truly the best KZbinr out there. Looking forward to the next one on encoding!

[@georgemasters9263]

Your examples of multiplying a number by 11 was developed by Jakow Trachtenberg and is documented in his book, The Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics. The book was published by Double Day in 1960. I found your examples intriguing because of Trachtenberg's original work.

[@GL-tx9dv]

I hate it. I just multiple by ten and add x.

[@itismethatguy]

I cant believe that thing needed to be developed like that

[@VulpixJLP]

Words without blanks: 10 Words with blanks: 10 Reading other comments, I saw that the story technique is quite common to use and it is the one that helped me remember. Not every word that had blanks threw me off on the attempt to make a story, but the ones that had consecutive blanks confused me and were the ones I couldn't even understand (letter and person, for example). I am also not a native english speaker, but I often consume media in english.

[@dittilio]

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.

[@finnyrawrs8276]

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!

[@basedtyrone461]

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

[@ThePC007]

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.

[@catatonicbug7522]

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.

[@katrinkarose175]

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.

[@georgedunkelberg5004]

@@katrinkarose175 YES ! ALL MY LIFE! MANY THANKS TO A KINDRED SPIRIT!

[@mithos789]

@@katrinkarose175 i learned how to write without looking at the page.

[@8dbassboost342]

words with blanks: 10 words without blanks: 2 I highly appreciate such videos! I've been trying to learn to encode better for 6 months now and I've seen some improvements but haven't reached the desired point yet. If you're reading this comment I also want to share a certain kind of a hypothesis that I've thought up on my own that I couldn't find it on internet and I think you might know something about this. Here's my hypothesis about how our brain levels up its learning capability: let's say I force my brain to solve a problem it has never encountered before. In my experience, my brain starts rushing an intense resistive thought process such as "What are you trying to figure out? Its impossible! why are you doing this? What are you doing?! What am I trying to think of? what is it?, etc Yet I endure it until I hit a solution thought that clears up the whole picture. Now my brain adds this experience to my "solution list of problems" that my brain has collected since I was a baby. If I get a response from you, I'll reply how I thought of this hypothesis with a story from my experience.

[@gamingthesystem4252]

Even though he didn't respond i will really love to hear your story

[@michaelg4896]

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.

[@pedroff_1]

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

[@Bunny501]

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

[@mikelezhnin8601]

I feel you brother

[@Currywurst-zo8oo]

Dont worry I got one of each. After the math question I just forgot the words.

[@SETHthegodofchaos]

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

[@The9thDoctor]

I remembered 6 without blanks and 4 with blanks. I simply kept repeating words to myself over and over. I remembered cotton, sugar, money, and dollar as one group. Mountain and journal, quite possibly because they were first. Same with party. Teacher I randomly remembered. Machine and master I remembered as a group too. Fascinating excitement!

[@ReflectionOcean]

Encoding refers to how new information is stored in long-term memory. We remember information better when we actively generate it rather than simply reading it. Bjork then applied this concept to reading passages from psychology textbooks. Some sentences had blanks, requiring participants to generate the missing words. When tested on their knowledge of the material, participants performed better on sentences with blanks compared to those without. However, in a subsequent experiment, participants showed improvement in their recall of normal sentences as well, indicating that they had learned to read more effectively by applying generation-like skills ...

[@Learner-rj2bk]

How can we apply this as a normal student ? One idea I can think of is making questions out of the text you read and then answering those questions after some days

[@bobstr6224]

​@@Learner-rj2bksummarising notes works well too

[@Nick-mq6iq]

Makes sense why I remember more from reading transcripts before watching KZbin video, regardless of the typos, cos I'm actively trying to make sense of what the text could mean and there's a lot of aha! Moments there

[@4n4xim4nd3r]

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!

[@rbcruz6708]

I always love watching your videos, Doc! Results: 3 (blanks) & 2 (w/o)

[@sf4h7]

Interesting experiment. My results: 10 without blanks, 9 with blanks. Somewhere in the middle I lost myself thinking how I should go about memorising the words. Should I group them instead of creating a story out of them? Should I remember where the blanks are? That made me lose a lot of the blanks.

[@phyphor]

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.

[@basedtyrone461]

These are the best kind of observers

[@artugert]

The first thing I thought of was masher, not master.

[@drditup]

not sure which words that point to, but as a pdh student there were 2 words in the beginning i could easily remember

[@benjaminkeep]

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.

[@twomoths]

12 w/o blanks 10 w/ blanks For those who built a story, I'm most interested to hear what they made up. The "story" strategy I think made the words with blanks a bit tougher to add in, as I occasionally had to stop telling myself the story to identify the word. The primary commonality among my missed words was how general of a concept they represented. Person, material, and meeting got dropped because they didn't lend themselves to a specific and evocative mental picture. At least not so much as the mountaintop journaling party where animals sit in corners writing letters to their teachers about the sugar-water industry.

[@Rishnai]

That was a great mountaintop journal party dude

[@matthewboyd8689]

Did the same and got 11 without blanks, 10 with. I also tried pairing specific words together like doctor delivering letter, or a circle of machines. I do this both with regular memory and jokes.

[@simonecordeddu4783]

I couldn't link all the words in just one story and with every new story I was able to link less and less words together. The first story was that the Mountain (the one from GoT) was taking notes on a journal in a corner at a college party and a bear was also there casually hanging out

[@TheStalitha]

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

[@andrewsad1]

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

[@trappedkitty5335]

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."

[@nolanalexander8696]

It would be interesting to see if the effect works the same on (1) students who speak English as their second language, (2) students in STEM vs student in Humanities, and (3) abstract math concepts or philosophical concepts. I speak English as second language, I got more score on words without blanks than words with blanks, since I run out of time figuring them out. I tried using mind palace method (there are party near the mountain, and a journal in the corner of the party, there are college freshmen who are talking about being boyfriend material, etc. etc.). For better discussions and understanding, I hope you could talk about the limitation of the study, and possible gaps from the research.

[@benjaminkeep]

Yep, that is 100% my intention. I didn't know quite what was going to happen with this, TBH, but I'll be analyzing the data and talking about what we can and can't learn from research like this in a future video.

[@MEILISREALM]

same i have more on without blanks than with blanks , and english is my second language

[@semperFi4ever100]

3 without blanks , 8 with blanks. That’s kinda cool, didn’t expect that!

[@eaurius7638]

I got 6&6, and after reading some comments, I think I know why. I would link pictures with an image or I would chunk certain words together that were synonyms, not even paying attention to the blanks. Very cool experiment!

[@socrateacher9331]

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...

[@timothyshires967]

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

[@socrateacher9331]

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

[@socrateacher9331]

My brain just wanted to write a story, I suppose....@@timothyshires967

[@Omlet221]

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!

[@danielvanstaden8247]

OH MY, you have no idea how much I'm looking forward to your encoding video. Your channel is my bible when it comes to learning. I've gone through lots of other channels (Cajun koi academy, Mike Dee, Healthygamergg, Justin sung), and although I appreciate Healthygamer and Justin Sung, no resource has quite been as thorough as you have been. I truly appreciate you and am grateful that you decided to start posting videos on KZbin and bless all of us with this free information. I've had a rough education career, going into and out of school, and have lost a lot of motivation in the process (I'm currently doing my IGCSEs). Your videos give me hope that I'll be able to achieve my goals and get to the places I want to be. Thank you.

[@jimmyjoe1591]

Please check out Jeffrey Kaplan and Artem kirsanov. Both are great but Jeffrey has excellent study strategies that actually work.

[@Ainennke]

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.

[@toomanycactus3138]

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.

[@jacobyoung6876]

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.

[@benjaminkeep]

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!

[@Talec-7]

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.

[@imbaby5499]

I think implementing a strategy (like creating a story in one's head as you presumably did) messes with the experiment.

[@williamjenkins4913]

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.

[@guilhermedomingosdosualdo1836]

I didn't try super hard, but even if I tried, I'm very anxious lately. Like, moderate anxiety attacks TODAY. Results: 3 without blanks, 4 with blanks. And for the ones without blanks I remembered the first one, which stuck in my head (mointain), and one related to that (valley), and another random word.

[@johkonut]

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

[@IPP133]

Words without blanks: 6 Words with blanks: 3 Additional info: I have been diagnosed with ADHD, and I have exceptionally poor recall, especially post-ECT treatments which I had for my depression but had to stop due to memory issues. I've had a neuropsych evaluation (because my memory is so poor it affects my daily life) and my recall for a similar test was two standard deviations below average. My paired recall is much higher, and all of the words I remembered from the test in this video except one were in pairs with related meanings (eg building and window). They were mostly close together in the list, but occasionally not (mountain and valley). I think this is why my "no blanks" recall was better, because I had more time to draw connections to other words, or perhaps just because I randomly happened to find more pairs with these words. 🤷 Interesting stuff! I'm very excited about the video you mentioned! I'm eager to learn more about how I can improve my recall.

[@moshak1008]

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

[@trisha.gonzales]

without blanks: 3 with blanks: 6 i tried the "picturing" a story on the second try and i had recalled 9 words on both! it's a really fun exercise

[@Ali-pu7nk]

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 😅

[@gamingthesystem4252]

Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is back

[@eliseolopez2790]

Who is he

[@gamingthesystem4252]

The person whose video you are watching maybe@@eliseolopez2790

[@folon12]

My results: 1 word without blank , 5 words with blank. I am really ashamed that I did so poorly..

[@NiwatiX]

words without blanks : 3 words with blanks: 8 Apparently that tiny bit of mental effort to fill in the blanks helps a ton for me. That fraction of a second tend to form some kind of emotional bound where I remember being anxious to find the words before it disappear. I could go as far back as banana, while I didn't remember the other word you presented as an example. I'm a Ph.D in Cybersecurity, during University I obviously had to learn how to learn (haha) so I realized early on that putting some works frequently to challenge myself on knowledge instead of just reading endless pages of content does a marvel to remember more stuff.

[@Arkylie]

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."

[@autumnthriller]

As soon as I saw the words with blanks appear I made the assumption that the test was trying to get me to remember those words more, so being a natural contrarion (aka painintheass) I tried really hard to remember words without blanks - this was definitely a mistake as I immediately found myself in conflict; I enjoyed solving the words with blanks, but I had given myself the rule of remembering more of/only the non-blanked words. As each word only showed briefly, I then found my attention being forced back and forth uncomfortably and I managed to remember very little overall, breaking even on the two different word sets.

[@diaboempessoa]

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!

[@benjaminkeep]

Thanks! I'll do a follow-up video where I talk more about where variation in the results probably comes from.

[@everythingispossible2258]

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!

[@jeniipop]

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.

[@jonatanriedel3129]

Words with blanks: 6 Words without blanks : 6

[@benjaminkeep]

Making a story out of the words is probably one of the most effective ways to remember them.

[@5yotub]

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 😬

[@elau89]

10 with blanks and 11 without. Like a number of the other comments said, I'd be very interested in seeing this experiment with words having less association with each other. It was fairly easy to use the memory palace technique here as many words were closely associated to each other. i.e., can easily imagine a picture of a party on the top of a mountain next to a factory and a woman paying a doctor. I will admit I remembered master and machine from needing to fill in the blank, so I can definitely see the use on it! I think the more thought-provoking blanks helped more (had to think for a second to get master)

[@RiskaAvian]

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 :)

[@WilliamJohnson-xs2vi]

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.

[@oneraymichels]

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!

[@Vearru]

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.

[@strangebird5974]

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.

[@Adriatic478]

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”)

[@aowomoyela]

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.

[@scottcartwright1718]

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!

[@hkpew]

I should have been going to bed instead of watching this, and I actually fell asleep during most of the math explanation. I almost went back and rewatched what I missed, but my math knowledge is good enough that I was able to figure out what it was all about just from the last two examples so I didn't. Anyway, that sleepiness may have had an effect on the total number of words I remembered, but the effect you are talking about was quite pronounced in my case: I only remembered 1 word without blanks but I remembered 5 with blanks.

[@cragnog]

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.

[@emirojaseng]

Without: 7 With: 7 But the interesting thing is that at the start I remembered mostly without blanks but as the experiment progressed I only remember the ones with blanks, very interesting!

[@malena3463]

Love your content so much, helping me learn better in undergrad!!

[@lizdavis6040]

2 without blanks, 8 with blanks This was soooooo interesting! Great video

[@austin7532]

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

[@mandateonmandalay7632]

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.

[@aceshigh5157]

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.

[@brycehuff]

I tried the visual story telling technique but lost focus in the middle. I remembered 6 without blanks, and 7 with blanks. Gonna try this in my HS math class for vocabulary and concept descriptions.

[@alexafan7]

9 without blanks and 10 with blanks. Used the visual method but was disrupted at sugar and le_te_ which I wrote as lecture. Liked this interactive style of video.

[@TallinuTV]

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. 😂

[@lewweisern]

6 with blanks, 3 without blanks. I tried to create a running story for all the words but the everything fell apart when I lost the sequence, but the words with blanks came to the rescue, but the story was already lost near the beginning.

[@ryft_music]

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.

[@jabadoodle]

I also did the "create a story/visual" trick. Remembered 7 words without blanks and 8 words with blanks. Seems to me physically writing notes or rewriting the key parts of a text as notes is a type of "generation". Also it's said (and I find it to be true) that if you can explain a topic to someone else (even just in your mind) you know it well. That is also a form of forcing yourself to "generate" the knowledge. Or maybe it's just a different "encoding" strategy.

[@nicolim3946]

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.

[@matthewboyd8689]

A similar thing happens in persuasion. If you tell someone you are side of the story, it's like them reading it. But if you ask them to think about your side of the story then they have to imagine. This makes them more likely to understand.

[@tv64738]

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.

[@MatteoBruniC]

With blanks: 10 Without blanks: 5 Very interesting and informative video! 🎉

[@ChrisField13]

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.

[@pulular5914]

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"

[@LukeMlsna]

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

[@tfw62192]

16 remembered, 7 with blanks, 9 without blanks Distorted by artifacts of my effectiveness of using the memory castle/image encoding approach AND a suspicion of a generation effect

[@MrEvanfoster]

I remembered 4 without blanks and 4 with blanks. Then I thought I remembered a few more words, but they weren't there. I was pretty shocked to realize that I didn't remember more words in general. I'm wondering how to apply this other forms of learning that don't include words. Like somatic movement education. Thank you for the experience

[@katejanek]

Without blank: 7 With blanks: 7 The strategy I used to remember the words, was to visualise them as objects, put them in the picture, and add a little of emotional attitude (eg. Doctor was pride and self-confident, holding the journal and a letter; machine was in the industry section, dirty and oily, etc.). So the words I didn’t remember were the ones I didn’t put enough focus to create this visualisation (I guess).

[@LiveWire937]

I missed "Machine," but knew it started with an M and ended with an E and felt medium-long. Otherwise, got them all, though the order got a little messed up in the last half. I didn't fill in the blank before memorizing the ones with blanks; I was employing a generative visual memory technique from the beginning by forming a picture in my head. Before long, I had the doctor in the corner of the college party writing all the incomplete words down in her journal, so I could devote more mental resources to the visualization and just fill in the blanks later upon recall. The problem with "Machine" was that I was busy realizing the image was getting too complex for me to hold it together and fill in the blanks at the same time, and by the time I thought of a solution, the next word was up.

[@syl3r]

I was able to remember 11 words with blanks and 11 words without blanks, at first I tried making a story but that stopped after “a party in the mountain with an animal doctor” but most words I remembered through association with another word, like I got doctor then found money, teacher got me college and master, industry got me material and so on, but looking back on it I definitely remembered more words without blanks through association than remembering them outright.

[@gc2009able]

Remembered with blanks: 11 Remembered without blanks: 10 My mnemonic was creating "scenes" as the list continued, adding elements to each scene. Consequently my recall ability was weighted in favour of earlier words, regardless of blanks.

[@olehshyshkin310]

Words without blank: 10 Words with blank: 10 I just watched your video with analysis, so here some extra information :) I’m not native speaker and I tried to build a story (like college party with pool in mountains for master students). But sometimes I just grouped words (industry material, money dollar, etc) Also, I didn’t know about effect you described, and not sure if I had the experience in the past.

[@21_smitkapani87]

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!