Developmental psychology.pdf

250 Learning and Information Processing
Repression as Active According to Freud, repression is a process, not a static state.
The maintenance of repression therefore requires considerable energy. A heavily repressed
person, busy keeping many unwanted thoughts from consciousness, does not
have a great deal of energy remaining for the tasks of daily life.
This concept of repression as an active process was tested with two complementary
hypotheses. One hypothesis stated that memory for previously known material
would be inhibited when this material became associated with failure. The subjects
in two groups, experimental and control, learned a list of verbal materials, and while
the control group performed an unrelated motor task, the subjects in the experimental
group failed a motor task related to the verbal materials. When a test of recall was
administered to both groups, comparison of the results showed that failure on the associated
motor task served to reduce the ability to recall the previously known verbal
materials.
But the other hypothesis was supported as well. This hypothesis stated that
memory for this same material would be restored when the threat of failure was removed.
When the experimental subjects achieved success on the related motor task,
recall of the original verbal material increased (Zeller, 1950).
Many psychologists are not satisfied with the concept of repression, however.
Some prefer the previously mentioned explanations, especially interference theory, and
others point out that forgetting of negatively toned material may occur simply because
there is no effort to remember the experience, apart from repression.
PRINCIPLES OF MEMORIZING
The chief explanations for Benjamin's forgetting seem to be interference and possibly
decay, for there was no obliterating experience and no good reason to postulate repressive
forgetting. In fact, the boy should have been very motivated to recall what
was read to him earlier, for it would have saved him a great deal of time and effort
later.
But Benjamin still had more work to do, as the careful reader perhaps has
surmised. His father read to him 21 passages in infancy, seven of which were relearned
in childhood, at age eight, and seven in adolescence, at age 14. The remaining seven
selections, together with another three control passages, would provide one final test
of 10 selections, which was presented to him in the first year of adulthood, when he
reached 18 years of age. Again, he undertook the task with no notion as to which
passages had been encountered earlier and which ones were entirely new.
This time Benjamin learned more slowly perhaps because of fatigue with this
task, which had recurred approximately every five years. He also reported confusion
with certain syllables, apparently from the previous effort at age 14, which underscores
the possible role of interference. But the results were perfectly clear. The effects of the
recitations in infancy, definitely manifest at age eight and still evident at 14, had completely
disappeared at age 18 (Figure 9.16).
The last few years had been sufficient to eradicate all remaining traces of the
stimulation in infancy. But why?
We have speculated about forgetting through interference and possible decay,
but something more can be said. Benjamin, a bright little boy with a measured IQ of
130, could have done better had he been older and wiser. Benjamin's father was interested
in infant memories, but had he waited until the boy was 14 and induced him
to memorize the passages himself, following the principles of effective memorizing,
there seems little doubt that traces would have remained not just 5, 10, or 15 years
but probably through a long life. These principles are reviewed here in the context of
some practical suggestions, and they emphasize once again that memory is an active
process, depending markedly upon technique (Gordon, Valentine, & Wilding, 1984).