Kenneth A. Blick

A comparison of the emotional content of dreams recalled by young and elderly women

Twenty-four college and 37 elderly women kept diaries for six weeks, at the end of which they voluntarily submitted them for analysis. The college women selected significantly more emotions for their dreams than did the elderly women. Enjoyment-joy accounted for a significantly higher proportion of emotions in dreams of elderly than in those of college women; but anger-rage and fear-terror occurred significantly less often in dreams of the elderly. The results were interpreted as providing support for the continuity hypothesis which states that dream content is a reflection of ones daily life.

Evaluation of Experimenter-Supplied and Subject-Originated First-Letter Mnemonics in a Free-Recall Task

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether supplying Ss with a mnemonic device produced a differential retention effect as opposed to letting Ss originate their own device when using a first-letter mnemonic technique in a free-recall situation. No difference in the recall of a list of 19 nouns existed at the immediate retention test, but Ss with an E-supplied scheme showed significantly better recall than those with S-originated schemes at 1-day, 1-wk., and 4-wk. retention intervals. It was concluded that the E-supplied first-letter mnemonic excelled S-originated ones as an effective aid to free recall.

EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF DREAMS RECALLED BY ELDERLY WOMEN

At the end of 6 wk., 37 elderly women turned in 145 dream narratives and accompanying emotions. Approximately two emotions were used to describe each dream; enjoyment, surprise, distress, confusion, interest, and fear accounted for 86% of all dream emotions. The emotions of disgust, anger, shame, and contempt were infrequently reported by these elderly persons. The dreams associated with the retirement life style of the elderly exhibited pleasant as well as unpleasant emotions.

FIRST-LETTER MNEMONICS AND SERIAL RETENTION'

The efficacy of mnemonic devices in the retention of serial lists has been amply demonstrated by Senter and Hauser (1968) for the hook or peg system, Bower and Clark (1969) for the narrative chaining method, and Delin (1969) for imagery instructions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the most popular serial mnemonic, the first-letter device. Twenty undergraduates were each assigned to a simple-repetition control or a firstletter mnemonic condition. The verbal material consisted of the following 15 English nouns: abdomen, archery, blizzard, cobalt, dagger, dresser, eternity, garlic, iceberg, oboe, petticoat, rafter, shack, topaz, and ulcer. Initially, both groups saw the words haphazardly arranged and were given 5 min. to complete the following assignment: the control group became familiar with the words and then copied them in an identical arrangement, whereas the first-letter group developed a mnemonic device to help them learn the words in any order which they had selected, and their order was written in a column. Next, the control group was given 3 min. to learn a random order of the words by using rehearsal only, whereas the first-letter group was given 3 min. to learn their chosen order, using their particular first-letter technique. The mean number of words correctly recalled during a 2-min. test at the immediate, 1-wk., and 8-wk. retention intervals, respectively, was 12.95, 3.35, and 2.25 for the control group; and 13.45, 4.55, and 2.45 for the first-letter group. The only significant difference was across retention intervals (F2,~ = 357.4, p < .O5), and both groups showed a significant loss only after the immediate test. Extensive analyses of the serial position data indicated no significant effects. These findings are in marked contrast to the significant advantages found for the peg system, narrative chaining, and imagery. Even though the first-letter device was the favorire serial mnemonic reported by college students (Blick, Buonassissi, & Boltwood, 1772), its effectiveness was not demonstrated in the present project.

A SURVEY OF MNEMONIC TECHNIQUES USED BY COLLEGE STUDENTS IN FREE-RECALL LEARNING

In a survey of memory aids that college students would employ in free-recall learning, Ss reported the following devices ordered by frequency of occurrence: first-letter, simple-repetition, clustering, other, personal-experience, and descriptive-story. No significant differences were found between men and women by category of memory aids reported, and the first-letter technique was found to be the mnemonic reported most often.

The effect of a mnemonic device on retention of verbal material

After 48 h, the retention of two lists of nine words, one list containing high meaningful words, the other low meaningful words, was compared for a group that was instructed in the use of a mnemonic device and a group that received no such instruction. The mnemonic group was instructed that the initial letters of the nine words could be arranged to spell the word “education.” Overall, the high meaningful list gave superior retention, and Ss who employed the mnemonic device showed superior retention, but the general method effect was not significant.

A SURVEY OF EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF DREAMS RECALLED BY COLLEGE STUDENTS

Dream diaries, narrative descriptions of five dreams and the selection from an emotion checklist of the two strongest emotions in each dream, were turned in during a 5-wk. period by 13 male and 18 female undergraduates. No significant differences were found in the emotional content of dreams of male and female undergraduates. A chi squared analysis of the combined data showed that the emotions of interest, fear, surprise, enjoyment, and distress were the most prominent ones while anger, shame, disgust, and contempt were the least prominent. The results generated by the dream diary—emotion checklist methodology were compared to and contrasted with those of other studies of dream emotions.

LEVELS OF PROCESSING AND THE RETENTION OF WORD MEANINGS

The effect of three encoding techniques, rote, semantic, and self-reference, on short-term and long-term retention levels of the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary words was examined. 72 college students participated in the experiment, with 24 students in each encoding group Ail participants viewed 20 target words and their definitions for 30 sec. Rote subjects were instructed to write just the word and its definition, semantic subjects were told to use the word in a sentence, and self-reference subjects wrote how the word might or might not describe themselves. After a 5-min. distractor task, subjects were tested on the recall of the definitions of those words. A retest was administered after 1 wk. As hypothesized, self-reference processing produced significantly higher retention than semantic processing, and semantic processing produced higher retention than rote processing. Encoding by self-reference was the most successful strategy for processing the meanings of unfamiliar nouns and adjectives.

Mnemonic Techniques Used by College Students in Serial Learning

College students reported 8 categories of memory aids that they would employ in learning a serial task. Although no significant differences were found between males and females by category of memory aids reported, there was a significant difference among categories. First letters and simple repetition accounted for 48% of all memory aids, while the remaining 52% were divided almost evenly among imagery, descriptive story, mediation, other, phonetic clustering, and semantic clustering. Clearly, the first-letter technique was the most popular mnemonic associated with the serial task.

Levels of Processing and the Retention of Paired-Associates

The effect of self-reference, semantic, and rote processing on the retention of paired-associates was examined at intervals of 5 min. and 2 wk. 25 subjects per group were given 120 sec. to process each of 15 paired-associates by self-reference, semantic, or rote. The pairs were a low meaningful nonsense word and a high meaningful English noun. At both retention intervals, self-reference and semantic processing produced significantly higher retention than rote processing and there was no difference in retention between self-reference and semantic processing. The results were compared with those of similar studies.