The Effect of Learning Instruction on Motor and Verbal Responses in Recall

An experiment was designed to compare the effect of instruction (set) on verbal performance (recall) on the one hand and on overt behaviour (application) on the other. The experiment, using six groups of twenty subjects and three types of instruction procedures, showed that ( a ) a set‐to‐recall led to high recall‐scores but low application scores; ( b ) a set‐to‐apply led to high application‐scores and low recall‐scores; ( c ) most surprising of all a learning instruction by which subjects were asked merely to learn without any indication of the purpose for learning resulted in significantly lower application and lower recall scores than either of the other two sets. Thus it seems that even a wrong instruction can sometimes be better than no instruction at all

Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Free recall · Recall · Recall test · Set (abstract data type) · Verbal learning · Communication in Education and Healthcare · Computer Science · Evaluation of Teaching Practices · Online and Blended Learning · Psychology