Effects of Vocalization and Visualization on Short-Term Memory, Article Critique Example

The Hypothesis (es) of the Current Research

Short-term memory of an individual and its effectiveness in retention of information depends on the magnitude of the interference that is caused. Vocalization and audio interferences need always to be avoided as much as possible in order to support information retention. Short-term memory that is used to store both visual and vocal information is prone to interference.

Data Collection Procedure

The main data collection procedure is from primary source which entail carrying of experiments on a number of individuals at a given environment to find out the level of information retention by use of the short memory. The experiments carried out were aimed at determining the ability to remember things that are both visual and vocal. The individuals involved were taken through different learning sessions where they were taught about different aspects of which involved the abilities to remember both visual and vocal information.

The presentation of information was done orally to one group and visually to other group. The last experiment involved the introduction of these individuals to a situation where interference was expected. The cognitive interferences were done both visually and vocally in order to determine the effect of each on the short memories and the kind of information that can be retained much longer that is between vocal data and visual data.

With this kind of experiment something that seemed important and needed controlled is the independence of variables. That involved the magnitude of both visual and vocal interference. Individuals were supposed to remain unchanged during the experimental process so to enable the experimenters to make good conclusions. For example, using different stanzas of a song, people who were experimented, were taken through the first stanza which was vocal and then later were taken through the subsequent stanzas. The experiment on vocal involved the use of the same song but by use of certain kind of gestures where individuals were expected to follow the conductor by doing the same signs throughout the song. The measures that were taken into consideration is the retention of individuals who taken through learning in the first process in order to see what the effect was if they repeated the first stanza after doing the subsequent ones both visually and vocally.

Major Findings of This Research

Use of vocalization as test for the ability of memory to store the information, it was found out that it produced more interferences on retentions and resulted to much deviations of the resultant figures on the effects vocalization. In the use of cognitive tests for those words that are similar to the ones in the memory stores, the effect was relatively much smaller during the first few minutes. Under vocalization it was discovered that it is easier to remember things more that the use of visualization.

However, after sometime, some dramatic effects appeared to be taking place whereby the abilities of individuals to conceptualize and repeat what was done previously seemed to go down. Individuals were not able to vocalize the words properly and even others tended to forget completely. Vocalization and more so the use of the dimension that tests the effect of similarity revealed that vocalization is the major cause of interference in the short-term memory.

The Relevance of the Hypotheses

The experiments indicate that the hypotheses are correct and therefore the interference of information retention within the short-term memory is evident. Both vocalization and visualization are major causes of forgetting among individual memories. According to the authors, vocal presentation aids ability to recall much more than visualization. Both researches are consistent and they all present the same findings. These findings are important since they reaffirm that memory retention is subject to interference from both vocal and visual sources and therefore providing very vital information that can be used by individuals to protect their memories.

Problems Reported in This Research and the Suggestions Does the Author(s) Give for Future Research

The major problems discovered in this research is that, it requires a lot of time to conduct the experiments. The ability to preserve individual privacy is likely to be disregarded. For future researches, it’s important for the researchers to do more study on the long-term effects of constant interferences to one’s vocal and visual stores.