d a much more lasting effect on memory. He concluded that repetition is the key to learning. Ebbinghaus also found that as he increased the list length that more original learning trials were required in order to memorize them. This being said, the longer lists required more learning trials. He found that after one day (24 hours) that once relearning took place that he managed more savings in the longer list than that of the shorter one. This was due to the larger number of learning trials for the larger list which shows “overlearning.”Ebbinghaus was also the first person to describe the primacy and recency effects. The primacy effect states that an individual tends to remember the first few items of a recall list in relation to its serial position. The recency effect is just the opposite whereas subjects remember the last few items of the list. The items that lie in the middle of a list are the ones that are less likely to be recalled.Many people did not accept the influence of Ebbinghaus and his experiments with nonsense syllables. These people argued that the nonsense syllable detracted meaning from the stimuli that was to be learned or remembered. It was argued that nonsense syllables are not generalizable therefore people in the “real world” will not deal with any meaningless stimulus such as nonsense syllables. They would in turn take the stimuli with no meaning and apply meaning to it. For example, they would transform the nonsense syllable S-A-T into “Saturday” mentally. The argument is that these nonsense syllables are misleading to psychology. On the contrary most people feel that his experiments still have significance in today’s research dealing with experimental psychology.Ebbinghaus had many achievements before he died of pneumonia in 1909. His life was short but his impact on Psychology was great. The fact that his experiments were done alone using himself as ...
