Effects of Text Emphasis Techniques on Memory Retention
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Effect of Text-Emphasising Techniques on
Memory Retention and Retrieval
Date of Submission: 25th March 2013
Tutor: Ms Aileen Ng Cheng Cheng
Tutorial Group: MA02
Group Members:
Eugene Sebastian Semuil
U1120262A
Hon Kuang Deng Royston
U1121501C
Khaw Kok Liang
U1120542L
Lisan Purnama
U1120884C
Wong Chu Ping
U1122260B
ABSTRACT (By Eugene Sebastian Semuil)
Memorising is one of the important aspects during studies, especially in University. To enhance the amounts of information retrieved, as well as giving focus on important part of notes, students often do highlighting, circling, and underlining. Those three methods are called text-emphasising. Recent studies have shown that the techniques could help the students to retrieve and store more information compared to students who do not use such techniques. However, no studies have further developed their research to the extent of comparison between each technique. This experiment is conducted to find the best emphasis method among three methods - highlighting, circling, and underlining - for memory retention.
In this experiment, participants are given a control passage, a passage without any text being emphasised, before answering a set of 10 multiple choices questions, without looking to the passage. After a short break, they are given another passage with a text emphasised technique, and answer another set of questions without looking to the passage. The score of the test will be recorded to determine the most effective emphasis method. This experiment shows that the best emphasis method is circling, and followed by highlighting. Underlining is found to be the least effective of the three methods. While this experiment only focuses on each method’s effectiveness on short term memory, further research might analyse the long term memory.
Despite the fact that each students may
Effect of Text-Emphasising Techniques on
Memory Retention and Retrieval
Date of Submission: 25th March 2013
Tutor: Ms Aileen Ng Cheng Cheng
Tutorial Group: MA02
Group Members:
Eugene Sebastian Semuil
U1120262A
Hon Kuang Deng Royston
U1121501C
Khaw Kok Liang
U1120542L
Lisan Purnama
U1120884C
Wong Chu Ping
U1122260B
ABSTRACT (By Eugene Sebastian Semuil)
Memorising is one of the important aspects during studies, especially in University. To enhance the amounts of information retrieved, as well as giving focus on important part of notes, students often do highlighting, circling, and underlining. Those three methods are called text-emphasising. Recent studies have shown that the techniques could help the students to retrieve and store more information compared to students who do not use such techniques. However, no studies have further developed their research to the extent of comparison between each technique. This experiment is conducted to find the best emphasis method among three methods - highlighting, circling, and underlining - for memory retention.
In this experiment, participants are given a control passage, a passage without any text being emphasised, before answering a set of 10 multiple choices questions, without looking to the passage. After a short break, they are given another passage with a text emphasised technique, and answer another set of questions without looking to the passage. The score of the test will be recorded to determine the most effective emphasis method. This experiment shows that the best emphasis method is circling, and followed by highlighting. Underlining is found to be the least effective of the three methods. While this experiment only focuses on each method’s effectiveness on short term memory, further research might analyse the long term memory.
Despite the fact that each students may