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48
24 HOURS AFTER
LEARNING SOMETHING,
WE FORGET
TWO-THIRDS OF IT
HERMANN EBBINGHAUS (1850–1909)
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
…forgetting is …items forgotten can be
Memory studies
most rapid within the relearned faster than new
BEFORE first nine hours. ones learned for the first time.
5th century BCE The
ancient Greeks make use of
“mnemonics”—techniques,
such as key words or rhymes,
that aid memory.
1582 Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno in The Art …meaningful
of Memory gives methods for …material that
things are
is studied
memorizing, using diagrams Ebbinghaus’s remembered
beyond
of knowledge and experience. memory for about ten
mastery
experiments times longer
AFTER (over-learned) is
showed that… than random,
remembered
1932 Frederick Bartlett says longer.
meaningless
that every memory is a blend things.
of knowledge and inference.
1949 Donald Hebb, in The
Organization of Behavior,
describes how learning results
from stimulated brain cells
linking up into “assemblies.”
…items toward the …repeated learning sessions
1960 US psychologist Leo beginning and end of over a longer interval of
Postman finds that new a series are most easily time improves memory
learning can interfere with remembered. retention on any subject.
previous learning, causing
“retroactive interference.”
PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS 49
See also: Donald Hebb 163 ■ Bluma Zeigarnik 162 ■ George Armitage Miller 168–73 ■ Endel Tulving 186–91 ■ Gordon H.
Bower 194–95 ■ Daniel Schacter 208–09 ■ Frederic Bartlett 335–36
I
n 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus recite a series correctly at speed.
became the first psychologist He tested different list lengths and
to systematically study different learning intervals, noting
learning and memory by carrying the speed of learning and forgetting.
out a long, exhausting experiment Ebbinghaus found that he could
on himself. Philosophers such as remember meaningful material,
John Locke and David Hume had such as a poem, ten times more
argued that remembering involves easily than his nonsense lists. He
association—linking things or also noted that the more times the
ideas by shared characteristics, stimuli (the nonsense syllables)
such as time, place, cause, or were repeated, the less time was
effect. Ebbinghaus tested the effect needed to reproduce the memorized
of association on memory, recording information. Also, the first few
the results mathematically to see if repetitions proved the most
Learning material and committing
memory follows verifiable patterns. effective in memorizing a list. it to memory within an hour of hearing
When looking at his results for it, Ebbinghaus showed, will mean that
Memory experiments evidence of forgetting, Ebbinghaus we remember it for longer and can
Ebbinghaus started by memorizing found, unsurprisingly, that he recall it more easily.
lists of words and testing how tended to forget less quickly the
many he could recall. To avoid the lists that he had spent the most two-thirds of anything memorized
use of association, he then created time memorizing, and that recall is is forgotten. Plotted on a graph, this
2,300 “nonsense syllables,” all three best performed immediately after shows a distinct “forgetting curve”
letters long and using the standard learning. Ebbinghaus also uncovered that starts with a sharp drop,
word format of consonant–vowel– an unexpected pattern in memory followed by a shallow slope.
consonant: for example, “ZUC” and retention. He found that there is Ebbinghaus’s research launched
“QAX.” Grouping these into lists, typically a very rapid loss of recall a new field of enquiry, and helped
he looked at each syllable for a in the first hour, followed by a establish psychology as a scientific
fraction of a second, pausing for 15 slightly slower loss, so that after discipline. His meticulous methods
seconds before going through a list nine hours, about 60 percent is remain the basis of all psychological
again. He did this until he could forgotten. After 24 hours, about experimentation to this day. ■
Hermann Ebbinghaus Hermann Ebbinghaus was born in two psychology laboratories

Barmen, Germany, to a family of and founded an academic
Lutheran merchants. At 17, he journal. Ebbinghaus later moved
began to study philosophy at to Breslau University, where he
Bonn University, but his academic also established a laboratory,
career was disrupted in 1870 by and finally to Halle, where he
the Franco-Prussian War. In 1873, taught until his death from
he completed his studies and pneumonia at the age of 59.
moved to Berlin, later traveling to
France and England, where he Key works
carried out research on the power
of his own memory, starting in 1885 Memory: A Contribution
1879. He published Memory in to Experimental Psychology
1885, detailing the “nonsense 1897–1908 Fundamentals
syllable” research, and in the of Psychology (2 volumes)
same year became a professor at 1908 Psychology: An
Berlin University, where he set up Elementary Textbook

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48

Hermann Ebbinghaus Hermann Ebbinghaus was born in two psychology laboratories

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