Memory for Orientation: Functionality, Implicit Learning and Handedness: Reply
✍ Scribed by MARYANNE MARTIN; GREGORY V. JONES
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 73 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In her commentary, Gillian Cohen (1997) raises issues concerning functionality and also the relation to reading skill of memory for orientation. We address these here in the context of recent developments in the study of implicit learning and of handedness, respectively. First, however, we rebut a specific argument that Cohen suggests may qualify the conclusions drawn by .
Cohen's concern is that the absence of correct recall demonstrated by Martin and Jones may merely have reflected the absence of an opportunity to observe the crescent moon either waxing or waning over successive nights: `Moon orientation is not like the orientation of a head on a coin because it is dynamic and changes over time. Thus the only way to learn the orientation by observation is to study the moon over a period of time and note that the right facing crescent wanes and the left facing crescent waxes.' In fact, however, Cohen's premise is incorrect. The learning of orientation by observation does not require waxing and waning to have been noted. Correct recall of orientation in Experiments 2, 3 and 4 of Martin and Jones (1997) required only that the moon had been observed both late in the day and early in the day. The poverty of remembering that was found in all the experiments cannot be attributed merely to a failure by participants to carry out a programme of study of the moon over periods of successive days.
With respect to functionality, we agree with Cohen that its role deserves further exploration. 1 In particular, the role of functional relevance appears to be related to the distinction between implicit and explicit learning (e.g., . On the face of it, one might expect that explicit learning occurs when the material to be learnt has functional significance and implicit learning occurs when it does not. Empirically, however, the results of the study of investigating memory for crescent moon orientation resembled those of previous studies of memory for coin head orientation (e.g., Jones and Martin,