nd
slower after whole learning than after part learning.

An old saying has it that quick learning means quick forgetting, and
that quick learners are quick forgetters. Experiment does not wholly
bear this out. A lesson that is learned quickly because it is clearly
understood is better retained than one which is imperfectly understood
and therefore slowly learned; and a learner who learns quickly because
he is on the alert for significant facts and connections retains
better than a learner who is slow from lack of such alertness. The
wider awake the learner, the quicker will be his learning and the
slower his subsequent forgetting; so that one is often tempted to
admonish a certain type of studious but easy-going person, "for
goodness' sake not to dawdle over his lessons", with any idea that the
more time he spends with them the longer he will remember them. More
gas! High pressure gives the biggest results, provided only it is
directed into high-level observation, and does not simply generate
fear and worry and a rattle-brained frenzy of rote learning.

{354}

Recall

Having committed something to memory, how do we get it back when we
want it? To judge from such simple cases as the animal's performance
of a previously learned reaction, all that is necessary is a
_stimulus_ previously linked with the response. How, for example,
shall we get the cat to turn the door-button, this being an act that
the cat has previously learned? Why, we put the cat into the same
cage, i.e., we supply the stimulus that has previously given the
reaction, and trust to it to give the same reaction again. The
learning process has attached this reaction to this stimulus. Now can
we say the same regarding material committed to memory by the human
subject? Is recall a species of learned reaction that needs only the
linked stimulus to arouse it?

If you have learned and still retain a list of numbers or syllables,
you can recite it on thinking of it, on hearing words that identify it
in your mind, or on being given the first few items in the list as a
start. The act of reciting the list became linked, during the
learning, with the thought of the list, with words signifying this
particular list, and with the first items of the list; therefore,
these stimuli can now arouse the reaction of reciting the list. As you
advance into the list, reciting it, the parts already recited act as
stimuli to keep you going forward. In the same way, if you ha