Learning and understanding

Abstract

Short texts containing rather difficult pieces of logical argument were presented, sometimes with illustrative graphs and sometimes without, to girls from the sixth form of a grammar school. They were required to study these, and recall afterwards what they were about. It was found that frequently there was a comparatively accurate recall of many of the individual items of the texts, but that certain essential points in the argument were omitted. Thus learning of detail could occur when there was no general understanding of the meaning. The effect of the illustrative graphs was to make the recalls even less coherent.