Verbal Memory and Learning

Abstract

Verbal memory is the memory of linguistic information, and is important to developing literacy and numeracy, as well as in the development of reading comprehension and proficiency, and by extension, later academic success. Early problems with verbal working memory can lead to long-term academic problems or exacerbate learning disabilities, whereas early interventions can prevent them. Verbal working memory has proven to correlate with academic success and especially reading proficiency more reliably than IQ.

Overview

Functions of memory are divided into several types by neurologists and cognitive psychologists, and play different roles in learning. Verbal memory refers to the individual's memory of verbal information and stimuli, meaning words and other aspects of language. It is important for researchers to differentiate among types of memory, and for educators to understand the different ways memory functions, in order to better develop teaching strategies, especially strategies that take into account the varying memory abilities of children of different ages or the impact of neurodevelopmental disorders. Verbal memory is key to learning for obvious reasons: It is implicated in the development of literacy, reading comprehension, and a student's ability to integrate auditory information such as lectures or instructions from teachers.

The basic function of memory is to encode, store, and recall information, where "encoding" refers to the conversion of information into something that can be stored in short-term memory or archived in long-term memory. Material is truly "learned" when it is stored in long-term memory, so that it may be recalled much later. No memory function or cognitive process related to memory is fully understood by theorists. Much of the work on memory has been done since the dawn of the computer age, with computer science helping to provide a model for understanding how information is handled, and the language and metaphors used to describe memory often reflect this.

Verbal memory is distinct from semantic memory, a type of explicit memory referring to general knowledge. Remembering the word "memory" after hearing it or reading it is verbal memory; knowing what the word "memory" means is semantic memory. Episodic memory is different from either: the memory of the individual's specific experiences. Verbal memory can be encoded in various ways, and perceptions of what is needed from the information later may impact this. For example, verbal information—something read or heard—may be encoded verbally, meaning that the subject can recall the exact words that the information consisted of. This is necessary for memorizing lines of a script, or a mnemonic device. Other verbal information may be semantically encoded—that is, the meaning is committed to memory, rather than the wording, and when recalled, the information may be paraphrased. A student might not remember the exact sentences that a teacher spoke when announcing the date of an exam, while still reliably remembering that the exam is next Friday.

Students and others use many strategies to improve verbal memory, including mnemonics (usually initialisms, like Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge to remember the E, G, B, D, F musical notation), association between words and objects or symbols, songs or narratives, and simple repetition of the information over and over. Encoding and survival in long-term memory requires repeated recalls, called maintenance rehearsal. Information the individual considers more important tends to be thought about more and so is recapitulated (deliberately recalled) more frequently. Involuntary processes, including association and pattern recognition (recalling the information when something serves to remind you of it) and sleep, also reinforce learning. Though it is not well understood, sleep is believed to play a critical role in long-term memory, and therefore in verbal learning. Disordered sleep is reliably correlated with weaker recall, while good quality sleep reliably correlates not only with more reliable recall from long-term memory, but also with improvements in short-term memory and attentional control, which are critical to learning new material.

All memory processes are subject to interference from many of the same sources. For example, stress impairs most memory processes, from encoding (storing memories) to recall, which is why game show contestants may forget seemingly simple facts, or nervous students may perform more poorly when called on in class than their actual mastery of the material would predict. It is not a coincidence that both of these examples involve impacts on recall. Neurochemical studies have found that the elevated levels of cortisol released by stress, a glucocorticoid that is normally used to process memories in the prefontal cortex and hippocampus, decreases brain activity during recall of explicit memory. Marijuana and inhalant use have both been demonstrated to interfere in verbal memory, learning, and executive functions of memory, and long-term use in adolescents may interfere with cognitive development.

Further Insights

Working memory is a short-term memory system, sometimes incorrectly understood as synonymous with all short-term memory; both working memory and short-term memory in general refer to the storage of information that persists for about thirty seconds. Working memory is the memory process responsible for holding in memory the information that has just been received, and manipulating that information, before any of it is committed to long-term memory—specifically, the information necessary in that moment for decision-making or other executive functions, or that conscious attention has chosen as the object of focus. While all information that is eventually stored in long-term memory passes through short-term memory processes first, not all short-term memory information is stored in long-term memory. For instance, if a cognitive test asks a subject to decide which of two words in a pair has the most syllables, and then gives the pair "working, memory," those two words will be held in working memory long enough for the subject to decide that "memory" has more syllables. After completing responses for a list of fifty pairs, they may no longer remember the first one—or many of the ones in between. The information was retained only as long as the subject's conscious attention required it.

The typical American phone number, not including the area code, is seven digits long. Cognitive psychologists call this the "magical number seven," discussed in the work of Princeton's George Miller beginning in 1956. According to Miller's Law, working memory can hold seven objects, plus or minus two, at one time. Attempting to manipulate more objects than the magical number leads to decreased performance even when the task itself is fairly simple. The magical number built on work on memory span, a measure of short-term memory.

The "plus or minus two" does not indicate uncertainty about the number, but rather variations in memory performance not only among individuals (and the circumstances in which they are using their working memory) but also among categories of chunk. Working memory capacity is consistently smaller—fewer chunks—for words than for letters, and smaller for letters than for numbers (typically 5, 6, and 7, respectively). "Chunk" here refers to the unit of information the brain creates when grouping pieces of information together—not groups that gain a new meaning, the way a word has a meaning independent from the letters that form it, but groups used to remember and recite the information more easily. The simplest example is the alphabet song, which recites the letters of the alphabet in order but uses melody and chunking ("A B C D / E F G / …").

This capacity is important in reading comprehension, especially in children still developing their reading proficiency, and has important implications for the effects of disruptions to working memory, from external distractions to multitasking to learning disabilities. Many theorists, beginning with the Neo-Piagetian tradition in cognitive psychology, believe that working memory capacity is not simply an outcome of childhood cognitive development, it is the horse that drives the cart. As a maturing child is able to hold more and more objects in working memory without performance degradation, they develop more and more adult-like cognitive capacities. Studies show strong longitudinal evidence that increases in working memory capacity at a young age correlates to better reasoning skills at a later age. Conversely, working memory capacity is one of the cognitive functions that declines in old age—more so than most cognitive functions, in fact.

There are strong correlations between working memory capacity, especially early development of working memory capacity, and later levels of literacy and numeracy (mathematics proficiency). At least one study found a more consistent correlation between working memory at age five and later academic success than between IQ test scores and success. At the other end of the spectrum, working memory deficits have been identified as either causing or correlating with poor performance in students under seven, and working memory also works as a better predictor than IQ in whether young children with pronounced learning disabilities will overcome them during their school years. More and more researchers suggest that working memory deficits are the most important learning problem to correct among young children, in terms of mitigating the impacts of dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, and other problems.

The impact of working memory on verbal memory is also demonstrated by the reductions to working memory capacity in patients with neurological disorders that affect their language abilities. Parkinson's sufferers, for example, show a reduction in verbal working memory capacity, the effects of which are exacerbated by interference with attentional control.

Verbal working memory is key to both retention and language production. The link between verbal working memory and language production was discovered in the 1980s and developed further in the twenty-first century after work by Albert Ellis highlighted the similarity between errors in verbal working memory and mistakes in speech (such as accidentally speaking a word that sounds similar to the word that was intended, or reversing the order of sounds or words). Language production is the ordering and maintenance of linguistic information, such as by speaking or writing, and is categorized by researchers into various levels, from short utterances to phrases to messages (output that includes more than one point).

Issues

Verbal memory is often tested with the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), which presents the patient with a succession of trials, in each of which the patient is read a list of ten words and asked to recall as many of the words as possible. The same list is presented five times, followed by another list, followed by an attempt to recall words from the first list. The RAVLT provides a quick diagnostic for short-term verbal memory and rate of learning.

When there is cause to believe that verbal memory and learning have been impaired, such as by concussion or possible injury, a tool called the Affective Word List (AWL) is used to measure performance. The AWL was originally developed to assess affective bias—positive or negative emotional responses, which can be indicated by word choice—as an indicator of mood in patients, who might not self-disclose the extent of their depression or other issues. Because the AWL takes the form of a list-learning task, it has found a secondary use in testing verbal memory (Meyer & Arnett, 2015).

Lifelong bilingualism—growing up fluent in two languages—has been shown to improve the development of the executive functions in children. In particular, bilingual children are better able to multitask and task-shift (the involuntary cognitive process of shifting attention back and forth among multiple tasks) than monolingual English speakers are. There are also a number of benefits to verbal learning and reasoning. For example, bilingual children are less likely to rely on the mutual-exclusivity bias, a phenomenon in young children in which a child assumes that an object has only one name, or the shape bias, a tendency to use the same term for multiple objects that have the same shape.

Furthermore, research has found that while the greatest benefits are seen in lifelong bilingual speakers—those who learned both languages at the same time, in infancy—students who are native speakers of English attending dual-immersion programs at a young age outperform monolingual students in many cognitive processes, especially verbal memory and the skills predicated thereon. This has important implications in curriculum design of early education, and is only one of many areas of research that have pointed to how much greater and more comprehensive the benefits of foreign language instruction are in younger age groups than at the high school or college level.

Terms & Concepts

Explicit Memory: Explicit memory or declarative memory is long-term memory that requires conscious effort to trigger recall of remembered events or information.

Implicit Memory: Implicit memory or nondeclarative memory is long-term memory that is both accessed and acquired unconsciously; one of the best-known forms is procedural memory, the memory process involved in remembering how to perform tasks without having to consciously try to remember them or to recall verbal instructions about them—such as tying shoes or riding a bicycle.

Neurodevelopmental Disorder: Any of a large variety of disorders that impact learning ability, memory, self-control, and other cognitive functions, including autism spectrum disorders, speech and communication disorders, intellectual disability, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Verbal Learning: Verbal or linguistic learning is a learning style that emphasizes language; verbal learners benefit from reading and writing more than other forms of learning.

Verbal Memory: Verbal memory is the memory of information in the form of language.

Working Memory: Working memory is a short term memory system that is used in reasoning and decision-making, as well as playing an important role in learning.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Benavides-Varela, S., & Mehler, J. (2015). Verbal positional memory in 7-month-olds. Child Development, 86(1), 209–223. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=100988947&site=ehost-live

Carey, S. S., Shusterman, A., Haward, P., & Distefano, R. (2017). Do analog number representations underlie the meanings of young children's verbal numerals? Cognition, 168, 243–255. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=124794750&site=ehost-live

Ferreri, L., & Verga, L. (2016). Benefits of music on verbal learning and memory: How and when does it work? Music Perception, 34(2), 167–182.

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Kurtz, M. M., Trask, C. L., Rosengard, R., Hyman, S., Kremen, L., Mehta, S., & ... Choi, J. (2017). Verbal learning and memory enhancement strategies in schizophrenia: A randomized, controlled investigation. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 23(4), 352–357.

Majerus, S., & Barisnikov, K. (2018). Verbal short-term memory shows a specific association with receptive but not productive vocabulary measures in Down syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 62(1), 10–20. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=126599285&site=ehost-live