Christopher: I had the exact same reaction to the article! In the case of Watson and Baldwin, the “incident” had some significance because it propelled Watson into the chair at Hopkins and also editor of Psych Review. Did it speed up the flow of behaviorism into the mainstream? Perhaps. But I agree that the line between interesting detail and irrelevant is difficult to draw. When I include such details, they effectively serve as retrieval cues, because part of my exam is matching people to descriptions, and the “deductive details” will appear in the descriptions to be match to the names. A student two years ago, feeling overwhelmed by my notes, asked if all this detail was going to be on the exam. I said “yes, as a retrieval cue” but that did not make him happy. I did not read the details of the article; I would imagine, for the sake of a clear cut manipulation, their seductive details were clearly NOT part of the focus of the material. ============================================ -----Original Message-----
According to a research article in the lastest issue
of Teaching of Psychology (Harp
& Maslich, p. 100ff.), including "seductive details" in lectures
to "spice them up" or make the "more relevant" actually
degrades students' recall of the important facts that were to be learned. -- e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |