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 CHAPTER V

RAPIDITY OF LEARNING SERIES OF SYLLABLES AS A FUNCTION OF THEIR LENGTH

Section 19.&emsp;Tests Belonging to the Later Period

It is sufficiently well known that the memorisation of a series of ideas that is to be reproduced at a later time is more difficult, the longer the series is. That is, the memorisation not only requires more time taken by itself, because each repetition lasts longer, but it also requires more time relatively because an increased number of repetitions becomes necessary. Six verses of a poem require for learning not only three times as much time as two but considerably more than that.

I did not investigate especially this relation of dependence, which of course becomes evident also in the first possible reproduction of series of nonsense syllables, but incidentally I obtained a few numerical values for it which are worth putting down, although they do not show particularly interesting relations.

The series in question comprised (in the case of the tests of the year 1883-84), 12, 16, 24, or 36 syllables each, and &ensp;9, 6, 3, or 2 series were each time combined into a test.

For the number of repetitions necessary in these cases to memorise the series up to the first errorless reproduction (and including it) the following numerical results were found:

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