Note Taking And Memory In Laboratory Setting: A Levels Of Processing Theory Perspective

The Impact of Note Taking on Memory Recall

Note taking is linked with a positive performance in test and this practice is not lost because the students acknowledge that lecture note taking is related with the positive educational experience. It is important to note that the majority of the college professors teach by giving lectures and at the same time majority of the students have the tendency to take notes in class. Even if the note taking process is beneficial for the students, note taking is a complex process and it requires skills to comprehend what the teacher wants to say (Bui, Myerson & Hale, 2013). Memory can be defined as a faculty of brain that processes information and stores the same through the process of learning. Note taking has a direct relation with the memory. To study the process of note taking, level of process theory will be used. This theory rejects the idea of dual store model of memory. This model postulates that the characteristics of a memory can be determined by its location. The durable memory can be traced to the long term store while, the fragile memory can be traced to the short term store (Craik and Lockhart, 1972).

This study will review a literature “Note-Taking with Computers: Exploring Alternative Strategies for Improved Recall” by Bui, Myerson & Hale, (2013). Correctional analysis of the three studies have revealed that students that took organized notes, for them the working memory predicted a note quantity which helped the students to recall the delayed and the immediate tests. students that tried to transcribe the whole lecture, for them note quantity predicted the recall. The results of the study indicated that individuals that have the poor memory still can take notes effectively by on a computer by transcribing. This method provides the students that has different types of the cognitive capabilities. While it has been argued by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) that students that take notes individually on a computer perform worse in comparison to the ones that takes notes collaboratively. While it has been suggested by Orndorff (2015), that students that take notes collaboratively had shown improved performance in terms of learning outcomes and improvement in grades. Collaborative note taking also hep the students that are poor in taking notes.

This study is to write a laboratory report on psychology and it is based on note taking and memory in laboratory setting. The aim of the study is to select an article for a laboratory report and use a theory called levels of processing theory as a theoretical framework for the study. The hypothesis of the study: the participants that use the traditional methods of note taking are in no way weak in memory than the typed group.

Traditional Hand-Written Note Taking versus Typed Note Taking

300 participants were selected for the study with a gender composition of 60 percent females and 40 percent males. The mean age of the participants is 27.98 years and the standard deviation is of 15.12. The range of the age is of 18 to 70 years.

The study here provides an experimental research design because the entire experiment provides a blueprint and this affects the result of the experiment. The experimental design consists of the experimental group. The independent variable in the study are the quality of the memory of the participants, while the dependent variables of the study include the note taking capacity of the respondents under different scenarios, the skills required for taking notes, and the note taking skills of an individual with a computer. The participants are assigned to watch a video on TED talks and the two groups are asked to take notes in hand written format and are also asked to take the notes through a word processing program. The participants are ten asked to complete two demographic questions. Subsequently, the participants that belong to the typed group are asked to fill the questionnaire in electronic format and the handwritten group are asked to fill questions in hardcopy format.

The participants were asked to view a TED talk show and take typed and hand written respectively depending on the type of the group from which the groups belong. The participants were asked to solve as many answers as they can among 500 mathematical questions in 15 minutes. The participants were also asked to answer questions on the subject they have covered in the TED talk show (Suzuki, 2017) (appendix 1). A demographic questionnaire was used and it was asked to solve by the participants.

The study was advertised on the social media and newspaper so that the general population can participate. The participants that participated into the study are randomly allocated into two groups like handwritten and typed. The entire study was conducted in the laboratory of the USC Sippy Downs campus. Each of the participant regardless of whichever group they were in are asked to meet with and Assistant Researcher where no other participants were present. The Assistant Research read out the entire procedure to each of the participant and the participants were also provided with the tips to aid their memory. The participant was asked to view a TED talk show and consequently take notes on the by writing and by typing the same in a word processing program in a computer. The participants are then asked to fill a demographic questionnaire in typed and electronic for the respective group. In the nest step the participants were asked to provide as many answers to a 500 mathematical question in 15 minutes (appendix 2). The participants were then asked to answer 20 questions that are based on the TED talk show which was previously shown to the participants (appendix 3). At the end of the study the participants were given the opportunity to ask any question related to the experiment.

Note Taking Skills and its Beneficial Impact on Educational Experiences

Data represented the number of correct responses to the memory recall questions. One mark was given to each correct answer, with a maximum of 20 marks possible for each participant. As indicated in Table 1, on average, participants in the handwritten group scored higher than those in the typed group. The spread of scores was similar for both groups, as indicated by the standard deviation and range of scores. However, the handwritten group had higher minimum and maximum scores compared to the typed group. An alpha level of .05 was used for the analysis that tested the hypothesis: the participants that use the traditional methods of note taking are in no way weak in memory than the typed group. The t-test was statistically significant, with the handwritten group demonstrating better memory than the typed group, t (298) = 2.45, p = .019.

Table 1:

Mean scores of the participants in each group

Note-taking	M	S.D	Minimum	Maximum
Handwritten	16.09	2.39	11	18
Typed	13.25	2.31	7	15

Note: n= 150 for each of the note taking group

The hypothesis of the study is that the participants that use the traditional methods of note taking are in no way weak in memory than the typed group. The t-test score denoted that the hand written group showed better memory in comparison to the typed group. This shows that the participants were either not proficient with typing or they do not possess the skills of note taking. While the participants that belonged from the hand written note group performed much better way. It is important to note that the traditional handwriting does not require extra skills during taking notes. Taking notes through traditional methods of handwriting is always fast than operating on a computer or a word processor program. Jotting down information in a hand written format is always format always proved to convenient. One has been proficient with a word processing program to work fast on a computer and take notes subsequently (Kienzle & Hinckley, 2013).

According to the Levels of processing theory by Craik and Lockhart (1972), the memories that are deeply processed stays longer in the memories while shallow processing leads to shorter storage of memories. The deep processes relate to a situation or an object, when meaning of something is thought off in our mind, and when someone processes the importance of something. Deep and semantic processing of information leads to deep thinking and this causes the memory of something to be easily assessed. The video provided a perfect example of maintenance rehearsal in which the speaker tells the audience to repeat the information; and an elaborative rehearsal is conducted in which information relating to exercise is analysed deeply. Limitation of the study is the sample size could have been restricted to a specific age group instead of making it a random assessment (Marshall et al., 2013).

Strength of the study is that the result can be used as an evidence to highlight the importance of taking notes in hand written format rather than emphasizing on the usage of technology. Notetaking depends on the capability of note takers on how fast they can write and take notes (Duran & Frederick, 2013). Thus, it is important to note that when the participants were asked to give answer to the 20 questions based on the TED talk. The hand written group performed in a better way than the typed group because they were able to take notes faster and thus were able to recall properly. The possible research scope in future is to conduct a research within a specific age group. From the above discussion it can be concluded that the t-test was statistically significant, with the handwritten group demonstrating better memory than the typed group. The hypothesis of the study stated that the participants that use the traditional methods of note taking are in no way weak in memory than the typed group. Deep and semantic processing of information leads to deep thinking and this causes the memory of something to be easily assessed.

Reference

Bui, D. C., Myerson, J., & Hale, S. (2013). Note-taking with computers: Exploring alternative strategies for improved recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 299. DOI: 10.1037/a0030367.

Craik, F. I., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 11(6), 671-684. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80001-X

Duran, K. S., & Frederick, C. M. (2013). Information comprehension: Handwritten vs. typed notes. Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences, 12(1). Retrieved from https://www.kon.org/urc/v12/duran.html

Kienzle, W., & Hinckley, K. (2013). Writing handwritten messages on a small touchscreen. In Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services (pp. 179-182). ACM. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2493190.2493200

Marshall, B., Cardon, P., Poddar, A., & Fontenot, R. (2013). Does sample size matter in qualitative research?: A review of qualitative interviews in IS research. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 54(1), 11-22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08874417.2013.11645667

Orndorff III, H. N. (2015). Collaborative Note-Taking: The Impact of Cloud Computing on Classroom Performance. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 27(3), 340-351. Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1093744

Suzuki, W. (2017). Wendy Suzuki: The brain-changing benefits of exercise [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_suzuki_the_brain_changing_benefits_of_exercise