Hierarchical Theory Of Motivation In The Charge Of The Light Brigade

Researchers claim to have discovered a new trick to improve students’ memory. Their hypothesis is that simply telling students they are going to have to teach someone else will improve their retention. To test this, a study was conducted where fifty-six undergraduates were selected and split into two groups; each of the two groups were given ten minutes to read a 1500 word passage about fictional depictions of The Charge of The Light Brigade. Then the two groups were each told separate events would happen following the reading. The first group was told that they would have a test immediately following the reading, whereas, the second group was told that they would have to teach another student. Both of these groups were not allowed to take notes and were then tested on their retention of the material twenty-five minutes after the completion of the exercise. For the test they had to recall as much information as possible from the article and then they were asked specific questions about the content. The results showed that the students who thought they were going to have to teach someone else the material had better recollection of the facts from the text, quicker recall for these points, and more accurate details of the main events and structure of the original text. In addition to this, the researchers conducted another study similar to the first, but this time they had students read an article on neurobiology. The test that followed this reading had students answer fill in the blank questions that were based on verbatim quotes pulled from the article. The results for this were not as brightly lit. The researchers still found that the students who thought they were going to have to teach the material, did show better recall of the main points from the article, but they were not able to recall more information overall. These results are very intriguing; however, I question some of …show more content…
When students just simply learn and then take tests, it is not any different than the routine day to day activities of college. Many students may be at a less than optimal level of arousal in the day to day and by adding this new stimulus of not just learning, but having to teach material that was just learned, it raises the students arousal level causing them to put more effort into learning the material. Also the aspect that they are accountable for not just their own success, but also someone else’s success would drive many of the students according to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchical Model of Motivation. For the students that were trying to achieve or maintain the fourth level known as the need for esteem, this would create a dilemma. The fact that they could be seen as incompetent to the person that they would teach if they do not understand the material adequately would drive many to put extra effort into learning the material in order to avoid …show more content…
The discovered technique is effective because of its utilization of the Optimal Arousal and Hierarchical Models of motivation thus driving the students to put more effort into their learning, and the benefits are seen in the results of the memory tests. Hopefully I will see further research in this method in the future and with the right results it can be properly utilized in our public health