Continuing my series of bits from the nice outline (by “gwennis48” at the Luther I. Replogle Foundation) of key points from the presentation that Andy Goodman delivered. I’ve blogged previously about my fondness for Goodman’s Web site and company…
To illustrate the effectiveness of stories for memory and learning, Goodman noted that when told to remember pairs of words, a group of 5-year-olds can remember one pair out of 21; if they make a sentence out of the pairs, they remember 8 of 21; if they make a question about the pairs, they remember 16 of 21. If the pair is “soap” and “shoe,” the question might be “Who put the soap in my shoe?” The research subjects remember when they ask a question because the question helps them make a story.