"At psychology long past, But short story"

"A Now You All forget", — spoke Will Smith And Tomy Lee Jones V series films O people V black, A then launched mine mysterious device under name "neuralizer". A If We to you say, What commit With people such procedure was at all not necessary? After all according to research Herman Ebbinghaus, through hour after act memorization V our memory remains less 50% information, A To month And Further preserved only 20%, And this number already Not is changing. "Curve forgetting" Ebbinghaus — one from most famous pictures V experimental psychology, But far Not the only one his contribution V this science.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Birth unique

ABOUT early years Not much is known about Hermann Ebbinghaus, who was born on January 24, 1850 in Bermen, in the Rhine Province of Prussia. His father Karl Ebbinghaus was reportedly a wealthy merchant who adhered to the Lutheran faith. The boy himself, at the age of 17, began attending the University of Bonn, where he planned to study history and philology. However, in the future, philosophy occupied the entire area of ​​\u200b\u200bhis interests. But the training, unfortunately (and perhaps fortunately) turned out to be short-lived, as in 1870 it was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war, where Herman went as a simple soldier. He did not stay in the army for a very long time, and, returning from the war, he continued his studies in the field of philosophy, which ended with writing a dissertation on the work of Eduard von Hartmann "Philosophy of the Unconscious". Thus, a very young philosopher at the age of 23 has already received the status of Doctor of Science. After graduating from university, Herman Ebbinghaus traveled around different countries, traveled to France, England, Germany, where he earned his living by tutoring.

The further direction of his life and scientific work decided in England within just one day. It all happened in a bookstore, where the scientist came across a book that described the work of Gustav Fechner "Elements of Psychophysics". The meticulous mathematical calculations presented in the work fascinated and inspired the "latent" mathematician for his research. Later, when evaluating the scientific views of Ebbinghaus, contemporaries will note their uniqueness and the fact that they did not bear the marks of any of the mentors, colleagues or teachers. Even the work of von Hartmann, on which Hermann Ebbinghaus wrote his doctoral thesis, was opposed to the views of the philosopher. But with regard to Fechner's book, one can unequivocally say: it turned out to be a landmark in the life of a scientist. Dedicating his second work "Principles of Psychology" to the inspirer, Ebbinghaus wrote: "I owe everything to you."

Gustav Fechner

"Senseless" memorization

The scientist began his famous mental experiments in 1879. He himself became the object of the study, and the method of assessing his memory was chosen very scrupulously and brought to perfection. In experiments conducted over two periods of one year each, 2300 cards with "nonsense syllables" were used and more than 15,000 of their repetitions. The very term "meaningless syllables" was introduced by the researcher to describe short and meaningless words consisting of three letters(CVC trigrams). They looked like this: in the first and last place there were consonants that did not repeat, and a vowel was placed between them (for example, SHOD, HIB, VYK). The main condition is that these three-letter combinations should not cause any associations, so as not to facilitate the memorization of individual cards and, thereby, not introduce an error into the experiment. The cards were randomly selected from the box and recorded, and further memorization took place aloud to the sounds of a metronome in a specially practiced voice.

There were many options for experience. With the help of them, Ebbinghaus tried to find out various properties of memory: forgetting time and speed, the number of repetitions for better memorization, the time and speed of memorization, the amount of information stored subconsciously, and some others.

A full-fledged result of seven years of work was the book "On Memory" or later translated into English as "Memory: a contribution to psychology." There, in addition to the forgetting curve, the learning curve, the learning method, the savings method, the fact of exercise, as well as the effect of repetition (relearning) and the edge factor were described.

Curve forgetting or curve Ebbinghaus. Line, Agree which memorized information starts sharp be forgotten through 20 minutes And reaches peak through hour; Later pace declining. IN eventually from elementary volume through month We remember order 20% from initial volume information.

Funeral old psychology

The effect of the work followed immediately, the scientific community accepted it extremely approvingly. William James, the founder of functional psychology, even remarked that the work was simply "heroic" and remarked that it was "the single most brilliant study in the entire history of psychology." The famous English psychologist Edward Titchener reacted in a similar way, equating the work with the greatest work on memory since Aristotle. The book "On Memory" also brought the scientist a promotion: a professorship at the University of Berlin, where he was able to open his own laboratory.
A little later, in 1890, Ebbinghaus, together with the German physicist Arthur Könich, founded the psychology journal Psychology and Physiology of the Senses.

Both "Principles of Psychology" and the third, no less famous work " Short description psychology” (however, it was not completely finished by Ebbinghaus himself, but later completed by his colleague Ernst Dürr) went through many reprints, remaining relevant to this day.

However, where there is a place for glory, there is a place for contradiction. No less striking than the works was the public dispute between Ebbinghaus and his former colleague Wilhelm Dilthey. The latter published an article in which he severely criticized experimental psychology, which he considered boring, and extolled descriptive psychology. Dilthey believed that due to the complexity of memory as a phenomenon, the only correct method for studying it is introspection, i.e. self-observation and description of the information received. Hermann Ebbinghaus had to defend his convictions. To do this, he first sent all his comments in a personal letter to a former colleague, and then wrote a public article. Later, the scientific community will note that Ebbinghaus "buried the old psychology of the 1890s."

Intelligence, illusions And standardization

A brilliant scientist who, however, never aspired to scientific fame, but made it so that his work perpetuated his name in the history of psychiatry and in the sciences of the brain and memory. He did not think about becoming a pioneer in the field of experimental study of memory, but in doing so he received extremely important results. Data on learning and forgetting, exercise and memory retention scientific basis all existing methods of learning and memorization.

Among other things, Ebbinghaus is credited with being the first to develop an intelligence test, in which children were asked to complete various sentences. Later, Alfred Binet would borrow the technique and add it to the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. Also, Hermann Ebbinghaus is considered the first to discover the phenomenon of optical illusion, known as the Ebbinghaus illusion.

IllusionEbbinghaus . INam Same Seems, What orange circles different? Two circle, equal By size (V center), surrounded in circles more (left) And lesser (on right) size, from- behind what They seem different.

In conclusion, we note that all the work of the scientist, which did not stop until his death on February 26, 1909, turned out to be important for modern science not only by the data obtained and the methods developed. Ebbinghaus is credited with being the first scientist to draw up a report standard. research work. His article on memory is divided into four parts: introduction, methods, results and discussion. Doesn't that remind you of anything?

Anastasia Natrova

(1850–1909)

January 24, 1850 was born Hermann Ebbinghaus - one of the founders of experimental psychology. Unlike his contemporary W. Wundt, who studied the "primary elements" of consciousness and was convinced that higher mental functions could not be experimentally studied, Ebbinghaus made a bold attempt to study memory using rigorous scientific methods.

A graduate of the University of Bonn, Ebbinghaus spent several years in England and France, earning a living as a tutor. In the shop of a Parisian second-hand book dealer, he accidentally found a book by T. Fechner "Fundamentals of Psychophysics". This event not only dramatically changed the life of Ebbinghaus himself, but also significantly influenced the fate of the entire psychological science.

Fechner's book formulated mathematical laws concerning the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations they evoke. Encouraged by the idea of ​​discovering exact patterns mental processes, Ebbinghaus decided to start experiments on memory. He put them on himself and at the same time was guided by the old idea that people remember, store in memory and reproduce the facts between which associations have developed. But usually these facts are subject to reflection, and therefore it is difficult to establish whether the association arose due to memory, or the mind intervened in the matter. Ebbinghaus set out to establish the laws of memory "in pure form" and for this he invented a special material. The units of such material were separate meaningless syllables, consisting of two consonants and a vowel between them (like “bov”, “gis”, “loch”, etc.). It was assumed that such elements cannot cause any associations, and their memorization is in no way mediated by thought processes and emotions.

Recent research has made it possible to refine the features of Ebbinghaus's experimental material. A careful study of the researcher's notes revealed that some of the syllables he invented had four, five, and even six letters. But something else is more important. In addition to his native German, Ebbinghaus was fluent in English and French, and had a good knowledge of Greek and Latin. At the same time, it was extremely difficult for him to find such combinations of sounds that would sound absolutely meaningless to him and would not give rise to any associations. But in fact, he did not strive for this. In an inaccurate translation, it was customary to call his experimental material "a series of meaningless syllables", while in fact he meant "a meaningless series of syllables." According to Ebbinghaus, it is not individual syllables that should be meaningless (although he managed to achieve this in most cases). Empty, not causing any associations, should be the whole set as a whole. According to some researchers, this calls into question the purity of Ebbinghaus' experiments. However, there is no doubt that for his time his experiments were truly innovative. E. Titchener assessed them as the first significant step in this area since the time of Aristotle.

Having compiled a list of meaningless sound combinations (about 2300 syllables written out on cards), Ebbinghaus experimented with them for five years. He outlined the main results of this study in his classic book"On Memory" (1855). First of all, he found out the dependence of the number of repetitions required to memorize the list on its length, establishing that, as a rule, 7 syllables are memorized when reading simultaneously. When increasing the list, it was required significantly more its repetitions than the number of syllables attached to the original list. The number of repetitions was taken as the memorization coefficient.

The method of conservation developed by Ebbinghaus consisted in the fact that after a certain period of time after the series had been memorized, an attempt was made to reproduce it again. When a certain number of syllables could not be restored to memory, the row was repeated again until it was correctly reproduced. The number of repetitions (or time) it took to restore knowledge of the full series was compared with the number of repetitions (or time) spent in the initial memorization.

The forgetting curve drawn by Ebbinghaus has gained particular popularity. Falling rapidly, this curve becomes flat. It turned out that most of the material is forgotten in the first minutes after memorization. Much less is forgotten in the next few minutes and even less in the coming days. Memorization of meaningful texts and meaningless syllables was also compared. Ebbinghaus memorized the text of Byron's Don Juan and an equal list of syllables. Meaningful material was remembered 9 times faster. As for the forgetting curve, in both cases it had a general shape, although in the first case (with meaningful material) the curve fell more slowly. Ebbinghaus also subjected to experimental study other factors influencing memory (for example, the comparative efficiency of continuous and time-distributed memorization).

Ebbinghaus also owns a number of other works and methods that still retain their significance. In particular, he created a test bearing his name for filling in a phrase with a missing word. This test was one of the first in the diagnosis of mental development and has found wide application.

Although Ebbinghaus did not develop a special theory, his research became key to experimental psychology. They actually showed that memory can be studied objectively, without resorting to the subjective method of finding out what is happening in the mind of the subject. The importance of statistical processing of data was also shown in order to establish the laws that govern, for all their capriciousness, mental phenomena. Ebbinghaus destroyed the stereotypes of the former experimental psychology created by the Wundt school, where it was believed that the experiment is applicable only to the processes caused in the mind of the subject with the help of special devices. The way was opened for experimental study, following the simplest elements of consciousness, complex forms of behavior - skills. The forgetting curve has acquired the value of a model for building future schedules for developing skills, solving problems, etc.

Ebbinghaus founded psychological laboratories at the universities of Berlin, Breslau and Halle. In 1902, the Fundamentals of Psychology manual, which had a huge success, was published, which the author dedicated to the memory of Fechner. The Journal of the Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs, founded by Ebbinghaus, was the first attempt to go beyond the "shop" publications and present the results of scientific research to the general public; This was facilitated by the high requirements for clarity and accessibility of the style of publications.

Ebbinghaus did not create a formal psychological system, did not establish his own scientific school. Yes, he hardly aspired to this. Nevertheless, he managed to occupy an exceptional place in the history of psychological science. The real measure of a scientist's value is how his views and conclusions have stood the test of time. And from this point of view, Ebbinghaus had an even more significant influence on science than Wundt. Ebbinghaus' research brought objectivity to quantitative and experimental methods in the study of higher mental functions. It was thanks to Ebbinghaus that the work in the field of studying associations turned from theorizing about their properties into a truly Scientific research. Many of his conclusions about the nature of learning and memory remain valid even a century later.

It happens very often in foreign language- I remembered the word (two, three, six) and everything seems to be fine, but a couple of hours have passed and, oh my, there is nothing in my head. It's all gone somewhere!

This is how the forgetting mechanism works. It turns out that we also forget according to a certain scheme, for a reason. The German scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied the mechanisms of memory for many years and, having done many experiments, deduced the “Forgetting Curve” or “Ebbinghaus Curve”. In 1885, the scientist published the famous monograph "Über das Gedächtnis". ("About Memory")

These were the first systematic studies of the properties of memory. For experiments, the scientist used meaningless syllables-trigrams. Three-letter combinations: consonant - vowel - consonant. During numerous experiments, it was necessary to memorize lists of 13 syllables and repeat them twice in a row. After some time, Ebbinghaus checked how well this list was preserved in memory.

As a result of these experiments, it turned out that most information is forgotten immediately in the first hours after memorization, and not later. long time as previously thought.

It turned out that 20 minutes after memorization, 40% of the information is forgotten, and after an hour - more than 50%, in a day - 70%. After a month, the forgetting curve slows down so much that it becomes almost horizontal.

How not to forget words and remember for a long time?

Based on his discovery, Ebbinghaus proposed the memorization technique "Remember for a long time." This technique is suitable for any information and data - from meaningless syllables to texts in a foreign language and works of writers. In order not to forget the words and remember them firmly and for a long time, you must follow the following rules:

1. Immediately after reading the material, you must repeat it for the first time.
2. 20 minutes after the first time, a second repetition should be done.
3. 8 hours after the second time - the third repetition.
4. One day after the third repetition, the material is repeated for the fourth time.

Well, in order to remember for a very long time, you need to repeat it after another 2-3 weeks and after 2-3 months.

This method of spaced repetition allows you to remember much more of the desired material.

In addition, Ebbinghaus also measured memorization time. The scientist wanted to know how much faster the repetition of already memorized material is than the study. It turned out that it took 1156 seconds to learn the list of syllables for the first time, and only 467 seconds to update knowledge.

Ebbinghaus also discovered the “edge effect”, when the material that is best remembered is at the beginning and at the end.

How do your plans and intentions affect memorization?

When the material is prepared for a certain period, for example, for an exam, in this case it is forgotten faster than when the material is memorized for a longer period.

In the experiments of A. Aal, students were asked to memorize two passages of the same difficulty. And the students were explained that they would have to reproduce one text the next day, and the other one a week later. But the next day, the check did not take place and, under various pretexts, was postponed for two weeks. When checking in two weeks later, it turned out that the second passage was remembered better, since there was a setting for long-term memorization.

Thus, it became clear that the same material in the same person can remain in memory for a more or less long time, depending on the intention with which this material is learned. This discovery of Aal has a very great theoretical and practical value; it clearly indicates the close connection of memory with the personality, with its integrity, needs, interests. Thus, the well-known phenomenon becomes clear when the material learned specifically for the exam is forgotten immediately after passing the exam.

So, in order not to forget the words and memorize the material for a long time, it is necessary long-term perspective And personal interest, and if to plug such emotions like pleasure, joy, enthusiasm, memorization will become much more efficient and reliable.

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Hermann Ebbinghaus was born on January 24, 1850 in Germany. Herman's parents wanted their son to get a profession that brings a good income, but the boy was very interested in science. Despite the objections of the family, he entered the university, where he got acquainted with the basics of the theory of psychophysics created by G. Fechner. The peculiarity of Fechner's theory was that he considered it possible to measure all mental processes by a quantitative method. After graduation, Ebbinghaus decided to conduct his experiments in line with this theory. He proceeded from the fact that not only elementary mental processes, but also such complex phenomena such as memory

experimental psychology was still underdeveloped at that time, Wilhelm Wundt opened his first laboratory of experimental psychology in Leipzig only in 1879. Ebbingauz had to create his own methods for studying various phenomena, and he himself acted as the object of research.

The main direction of the scientist's research was the study of the problems of the psychology of memory by quantitative methods. In 1885, Ebbinghaus published the book “On Memory”, where he cited some of the laws of this department of psychology. He defined memory as a system consisting of remembering, storing and reproducing information in the future. The basis of this work was the experiments he conducted on himself. Trying to deduce certain laws of memorizing the material and its subsequent reproduction, the scientist compiled 2300 three-letter words, consisting of two consonants and a vowel between them. These words did not have any meaning and, moreover, did not evoke any semantic associations.

During the experiments, he tried and calculated the time and volume of their memorization, found patterns of forgetting. The "forgetting curve", derived by him on the basis of these experiments, is one of the fundamental elements of the psychology of memory. It shows that about half of the memorized material is forgotten in the first half hour after memorization, and during the first hour - already about 60% of the information received. Gradually, the speed of the forgetting process decreases, and after a week, 20% of the information is in memory, which can already be stored for a long time.

This curve, along with the learning curve, is a classic in psychology and is often taken as a basis for developing professional skills, as well as for solving various psychological problems. In addition, Ebbinghaus in his work outlined some features of the reproduction of material of various sizes, as well as fragments of this material of various order. Having developed mathematical models of memory, G. Ebbinghaus was the first to show that the processes of memorization and forgetting are non-linear.

All the research that the scientist conducted was based on memorizing meaningless letter combinations. Meaningful material is remembered somewhat faster, in addition, when memorizing information that carries a specific semantic load, certain effects and patterns operate. So, for example, when memorizing a task, a special effect operates. If the solution of the problem is not completed, it is remembered better and remains in memory longer, while the solved problem is remembered much worse.

In addition, there is an edge effect. The information that is closer to the edge of the list, i.e. either at the end or at the beginning is remembered better, and what is located in the middle disappears from memory faster.

Conducting various experiments, G. Ebbinghaus found that the period for which information is remembered depends on the setting that is in effect during memorization. One of the experiments involved students who were asked to memorize two stories. They were told that the first story would be checked the next day, and the second - not soon. In fact, both stories were checked a month later. It turned out that the students remembered the second story better than the first one. Thus, Ebbinghaus suggested

such a method for better storing information in memory: when memorizing, you need to rely on the fact that this information will definitely be needed in the future.

Also, when memorizing a large amount of various information, there is an effect of “trampling down traces”. The more data similar in content and form a person tries to remember, the worse he succeeds. In studying these patterns, G. Ebbinghaus developed several techniques that can be used to study memory processes.

From memory studies, Ebbinghaus quite naturally moved on to studying various problems of pedagogy. The child's memory is very active and capacious, children and adolescents, if desired, can remember much more information than adults, their memorization speed is also much higher. However, when memorizing, children do much more bugs which causes a rapid loss of information.

G. Ebbinghaus published a number of articles intended both for teachers and parents, and for children. In these works, he offered a number of practical recommendations for improving the quality of memorization. The information that the child receives in the lesson should be actively perceived by him. If, in the process of obtaining knowledge, he tries to think about them, formulate questions and comments, then the memorization process will be more effective.

The information that students receive should be emotionally saturated, then it will be easier to remember, but if there is no emotional coloring, then it needs to be “invented”. In other words, G. Ebbinghaus advised to figure out how to apply the information received in the future or create a humorous interpretation for it.

When memorizing a large amount of material, it is necessary to carefully memorize the information contained in the middle of the educational material, since it is this information that usually falls out of memory most quickly. In order to avoid the effect of "trampling down traces", you need to constantly change the specifics of the material being remembered. The scientist advised at least to alternate natural subjects with the humanities, as well as to change the form of presentation of the material.

Actively dealing with the problems of child psychology, G. Ebbinghaus conducted research on the mental abilities of children different ages, the result of which was the scale of mental abilities. In order to quantify these

abilities, the scientist invented a test, called the Ebbinghaus test.

From the beginning of the 1890s. Ebbinghaus worked in a laboratory where he performed many experiments. He empirically studied the problems of sensory sensation, in particular visual perception. Having collected enough facts, the scientist published several articles on this issue.

Hermann Ebbinghaus died February 26, 1909. His scientific activity was mainly devoted to memory problems. He studied the patterns of remembering and forgetting information, deduced a curve showing the non-linear nature of the process of forgetting.

In addition, G. Ebbinghaus is one of the founders of experimental psychology. He substantiated all his scientific developments with the help of experimentally obtained data. First, he conducted experiments on himself, and then in laboratories. Since experimental psychology was still completely undeveloped at that time, Ebbinghaus had to independently develop methods for working.

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Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909)

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909)

Just a few years after Wundt's statement about the impossibility of an experimental study of higher mental functions, a German psychologist - a loner who worked outside of any universities - began to successfully use experiments to study these processes. Hermann Ebbinghaus was the first psychologist to study memory and learning using the experimental method. Thus, he not only proved that Wundt was mistaken in this matter, but also changed the very way of studying the processes of association and learning,

Before Ebbinghaus, by the generally accepted method - in the most famous works British followers of empirical and associative psychology - was the study of already established associations. The researchers worked as if in the opposite direction - trying to determine the nature of the established relationships.

Ebbinghaus approached the issue from a different angle: from the formation of associations. In this way, he could control the conditions for the emergence of associations and, consequently, make studies of memory processes more objective.

Ebbinghaus's study of the processes of learning and forgetting - a recognized example of a truly brilliant work in experimental psychology - was the first attempt to consider problems that were actually psychological, and not physiological (in contrast to Wundt's experiments). As a consequence, Ebbinghaus's research greatly expanded the horizons of experimental psychology.

Ebbinghaus was born in 1850 in Germany, near Bonn. He studied first at the University of Bonn and then at the universities of Halle and Berlin; During his studies, he was interested in history and literature, as well as philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in 1873, followed by military service during the Franco-Prussian War. For seven years, Ebbinghaus studied at his own expense in England and France, where his scientific interests changed again. About three years before founding his own laboratory, Ebbinghaus bought Fechner's Elements of Psychophysics from a London second-hand book dealer. This incident was destined not only to turn the life of Ebbinghaus himself abruptly, but also to significantly influence the fate of the entire new psychology.

Fechner's mathematical approach to psychic phenomena was a real revelation for the young Ebbinghaus. He decided, by resorting to rigorous systematic measurements, to do for psychology what Fechner had done for psychophysics. Ebbinghaus conceived the idea of ​​applying the experimental method to the study of higher mental functions. Largely due to the popularity of the ideas of British associationists, he chose the psychology of memory as the subject of his future scientific achievements.

Let us consider Ebbinghaus's daring designs in the light of the theme he chose and the situation at that time. No one has yet undertaken to investigate the processes of learning and memory experimentally. The famous psychologist Wilhelm Wundt authoritatively stated that this is impossible. But Ebbinghaus worked independently, had neither an academic position, nor support from any university, nor his own laboratory. And yet, over the course of five years, he conducted a series of most serious and exhaustive scientific experiments, in which he himself was the only test subject.

For the main criterion of the learning process, Ebbinghaus took a method borrowed from associative psychology, based on the law establishing the relationship between the frequency of associations and the quality of memorization. Ebbinghaus argued that the difficulty of memorized material can be measured by the number of repetitions required in order to reproduce this material perfectly. This is another example of the influence of Fechner, who measured sensations indirectly, by measuring the intensity of the stimulus needed to detect a subtle difference in sensations. Ebbinghaus used a similar approach to measure memory: he counted the number of attempts, or repetitions, required to memorize material.

Ebbinghaus used nonsensical lists of three-letter syllables as memory material, repeating them as often as he could to be sure of the accuracy of the experiment. In this way, he could exclude errors that occurred during repetitions and obtain some average value for the evaluation of the memorization process. Eb-bingauz approached his experiments so methodically that he subordinated to them the routine of his whole life - in order to be able to memorize the necessary material at the same hours every day.

Studies with nonsense syllables

As material for his research - material for memorization - Ebbinghaus used nonsense syllables, and this invention of his radically changed the study of the learning process.

Titchener later noted that the use of nonsense syllables was the first notable step in the field since Aristotle.

Ebbinghaus saw difficulty in using poetry or coherent stories as memorization material. In a person familiar with this language, words cause certain associations. These associations may facilitate the process of memorization and, since they will already be present in the subject during the experiment, the researcher will not be able to control them. Ebbinghaus, on the other hand, wanted to use in his experiments material that was completely homogeneous, did not give rise to any associations and was absolutely unfamiliar - material with which the subject had minimal connection. His nonsensical syllables, usually consisting of two consonants and one vowel (such as lef, bok or yat), met these requirements. He painted all possible three-letter combinations on cards, getting a stock of 2300 syllables, from which he randomly chose syllables to memorize.

Recent facts - provided by a German psychologist who studied all the footnotes in Ebbinguaa's publications and the notes he made during the experiments, and also compared English translations his works with original texts in German - give a new interpretation of the meaning of meaningless syllables (GuncUach.1986). They were not complete nonsense, and. It turns out that among them were not only three-letter ones.

A meticulous study of historical data - that is, Ebbinghaus's handwritten notes - turns out that some of the syllables he invented had four, five, and even six letters. More importantly, what Ebbinghaus called "a nonsensical series of syllables" in English language inaccurately translated as "a series of meaningless syllables." According to Ebbinghaus, it is not individual syllables that should be meaningless (although most of them were) - the list as a whole should be meaningless, not causing any associations.

Thanks to this new information, we learned that Ebbinghaus was as fluent in English and French as in his native German; studied Latin and Greek. “In fact, it was quite difficult for him to find such combinations of letters that would sound absolutely meaningless to him. Some of his followers tried in vain to come up with completely meaningless, unassociative syllables> (Gundlach. 1986. P. 469–470).

Ebbinghaus decided to conduct several experiments using nonsense syllables to determine the characteristics of learning and memorization in different conditions. During one of them, he investigated the difference in the speed of remembering a meaningless list of syllables and the speed of remembering meaningful material. To do this, he learned passages from Byron's poem<Дон Жуан>. Each of the stanzas had 80 syllables, and Ebbinghaus calculated that to memorize one stanza, he needed to read it about 9 times. When he learned 80 syllables, he calculated that he had to repeat them at least 80 times. Ebbinghaus came to the conclusion that contentless and unassociated material is almost nine times more difficult to remember than meaningful material.

Ebbinghaus also investigated the dependence of the number of repetitions required for the perfect reproduction of the material presented for memorization, on its volume. He concluded that the larger the amount of material, the more repetitions are required to memorize it, and, consequently, more time. The average time spent memorizing one syllable increases as the number of syllables increases. Frankly, this conclusion is easily predictable: the more we need to learn, the more time we will spend. But the work of Ebbinghaus is valuable for its thoroughness, strict control over compliance with the conditions of the experiment, mathematical analysis data. Great importance has the conclusion of Ebbinghaus that with an increase in the list of syllables, the time for memorizing each syllable and the total time for memorizing all syllables increases.

Ebbinghaus studied other factors that, in his opinion, can affect memory and learning. This is the effect of excessive memorization (there are more repetitions of the material than is required for its flawless reproduction), and associations within the list of syllables, and the repetition of already learned material, and the time between memorization and recall. Based on the study of the influence of the time factor on memory processes, Ebbinghaus compiled a forgetting curve (“Ebbinghaus curve”), according to which the material is most quickly forgotten in the first few hours after memorization, and then the forgetting rate slowly decreases (Fig. 4.1).

In 1880, Ebbinghaus received a position at the University of Berlin, where he continued his research, conducting additional experiments and rechecking the results obtained earlier. He described his experiments in the work "On Memory" (liber das Cedachtnis), which in the history of psychology to this day remains, perhaps, the most brilliant scientific work written by an independent researcher. It marks not only the beginning new area research, but also exemplary professional excellence and the persistence of its author. There is no other figure in the history of psychology like Ebbinghaus, a scientist who, working without any support, was able to subordinate his whole life to scrupulous experimentation. His experiments were carried out with such precision, thoroughness and methodicalness that for more than a hundred years they have been referred to in all textbooks on psychology.

Other studies of Ebbinghaus

Ebbinghaus did not mind that other scientists developed his research topic, improving the methodology. After 1885 he published not many works. In 1886 he was appointed assistant professor at the University of Berlin. He created a laboratory. and in 1890, together with the physicist Arthur Koenig, he founded the Journal of the Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs. In Germany, there was a need for such a journal, since Wundt's journal. the press organ of the Leipzig laboratory was simply not able to cover all the research being carried out at that time. The need for a new journal, only nine years after the founding of Wundt's journal, is evidence of the rapid development of the new psychology.

In the first issue of their journal, Ebbinghaus and Koenig made a bold statement about the two disciplines featured in its title: psychology and physiology. They wrote that these sciences "developed together ... to merge into a single whole: they stimulated and predicted the development of each other, and therefore are two equivalent parts of one great science" (Turner. 1982. P. 151). Such a statement, only two years after the opening of Wundt's laboratory, also testifies to how far his idea of ​​a new science has advanced.

At the University of Berlin, Ebbinghaus was never promoted again, apparently because he was rarely published. In 1894 he accepted an offer to work at the University of Breslau, where he remained until 1905. Ebbinghaus developed a test that asked you to complete a sentence; in a modified form, this test is also used for simultaneous testing of intelligence.

In 1902 he published his enormously successful manual, Principles of Psychology (Grundziige der Psychologie), which the author dedicated to Fechner's memory. Even more popular was Ebbinghaus's Essays in Psychology (Abriss der Psychologie.

1908). Both works were repeatedly reprinted not only during his lifetime, but also after the death of Ebbinghaus. In 1905, Ebbinghaus became a professor at the University of Halle, where he died of pneumonia four years later.

Ebbinghaus made no theoretical contribution to psychology; he did not create a formal system, he did not educate students who became outstanding scientists. He did not found his own school, and hardly thought about it. And yet, his place in the history of psychology is determined not only by the fact that he laid the foundation for experimental studies of memory.

The only measure of a scientist's worth is whether or not he scientific views and conclusions the test of time. And from this point of view, Ebbinghaus had a more significant influence on science than Wundt. Ebbinghaus' research brought the objectivity of quantitative and experimental methods to the study of higher mental processes - one of the central themes of modern psychology. It was thanks to Ebbinghaus that work in the field of the study of associations turned from theorizing about their properties into genuine scientific research. Many of his conclusions about the nature of learning and memory remain valid even a century after their appearance.

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From the author's book

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Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) Personality and inkblots Hermann Rorschach was born on November 8, 1884 in Zurich (Switzerland). He was the eldest son of an unsuccessful painter who was forced to earn his living by giving art lessons at school. Herman from childhood was fascinated by color