SIUE’s Meeks to Reveal New Insights into Memorization and Learning
Memory capability is crucial in the learning process and in education, according to J. Thad Meeks, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
Meeks, a cognitive psychologist, will present his recent findings in the area of memory research at the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s 15th Annual Conference on Teaching (ACT) on Friday, Oct. 21 in Decatur, Ga. Included in Meeks poster presentation will be the study findings of two SIUE Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URCA) students, Nikki Hurley and Krista Sheets.
The poster is entitled, “The Effectiveness of Note-Taking and Immediate Review Strategies on Exam Performance: An Individual Differences Perspective.”
Meeks said his research efforts, both in the past and the future, “support my endeavor to learn more about learning and teaching style to improve educational performance.
“For my sabbatical research, I decided to combine my teaching with my research interests,” he continued. “I wanted to examine whether different study and review strategies affect exam performance and whether this depends on the differences between individuals’ cognitive ability.”
What Meeks and the students discovered was that there were more effective learning strategies that could help a person’s recall abilities.
“We found that in some instances taking notes in one's own words was effective for short answer performance,” he said. “In addition, cognitive ability predicted exam performance, but handwriting speed only predicted performance when participants took notes in their own words.”
“This is important for teaching,” Meeks continued, “because instructors can give advice on note-taking and study strategies based on a student’s individual ability. It’s important, not just for school but also for society, to produce better learners. A higher level of learning and memorization is needed not only for learning in the classroom, but also for everyday memory practices.”
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J. Thad Meeks, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychology.
