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The effects of golf expertise and presentation modality on memory for golf and everyday items
Acta Psychologica 128 (2008) 298–303
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Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy
The effects of golf expertise and presentation modality on memory for golf and everyday items Katinka Dijkstra a,*, Clare MacMahon b,1, Mine Misirlisoy c,2 a
Department of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, T13-39, 3062 PA Rotterdam, Netherlands Motor Learning and Skilled Performance, School of Human Movement, Recreation, and Performance, Victoria University, CRICOS Provider No. 00124K, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne, VIC 8001, Australia c Middle East Technical University, 06531 Ankara, Turkey b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 14 May 2007 Received in revised form 28 February 2008 Accepted 4 March 2008 Available online 25 April 2008 PsycINFO classification: 2340 2343 Keywords: Cognition Declarative memory Expertise Motor processes
a b s t r a c t The present study assessed whether golf expertise, presentation modality, and domain relevance affected memory for golf-related and everyday items. Forty-eight experienced golfers and 48 non-golfers were compared in their memory for golf-related (‘‘putt to the hole”) and everyday (‘‘turn on the lamp”) items. To-be-remembered items were presented verbally, visually, or were enacted. Enacted information was recalled best, followed by visually presented information. Combined effects of modality and golf expertise on recall of golf items were demonstrated on immediate but not on delayed recall. The findings suggest that recall of domain-relevant information is optimal when one has relevant background knowledge, and under conditions of visual encoding. The data support research on facilitation of domain-relevant knowledge on recall [Weber, N., & Brewer, N. (2003). Expert memory: The interaction of stimulus structure, attention, and expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 295–308]. Interpersonal body representation may have played a role in recall processes among experts [Thomas, R., Press, C., & Haggard, P. (2006). Shared representations in body perception. Acta Psychologica, 121, 317–330]. Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Suppose a golf expert has to remember golf exercises that she read, observed, or performed. Which of the three encoding modalities would facilitate recall the most? What if the person being presented with these golf exercises has never played golf in her life? Would the same modality facilitate recall for a beginner as for an expert? Knowing the best way to present sports-related information to athletes for later recall or skill acquisition could help make training strategies used by athletes and coaches more effective (Magill, 2003). The current study examines whether encoding in an enactment modality yields higher recall in combination with level of expertise and domain relevance of these materials relative to a verbal or visual encoding condition and when materials are not domain-relevant. Research has demonstrated superiority effects of enactment on recall (Bäckman, 1985; Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006; Engelkamp &
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 10 408 8657; fax: +31 10 408 9009. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K. Dijkstra), [email protected] (C. MacMahon), [email protected] (M. Misirlisoy). 1 Tel.: +61 3 9919 5410; fax: +61 3 9919 4891. 2 Tel.: +90 312 210 5107; fax: +90 312 210 7975. 0001-6918/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.03.001
Zimmer, 1997) and expertise on recall of domain-relevant materials (Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979; Fincher-Kiefer, Post, Greene, & Voss, 1988; Hambrick & Engle, 2002) in separate studies. Studies examining combined effects of modality and expertise, however, have not systematically compared encoding conditions with differential recall of domain-relevant and irrelevant stimulus materials (Noice & Noice, 2006; Noice, Noice, & Kennedy, 2000; Starkes, Deakin, Lindley, & Crisp, 1987). Such a comparison could be helpful in demonstrating superiority of certain domain-based encoding modalities over others. This in turn can be used to devise effective domain-relevant training strategies, such as movements that focus on precision skills, and could be more effective for skill acquisition and retention than watching another athlete perform that action or reading about that action. The enactment effect, i.e., superiority of an enactment encoding modality for recall relative to verbally or visually encoded material has been demonstrated repeatedly in different empirical studies (Bäckman, 1985; Cohen, 1983; Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006; Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997; Mulligan & Hornstein, 2003). Expertise effects in the recall of domain-relevant materials have also been demonstrated, for materials that were read (Chiesi et al., 1979; Fincher-Kiefer et al., 1988; Recht & Leslie, 1988; Schneider, Bjorklund, & Maier-Brückhner, 1996; Walker, 1987), heard (Morrow et al.,
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2003; Weber & Brewer, 2003) or viewed (Starkes et al., 1987) by experts. These findings suggest that enactment may offer an optimal environment for encoding new information and incorporating it within existing knowledge structures (Nilsson & Cohen, 1988). An enacted item involves a motoric trace as well as a verbal trace associated with the item and is also associated with the physical environment in which the action was performed (Nilsson & Bäckman, 1989). Moreover, enactment enhances the encoding of item-specific information which makes those items more distinctive than when they are encoded only verbally (Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997). This facilitation is limited to encoding. Retrieval enactment does not improve memory for items encoded in an enactment or verbal condition (Kormi-Nouri, Nyberg, & Nilsson, 1994). Expertise is another factor that may facilitate recall although it is constrained to stimulus materials that are relevant to the domain of expertise. One of the reasons for this facilitation is that relevant knowledge structures in long-term memory can be utilized to process and incorporate incoming information from that domain, thereby reducing demands on cognitive resources (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). Moreover, the development of complex representations of relevant stimulus materials may allow them immediate access to information that is relevant to the domain (Feltovich, Prietula, & Ericsson, 2006). Experts in baseball can therefore more easily detect changes in baseball descriptions than non-experts, possibly because those changes were inconsistent with experts’ schemas on baseball that they had developed over time (Chiesi et al., 1979). Non-experts would have insufficient baseball knowledge to develop such schemas in the first place. Benefits of using task-relevant processing strategies were demonstrated in studies in which baseball expertise facilitated working memory span for baseball-related sentences (Fincher-Kiefer et al., 1988) and memory for information regarding narratives about baseball (Recht & Leslie, 1988; Walker, 1987). Apparently, background knowledge in a given domain facilitates processing of new domain-relevant information because it can be mapped on to an existing knowledge structure. Likewise, successive domain-relevant actions allow individuals with high levels of knowledge in a certain domain to utilize the meaningfulness and structure in stimulus sequences to integrate information, thereby limiting the demands on working memory. So far, only few studies have examined facilitation of both enactment and expertise on recall of domain-relevant stimulus materials (Noice et al., 2000; Starkes et al., 1987). Such a combined approach could yield higher benefits for immediate and long-term recall because of a more efficient use of cognitive resources coupled with the opportunity to use task-relevant processing strategies in a rich encoding environment. Long-term memory facilitation of enacted domain-relevant stimulus materials by experts was observed in studies of professional actors whose recall was reassessed after three months (Noice & Noice, 1999), and five months (Noice et al., 2000) even if the movement was not semantically congruent with the stimulus materials. Immediate benefits of enactment and expertise on recall of domain-relevant material were demonstrated by Starkes and colleagues (1987) in the form of better recall for expert dancers than novices after viewing motoric ballet sequences (Starkes et al., 1987). The difference between experts and novices for enacted recall (i.e., dancing the sequences) and verbal recall was highest for moves towards the middle of the sequence for enacted recall and towards the end of the sequence for verbal recall. There was no difference between structured verbal and enacted recall, however. The combination of enactment, expertise and domain relevance of stimulus materials resulted in high recall performance in the
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studies discussed above. However, there are some limitations in these studies that restrict generalization of the findings to facilitation of modality and expertise on recall of domain-relevant stimulus materials. First, the study by Noice and colleagues included experts only (Noice et al., 2000). Therefore, no insight into the potential facilitation of expertise on domain-relevant materials could be gained. Secondly, the study by Starkes and colleagues employed different encoding (visual) and retrieval strategies (enactment, verbal recall) and included a structured/unstructured sequence condition which made it difficult to determine what the benefits of enactment were, particularly because no significant differences in enacted and verbal recall were found (Starkes et al., 1987). This lack of benefit for enactment at retrieval (see also Kormi-Nouri et al., 1994) could be due to the absence of an enactment condition during encoding. Third, neither study manipulated the domain relevance of the stimuli materials, for example by comparing recall of domain-related materials with that of materials outside the domain. Therefore, the contribution of expertise on recall of domain-relevant materials could not be determined other than in differences between experts and novices. Finally, as is common in expertise studies, the sample size was relatively small including six actors (Noice et al., 2000) and eight dancers per condition (Starkes et al., 1987), respectively. The current study, therefore, systematically compared different modalities at encoding only, varied the domain relevance of the stimulus materials in relation to the population recalling these materials, experts versus controls, and included a larger sample size. The aim was to provide support for an enactment superiority effect for recall of domain-specific items by experts as the result of a rich, multi-modal encoding environment leaving a more elaborate and distinct memory trace than verbally or visually encoded items (Nilsson & Bäckman, 1989). This view is consistent with an embodied view of cognition that considers memory processes to be part of a real-world environment involving perception and action which are grounded in experiences in this environment (Barsalou, Niedenthal, Barbey, & Ruppert, 2003; Glenberg, 1997; Wilson, 2002). According to this view, a stimulus item is stored in the motor pathways that were involved when this item was initially processed (Dijkstra, Kachak, & Zwaan, 2007). Performing an action, particularly the type of action that has been executed repeatedly as part of a lengthy skill acquisition, should therefore be easier to remember than reading about such actions or viewing those actions because of the way these enacted items are stored relative to differently encoded stimulus materials. We hypothesized that greatest recall benefits would occur for experts when processing domain-relevant stimulus materials in an enactment modality because new domain-relevant information could be processed more quickly, and organized and incorporated better within existing stores of relevant information, (Hodges, Starkes, & MacMahon, 2006). Such recall benefits were expected to be absent for novices and for items in the verbal modality because they would lack the multi-modal processing environment. A visual encoding condition was added because recent evidence suggested that visual encoding may yield similar recall performance for action sequences in a naturalistic setting of packing a backpack (Steffens, 2007). As the current study included action sequences in a naturalistic environment, visual encoding could facilitate recall to a certain extent as well. Following findings in earlier studies (Noice & Noice, 1999; Noice et al., 2000), we also explored whether modality and domain-relevant knowledge would have longer lasting effects in addition to effects in immediate recall. This could not only replicate findings for immediate recall but also provide insight into what factors specifically contribute to lasting effects on recall. It is likely that specifics of a facilitative encoding environment in conjunction with
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expertise for domain-relevant materials would be incorporated into long-term memory structures that would facilitate access to these materials over time (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). The current study presented stimulus materials in three different modalities: a verbal, a visual, and an enactment condition. In the verbal condition, participants read out actions loud from a card. In the visual condition, participants watched video clips of a model performing the actions, and in the enactment condition, participants acted out the actions which were presented to them auditorily. Expertise was manipulated by recruiting groups of skilled golfers and groups of non-golfers (controls) with no golfing experience. We also manipulated the domain-relevant content of stimulus items (golf items, e.g. ‘‘putt to the hole” versus everyday items, e.g. ‘‘close the book on the desk”). Although putting is only one way golfers play their game (in addition to the ‘‘drive” and the ‘‘swing”), the putting movement is a relatively subtle and controlled movement conducted within a small geographical area in which many variations as direction, speed, or precision can occur. 2. Method 2.1. Participants Informed consent was obtained from 96 participants (mean age = 43.4, SD = 24.1, range = 18–85; 82% Caucasian; education = 14.9, SD = 2.9). Half of the participants were golfers with a handicap of 19 or below (mean handicap = 9.7, SD = 4.7, range 0– 19), the other half were non-golfer controls. Exclusion criteria for golfers were a handicap of 20 or higher and lack of current active golf status. Controls had to have never played golf in their life. All participants were right-handed and filled out a questionnaire regarding participation in sports and non-golfers indicated that they had never played golf. Apart from their golf experience, both groups were comparable in age, education level, and subjective health rating. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board. 2.2. Procedure Participants signed the consent form and received instructions in a waiting room, which was different from the experiment room. The instructions were that they would either read out loud an item from a card that the experimenter would hold in front of them (approximately 15 in. from their face), or watch video clips of an action on a laptop (performed by a golfer with a 0 handicap), or physically perform an action they were verbally told by the experimenter. They were also told that some of the items would relate to the game of golf and some of the items would not. An example card with an everyday item (‘‘push the chair under the desk”) was used to explain the instructions for the three modalities. After the instructions, the participant was asked to repeat back to the experimenter what they should do when the item was presented on a card (verbal condition), on a video clip (visual condition), or as a verbal instruction (enactment condition). The experiment proceeded only after the participant was able to repeat the instructions correctly. Still in the waiting room, participants chose from among five putters of different heights and one left-handed putter, and subsequently practiced five practice putts in order to become familiar with the speed of the golf ball on a carpeted surface. Participants were then brought into the experiment room where they proceeded with their first task. Each participant was presented with 12 items in each modality, a total of 36 actions. The experiment room was set up in a way that allowed for 18 different putts to be made. There were three possible starting posi-
tions, indicated by markers on the floor (#1, #2, and #3). Eleven targets were marked with tape (e.g., a circle or the letter ‘‘A”), and one target was to hit the bottom of the desk in the room. Four of the eleven targets were on an inclined ramp lined with a felt ‘‘golf mat”, while the others were all on the floor of the room. A description of all 36 experimental items is listed in Appendix A.3 The experimenter announced the condition (verbal, visual, action) prior to presenting the items in one condition. Conditions were blocked, with the order of the conditions randomized across subjects and yoked between groups. Half of the 36 items were golfrelated (e.g., ‘‘from start position 2, putt to the ”), whereas half were not (e.g., ‘‘close the book on the desk”). After every three items, participants performed a filler task to prevent rehearsal of items. Filler tasks consisted of counting backwards or forwards by 3s, 7s, and 9s starting at different numbers, or generating as many boys names/girls names/TV-shows/names of plants as possible. They were different from the items in the verbal condition because the participant had to generate numbers or names, whereas the verbal condition involved reading out loud an action sentence. Filler tasks were done for approximately 10 s between every three items. After completing all 36 items, participants were taken to the waiting room and tested in their recall of items from all three conditions. The experimenter prompted (e.g., ‘‘anything else?”) until the participant felt no more items could be recalled. Recall testing was unexpected, and took place in the waiting room in order to prevent recall facilitation from the experimental environment. Participant responses were recorded on an Olympus digital recorder for later transcription and scoring. At the end of the experiment, participants were given a debriefing sheet that contained the phone number of an experimenter and were instructed to call on a Wednesday, the week after the experiment as a prospective memory task. The task was in fact a delayed recall task in which participants were asked what items they remembered from the previous week. The true purpose of this task was not revealed to avoid rehearsal of item information during the delay. To ensure compliance with the task, participants were told that the phone call was a crucial and important part of the experiment. The time between the experiment and delayed recall was 7 days in the vast majority of the cases, but occasionally was one or two days shorter.4 Research on delayed recall is usually done after a week (de Groot, 2006) which provides a good comparison with immediate recall. If a participant forgot to call back, the first author called this person until contact was established. Three participants could not be reached after five attempts and had missing delayed recall data (1 in the control and 2 in the expertise group). Scoring was done afterwards based on the transcripts of the immediate recall data and notes taken during delayed recall data. A conservative scoring method was utilized by only awarding points for action items (1 point per item) that were recalled entirely and in the correct modality (i.e., ‘‘Putt to target A” would be awarded a point whereas ‘‘Putt to the target” would not be awarded a point). If an action item was recalled in the wrong modality, which happened occasionally, a half point was awarded to this item. 2.3. Design The study was a 2 3 2 mixed design, including the betweensubjects factor expertise (golfers, controls) and the within-subjects
3 Even though these targets do not all match targets in a golf match, they can be considered appropriate items for practice situations (e.g., putt to the leaf, or alongside the edge of the field). 4 This information was not recorded; therefore no statistical comparisons could be made.
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factors of modality (verbal, visual, or enacted) and item type (golf or everyday item). As from a theoretical point of view no higher order interactions were expected with time of recall, analyses were run separately for immediate and delayed recall.
6
3. Results
4
6
# items
In order to test our hypotheses, we performed analyses of variance with the relevant target variables. Alpha level was set at .05 unless otherwise noted. The first hypothesis predicted combined effects of modality, expertise, and item type with highest expected recall for enacted golf items by golfers. Fig. 1 displays the data for immediate recall for golfers and controls, respectively. The 2 3 2 repeated measures ANOVA showed that the three-way interaction of expertise, item type, and modality was significant, F(2, 188)=3.84, MSe = 1.59, p < .05, g2 = .039. Whereas the modality by expertise interaction was not significant, (F < 1.4), the interaction between item type and expertise indicated that domain-relevant content (golf-related item content) was recalled better by experts than controls, as predicted, F(1, 94) = 5.830, MSe = 1.83, p < .05, g2 = .058. The interaction between modality and item type, F(2, 94) = 6.40, MSe = 1.59, p < .01, g2 = .064 demonstrated higher recall in the enactment than in the visual and verbal condition for golf, t(95) = 10.33, p < .001, t(95) = 14.28, p < .001 and everyday items, t(95) = 7.70, p < .001, t(95) = 19.69, p < .001, respectively; higher recall for golf items than everyday items in the verbal condition, t(95) = 5.32, p < .001, and marginally higher recall for golf items than everyday items in the enactment condition, t(95) = 1.78, p = .077. There was no difference in recall for golf and everyday items in the visual condition however (t < 1). This differential pattern for recall in the visual condition can be ascribed to differences between experts and controls in memory for golf items, t(95) = 2.10, p < .05, with experts demonstrating higher recall for golf items than controls in the visual condition. The three-way interaction supported the predicted superiority of domain-relevant content by experts in that domain, and the superiority of enactment over other modalities in immediate recall of golf-related and everyday stimulus materials. Rather than a strengthening effect of expertise and enactment, in combination with domain-relevant content on recall, a different pattern was observed. There was no overall difference in recall for golf-related
5
verbal
3
visual enacted
2
1
0 golf-related
golfers
everyday
golf-related
everyday
controls
Fig. 2. Delayed recall for golf and everyday items by golfers and controls.
and everyday items in the visual condition but higher recall for golf items by experts than controls. Regarding delayed recall, combined effects of modality, expertise, and item type were expected to occur. Fig. 2 displays the data for delayed recall among experts and controls. The three-way interaction between expertise, item type and stimulus organization was not significant (F < 1), nor was there a significant interaction between modality and expertise, (F < 1.1). There was a significant interaction between item type and expertise, F(1, 91) = 9.67, MSe = 1.11, p < .01, g2 = .096 demonstrating higher recall of golf items by experts as expected. There was also a significant interaction between modality and item type, F(2, 182)=7.506, MSe = 1.76, p = .01, g2 = .076, demonstrating, again, a superiority of recall in the enactment modality over the visual and verbal modality for both golf, t(92) = 10.16, p < .001, t(92) = 16.88, p < .001, and everyday items, t(92) = 6.09, p < .001, t(92) = 19.21, p < .001 and higher recall for golf than everyday items in the verbal, t(92) = 3.48, p < .001, and enactment condition, t(92) = 3.35, p < .001, but no difference in recall for golf and everyday items in the visual condition (t < 1.5). The pattern of results suggests no difference in effects of expertise and modality on delayed recall of domain-relevant or everyday items because the three-way interaction was not significant. However, higher recall for golf items by experts relative to controls and superiority of enactment for recall were replicated for delayed recall and were consistent with our predictions.
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4. Discussion verbal
# items
4
visual enacted
3
2
1
0 golf-related
golfers
everyday
golf-related
everyday
controls
Fig. 1. Immediate recall for golf and everyday items by golfers and controls.
Effects of expertise, modality, and domain-relevant item content were predicted and found on immediate and delayed recall of to-be-remembered materials. Specifically, enactment facilitated immediate and delayed recall of both golf items and everyday items. Moreover, experts recalled golf items better than everyday items. These findings support earlier research demonstrating effects of enactment (Bäckman, 1985; Bäckman & Nilsson, 1984; Cohen, Peterson, & Mantini-Atkinson, 1987; Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997), and expertise on recall (Starkes et al., 1987; Weber & Brewer, 2003). The predicted combined effect of enactment and expertise on recall of golf items was not demonstrated, however. Instead, a more complex pattern occurred. Experts had higher immediate recall of golf items in the visual modality than controls, whereas
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the enactment superiority tended to be a more general phenomenon that was observed in controls as well as experts. There may be several explanations for this finding. Better immediate recall of golf items in the visual condition may reflect golfers’ practice of observing golf actions performed by others (e.g., competitors), often for skill acquisition and refinement purposes. During the experiment, several golfers commented on the high degree of skill of the model in the video clips, a golfer with a 0 handicap. Thus, golfers may have found more meaning and information in the golf clips than the clips depicting everyday actions. They may have also been able to incorporate this information into existing schemas of golf exercises or golf-related knowledge in general. What may have contributed to facilitation of observing is the phenomenon of interpersonal body representation, the relation between the self and other body events (Thomas, Press, & Haggard, 2006). If a body event is observed in others, such as raising a hand, it would be followed by an association that is made between the body event and the person observing the body event (Thomas et al., 2006). For example, a golf expert who observes a video clip of a golfer performing the difficult task of putting a golf ball to stop on a square may imagine what movements he or she would make to accomplish the same task. A relation between the self and other body events has also been found in research on mirror neuron systems (Gallese & Goldman, 1998). Motor evoked potentials during grasping observation that were recorded from hand muscles increased relative to a detection task (Fadiga, Fogassi, Pavesi, & Rizzolatti, 1995). This increase only occurred in the specific muscles that participants would use themselves if they were in a situation that they would perform these movements in themselves. Moreover, stronger bilateral brain activation was demonstrated when expert dancers observed motor movements that were part of their own (expert) motor repertoire compared to movements they were never trained to do (Calvo-Merino, Glaser, Grèzes, Passingham, & Haggard, 2005). Moreover, Steffens demonstrated high recall of encoded verb-object phrases in a visual (observation) and an enactment condition relative to a verbal condition (2007), which is suggestive of a similar facilitation of visual and enactment encoding. One of the reasons that visual encoding was helpful in this particular study is that enactment may sometimes provoke item-specific processing at the expense of processing relations between items. If the stimuli materials include action sequences visual encoding may be as effective. We can relate those findings to the findings of the current study by assuming that experts show interpersonal body representation only when encoding domain-relevant material because of their skill and experience to transfer observed domain-specific action to a simulation of how they could execute this action. The process of observing, then creating a representation of the action within the relevant domain should strengthen the memory trace of the stimulus item of experts in that domain. Another explanation for the lack of expertise effect in conjunction with enactment could be due to possible overshadowing of enactment over other factors. In other words, enactment had such a strong effect on recall that all participants benefited from this modality when processing golf items as well as everyday items. According to Zimmer and colleagues (Zimmer, Helstrup, & Engelkamp, 2000), the automatic retrieval process is enhanced by enactment whereas this is not the case for other modalities. It is doubtful however, that item-specific processing occurred in this study at the expense of processing relations as was demonstrated elsewhere (Steffens, 2007). Expertise benefits in the visual modality were limited to domain-relevant stimulus materials and enactment benefits were profound and occurred for experts and controls in immediate and delayed recall.
The overshadowing of enactment could have had consequences for recall in the verbal modality. Immediate recall after verbal encoding was low and delayed recall was at floor levels of less than 12% recall performance. The higher facilitation of other modalities for recall could have taken up cognitive resources in a manner that left insufficient room for a distinctive memory trace to form. Low levels of recall in a verbal condition have been demonstrated before (Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006) in a study in which fewer items were processed (12 instead of the 36 items processed in the current study). In this particular study, there was competition of two relatively rich encoding environments, an enactment and autobiographical encoding environment, that may have contributed to overshadowing effects for recall in the verbal modality (Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006). Further research should be conducted to provide more definite answers, however. Although benefits of enactment, expertise, and domain relevance were demonstrated for delayed recall, a remaining question is why no three-way interaction of these factors occurred. Once stimulus items are successfully integrated with existing structures, long-term benefits could be expected (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). Long-term benefits of effective encoding were demonstrated in several studies (Noice & Noice, 1999; Noice et al., 2000). These studies did not vary domain relevance of the stimulus materials, however and therefore could not demonstrate long-term benefits of the integration of new, domain-relevant information with existing knowledge structures. The current study did support shortterm and long-term retention of domain-relevant information by experts, something that has not been demonstrated in this manner before. Other than expected, this long-term retention did not depend on encoding modality. Enactment appears to be a superior encoding modality with long-term benefits. It may even overshadow recall of stimulus items encoded in other modalities because of the rich memory traces that result from enactment at encoding. Expertise in conjunction with the modality in which stimulus materials are presented seems to have a selective rather than a general advantage on recall of these materials. The finding that immediate recall performance of golf items among golfers was higher in the visual modality is different from other studies that demonstrated only the superiority of the enactment modality for recall (Noice et al., 2000; Starkes et al., 1987). The possibility that interpersonal body representations and mirror neuron systems may have contributed to a stronger (immediate) memory trace of golf items among golfers in the visual condition is a novel finding that could be particularly relevant for expertise research. The application of the concepts of interpersonal body representations and mirror neuron systems could demonstrate a potentially successful way of encoding or learning of domain-relevant information that has not been attempted in this context in great detail yet. Enhanced recall of domain-relevant information could be considered a successful learning outcome in experts who seek to expand their expertise in various ways. Future endeavors should focus on how interpersonal body representations could facilitate learning practices among experts when they study domain-relevant materials.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank William Land for his appearance in the video clips, Len Hill for his assistance with generating golf items, and Lizmar Burguera, Michael Hill, Bridget Oulundsen, and Brittany Roberts for their help in data collection. Data were collected at Florida State University.
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Appendix A List of items No.
Golf action
Start position
No.
Everyday action
1
1
19
1
20
1
21
Turn on the computer screen Point to the target with the mouse Press the space bar
2
22
Open and close the door
2
23
2 3
24 25
Pick up the file from the top drawer Put the file on the desk Turn-off the desk lamp
3
26
3
27
3
28
2
29
3
30
1
31
14
Putt to target A on the ramp Putt to target B on the ramp Putt to target C on the ramp Putt to the ‘‘square” Putt to the ‘‘triangle” Putt to the ‘‘X” Putt to the left of the basket Putt to the right of the basket Putt into the basket Putt between the lines Putt over the line Putt to the asterisk Putt to target ‘‘D” on the ramp Putt to the desk
3
32
15
Putt into the cup
2
33
16
Putt to the left of the cup Putt to target ‘‘K” Putt to the right of the cup
2
34
3
35
2
36
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
17 18
Close the book on the desk Put the book on the shelf. Put the picture frame one shelf higher Pick up the telephone receiver and put it down Put the hanger on the door handle Put the scissors into the pencil holder Touch the cup on the shelf Stamp the paper with the stamper Throw the soda can into the trash Switch the main light on and off Put the post-it on the computer screen
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Studies of expertise from psychological perspectives. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 41–68). Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Fincher-Kiefer, R., Post, T. A., Greene, T. R., & Voss, J. F. (1988). On the role of prior knowledge and task demands in the processing of text. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 416–428. Gallese, V., & Goldman, A. (1998). Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 493–501. Glenberg, A. M. (1997). What memory is for. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20, 1–55. Hambrick, D. Z., & Engle, R. W. (2002). Effects of domain knowledge, working memory capacity, and age on cognitive performance: An investigation of the knowledge-is-power hypothesis. Cognitive Psychology, 44, 339–387. Hodges, N. J., Starkes, J. L., & MacMahon, C. (2006). Expert performance in sport: A cognitive process. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 471–488). Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Kormi-Nouri, R., Nyberg, L., & Nilsson, L.-G. (1994). The effect of retrieval enactment on recall of subject-performed tasks and verbal tasks. Memory & Cognition, 22, 723–728. Magill, R. A. (2003). Motor learning and control: Concepts and applications. Columbus, OH: McGraw Hill. Morrow, D. G., Menard, W. E., Ridolfo, H. E., Stine-Morrow, E. A. L., Teller, T., & Bryant, D. (2003). International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 13, 345–371. Mulligan, N. W., & Hornstein, S. (2003). Memory for actions: Self-performed tasks and the reenactment effect. Memory & Cognition, 31, 412–421. Nilsson, L.-G., & Cohen, R. L. (1988). Enrichment and generation in the recall of enacted and non-enacted instructions. In M. M. Gruneberg, P. E. Morris, & R. N. Sykes (Eds.), Practical aspects of memory: Current research and issues. Memory in everyday life (Vol. 1, pp. 427–432). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Nilsson, L.-G., & Bäckman, L. (1989). Implicit memory and the enactment of verbal instructions. In S. Lewandowsky, J. Dunn, & K. Kirsner (Eds.), Implicit memory: Theoretical issues (pp. 173–183). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Noice, H., & Noice, T. (1999). Long-term retention of theatrical roles. Memory, 7, 357–382. Noice, H., & Noice, T. (2006). What studies of actors and acting can tell us about memory and cognitive functioning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 14–18. Noice, H., Noice, T., & Kennedy, C. (2000). Effects of enactment by professional actors at encoding and retrieval. Memory, 8, 353–363. Recht, D. R., & Leslie, L. (1988). Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers’ memory of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 16–20. Schneider, W., Bjorklund, D. F., & Maier-Brückhner, W. (1996). 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Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy
The effects of golf expertise and presentation modality on memory for golf and everyday items Katinka Dijkstra a,*, Clare MacMahon b,1, Mine Misirlisoy c,2 a
Department of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, T13-39, 3062 PA Rotterdam, Netherlands Motor Learning and Skilled Performance, School of Human Movement, Recreation, and Performance, Victoria University, CRICOS Provider No. 00124K, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne, VIC 8001, Australia c Middle East Technical University, 06531 Ankara, Turkey b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 14 May 2007 Received in revised form 28 February 2008 Accepted 4 March 2008 Available online 25 April 2008 PsycINFO classification: 2340 2343 Keywords: Cognition Declarative memory Expertise Motor processes
a b s t r a c t The present study assessed whether golf expertise, presentation modality, and domain relevance affected memory for golf-related and everyday items. Forty-eight experienced golfers and 48 non-golfers were compared in their memory for golf-related (‘‘putt to the hole”) and everyday (‘‘turn on the lamp”) items. To-be-remembered items were presented verbally, visually, or were enacted. Enacted information was recalled best, followed by visually presented information. Combined effects of modality and golf expertise on recall of golf items were demonstrated on immediate but not on delayed recall. The findings suggest that recall of domain-relevant information is optimal when one has relevant background knowledge, and under conditions of visual encoding. The data support research on facilitation of domain-relevant knowledge on recall [Weber, N., & Brewer, N. (2003). Expert memory: The interaction of stimulus structure, attention, and expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 295–308]. Interpersonal body representation may have played a role in recall processes among experts [Thomas, R., Press, C., & Haggard, P. (2006). Shared representations in body perception. Acta Psychologica, 121, 317–330]. Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Suppose a golf expert has to remember golf exercises that she read, observed, or performed. Which of the three encoding modalities would facilitate recall the most? What if the person being presented with these golf exercises has never played golf in her life? Would the same modality facilitate recall for a beginner as for an expert? Knowing the best way to present sports-related information to athletes for later recall or skill acquisition could help make training strategies used by athletes and coaches more effective (Magill, 2003). The current study examines whether encoding in an enactment modality yields higher recall in combination with level of expertise and domain relevance of these materials relative to a verbal or visual encoding condition and when materials are not domain-relevant. Research has demonstrated superiority effects of enactment on recall (Bäckman, 1985; Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006; Engelkamp &
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 10 408 8657; fax: +31 10 408 9009. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K. Dijkstra), [email protected] (C. MacMahon), [email protected] (M. Misirlisoy). 1 Tel.: +61 3 9919 5410; fax: +61 3 9919 4891. 2 Tel.: +90 312 210 5107; fax: +90 312 210 7975. 0001-6918/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.03.001
Zimmer, 1997) and expertise on recall of domain-relevant materials (Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979; Fincher-Kiefer, Post, Greene, & Voss, 1988; Hambrick & Engle, 2002) in separate studies. Studies examining combined effects of modality and expertise, however, have not systematically compared encoding conditions with differential recall of domain-relevant and irrelevant stimulus materials (Noice & Noice, 2006; Noice, Noice, & Kennedy, 2000; Starkes, Deakin, Lindley, & Crisp, 1987). Such a comparison could be helpful in demonstrating superiority of certain domain-based encoding modalities over others. This in turn can be used to devise effective domain-relevant training strategies, such as movements that focus on precision skills, and could be more effective for skill acquisition and retention than watching another athlete perform that action or reading about that action. The enactment effect, i.e., superiority of an enactment encoding modality for recall relative to verbally or visually encoded material has been demonstrated repeatedly in different empirical studies (Bäckman, 1985; Cohen, 1983; Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006; Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997; Mulligan & Hornstein, 2003). Expertise effects in the recall of domain-relevant materials have also been demonstrated, for materials that were read (Chiesi et al., 1979; Fincher-Kiefer et al., 1988; Recht & Leslie, 1988; Schneider, Bjorklund, & Maier-Brückhner, 1996; Walker, 1987), heard (Morrow et al.,
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2003; Weber & Brewer, 2003) or viewed (Starkes et al., 1987) by experts. These findings suggest that enactment may offer an optimal environment for encoding new information and incorporating it within existing knowledge structures (Nilsson & Cohen, 1988). An enacted item involves a motoric trace as well as a verbal trace associated with the item and is also associated with the physical environment in which the action was performed (Nilsson & Bäckman, 1989). Moreover, enactment enhances the encoding of item-specific information which makes those items more distinctive than when they are encoded only verbally (Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997). This facilitation is limited to encoding. Retrieval enactment does not improve memory for items encoded in an enactment or verbal condition (Kormi-Nouri, Nyberg, & Nilsson, 1994). Expertise is another factor that may facilitate recall although it is constrained to stimulus materials that are relevant to the domain of expertise. One of the reasons for this facilitation is that relevant knowledge structures in long-term memory can be utilized to process and incorporate incoming information from that domain, thereby reducing demands on cognitive resources (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). Moreover, the development of complex representations of relevant stimulus materials may allow them immediate access to information that is relevant to the domain (Feltovich, Prietula, & Ericsson, 2006). Experts in baseball can therefore more easily detect changes in baseball descriptions than non-experts, possibly because those changes were inconsistent with experts’ schemas on baseball that they had developed over time (Chiesi et al., 1979). Non-experts would have insufficient baseball knowledge to develop such schemas in the first place. Benefits of using task-relevant processing strategies were demonstrated in studies in which baseball expertise facilitated working memory span for baseball-related sentences (Fincher-Kiefer et al., 1988) and memory for information regarding narratives about baseball (Recht & Leslie, 1988; Walker, 1987). Apparently, background knowledge in a given domain facilitates processing of new domain-relevant information because it can be mapped on to an existing knowledge structure. Likewise, successive domain-relevant actions allow individuals with high levels of knowledge in a certain domain to utilize the meaningfulness and structure in stimulus sequences to integrate information, thereby limiting the demands on working memory. So far, only few studies have examined facilitation of both enactment and expertise on recall of domain-relevant stimulus materials (Noice et al., 2000; Starkes et al., 1987). Such a combined approach could yield higher benefits for immediate and long-term recall because of a more efficient use of cognitive resources coupled with the opportunity to use task-relevant processing strategies in a rich encoding environment. Long-term memory facilitation of enacted domain-relevant stimulus materials by experts was observed in studies of professional actors whose recall was reassessed after three months (Noice & Noice, 1999), and five months (Noice et al., 2000) even if the movement was not semantically congruent with the stimulus materials. Immediate benefits of enactment and expertise on recall of domain-relevant material were demonstrated by Starkes and colleagues (1987) in the form of better recall for expert dancers than novices after viewing motoric ballet sequences (Starkes et al., 1987). The difference between experts and novices for enacted recall (i.e., dancing the sequences) and verbal recall was highest for moves towards the middle of the sequence for enacted recall and towards the end of the sequence for verbal recall. There was no difference between structured verbal and enacted recall, however. The combination of enactment, expertise and domain relevance of stimulus materials resulted in high recall performance in the
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studies discussed above. However, there are some limitations in these studies that restrict generalization of the findings to facilitation of modality and expertise on recall of domain-relevant stimulus materials. First, the study by Noice and colleagues included experts only (Noice et al., 2000). Therefore, no insight into the potential facilitation of expertise on domain-relevant materials could be gained. Secondly, the study by Starkes and colleagues employed different encoding (visual) and retrieval strategies (enactment, verbal recall) and included a structured/unstructured sequence condition which made it difficult to determine what the benefits of enactment were, particularly because no significant differences in enacted and verbal recall were found (Starkes et al., 1987). This lack of benefit for enactment at retrieval (see also Kormi-Nouri et al., 1994) could be due to the absence of an enactment condition during encoding. Third, neither study manipulated the domain relevance of the stimuli materials, for example by comparing recall of domain-related materials with that of materials outside the domain. Therefore, the contribution of expertise on recall of domain-relevant materials could not be determined other than in differences between experts and novices. Finally, as is common in expertise studies, the sample size was relatively small including six actors (Noice et al., 2000) and eight dancers per condition (Starkes et al., 1987), respectively. The current study, therefore, systematically compared different modalities at encoding only, varied the domain relevance of the stimulus materials in relation to the population recalling these materials, experts versus controls, and included a larger sample size. The aim was to provide support for an enactment superiority effect for recall of domain-specific items by experts as the result of a rich, multi-modal encoding environment leaving a more elaborate and distinct memory trace than verbally or visually encoded items (Nilsson & Bäckman, 1989). This view is consistent with an embodied view of cognition that considers memory processes to be part of a real-world environment involving perception and action which are grounded in experiences in this environment (Barsalou, Niedenthal, Barbey, & Ruppert, 2003; Glenberg, 1997; Wilson, 2002). According to this view, a stimulus item is stored in the motor pathways that were involved when this item was initially processed (Dijkstra, Kachak, & Zwaan, 2007). Performing an action, particularly the type of action that has been executed repeatedly as part of a lengthy skill acquisition, should therefore be easier to remember than reading about such actions or viewing those actions because of the way these enacted items are stored relative to differently encoded stimulus materials. We hypothesized that greatest recall benefits would occur for experts when processing domain-relevant stimulus materials in an enactment modality because new domain-relevant information could be processed more quickly, and organized and incorporated better within existing stores of relevant information, (Hodges, Starkes, & MacMahon, 2006). Such recall benefits were expected to be absent for novices and for items in the verbal modality because they would lack the multi-modal processing environment. A visual encoding condition was added because recent evidence suggested that visual encoding may yield similar recall performance for action sequences in a naturalistic setting of packing a backpack (Steffens, 2007). As the current study included action sequences in a naturalistic environment, visual encoding could facilitate recall to a certain extent as well. Following findings in earlier studies (Noice & Noice, 1999; Noice et al., 2000), we also explored whether modality and domain-relevant knowledge would have longer lasting effects in addition to effects in immediate recall. This could not only replicate findings for immediate recall but also provide insight into what factors specifically contribute to lasting effects on recall. It is likely that specifics of a facilitative encoding environment in conjunction with
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expertise for domain-relevant materials would be incorporated into long-term memory structures that would facilitate access to these materials over time (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). The current study presented stimulus materials in three different modalities: a verbal, a visual, and an enactment condition. In the verbal condition, participants read out actions loud from a card. In the visual condition, participants watched video clips of a model performing the actions, and in the enactment condition, participants acted out the actions which were presented to them auditorily. Expertise was manipulated by recruiting groups of skilled golfers and groups of non-golfers (controls) with no golfing experience. We also manipulated the domain-relevant content of stimulus items (golf items, e.g. ‘‘putt to the hole” versus everyday items, e.g. ‘‘close the book on the desk”). Although putting is only one way golfers play their game (in addition to the ‘‘drive” and the ‘‘swing”), the putting movement is a relatively subtle and controlled movement conducted within a small geographical area in which many variations as direction, speed, or precision can occur. 2. Method 2.1. Participants Informed consent was obtained from 96 participants (mean age = 43.4, SD = 24.1, range = 18–85; 82% Caucasian; education = 14.9, SD = 2.9). Half of the participants were golfers with a handicap of 19 or below (mean handicap = 9.7, SD = 4.7, range 0– 19), the other half were non-golfer controls. Exclusion criteria for golfers were a handicap of 20 or higher and lack of current active golf status. Controls had to have never played golf in their life. All participants were right-handed and filled out a questionnaire regarding participation in sports and non-golfers indicated that they had never played golf. Apart from their golf experience, both groups were comparable in age, education level, and subjective health rating. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board. 2.2. Procedure Participants signed the consent form and received instructions in a waiting room, which was different from the experiment room. The instructions were that they would either read out loud an item from a card that the experimenter would hold in front of them (approximately 15 in. from their face), or watch video clips of an action on a laptop (performed by a golfer with a 0 handicap), or physically perform an action they were verbally told by the experimenter. They were also told that some of the items would relate to the game of golf and some of the items would not. An example card with an everyday item (‘‘push the chair under the desk”) was used to explain the instructions for the three modalities. After the instructions, the participant was asked to repeat back to the experimenter what they should do when the item was presented on a card (verbal condition), on a video clip (visual condition), or as a verbal instruction (enactment condition). The experiment proceeded only after the participant was able to repeat the instructions correctly. Still in the waiting room, participants chose from among five putters of different heights and one left-handed putter, and subsequently practiced five practice putts in order to become familiar with the speed of the golf ball on a carpeted surface. Participants were then brought into the experiment room where they proceeded with their first task. Each participant was presented with 12 items in each modality, a total of 36 actions. The experiment room was set up in a way that allowed for 18 different putts to be made. There were three possible starting posi-
tions, indicated by markers on the floor (#1, #2, and #3). Eleven targets were marked with tape (e.g., a circle or the letter ‘‘A”), and one target was to hit the bottom of the desk in the room. Four of the eleven targets were on an inclined ramp lined with a felt ‘‘golf mat”, while the others were all on the floor of the room. A description of all 36 experimental items is listed in Appendix A.3 The experimenter announced the condition (verbal, visual, action) prior to presenting the items in one condition. Conditions were blocked, with the order of the conditions randomized across subjects and yoked between groups. Half of the 36 items were golfrelated (e.g., ‘‘from start position 2, putt to the ”), whereas half were not (e.g., ‘‘close the book on the desk”). After every three items, participants performed a filler task to prevent rehearsal of items. Filler tasks consisted of counting backwards or forwards by 3s, 7s, and 9s starting at different numbers, or generating as many boys names/girls names/TV-shows/names of plants as possible. They were different from the items in the verbal condition because the participant had to generate numbers or names, whereas the verbal condition involved reading out loud an action sentence. Filler tasks were done for approximately 10 s between every three items. After completing all 36 items, participants were taken to the waiting room and tested in their recall of items from all three conditions. The experimenter prompted (e.g., ‘‘anything else?”) until the participant felt no more items could be recalled. Recall testing was unexpected, and took place in the waiting room in order to prevent recall facilitation from the experimental environment. Participant responses were recorded on an Olympus digital recorder for later transcription and scoring. At the end of the experiment, participants were given a debriefing sheet that contained the phone number of an experimenter and were instructed to call on a Wednesday, the week after the experiment as a prospective memory task. The task was in fact a delayed recall task in which participants were asked what items they remembered from the previous week. The true purpose of this task was not revealed to avoid rehearsal of item information during the delay. To ensure compliance with the task, participants were told that the phone call was a crucial and important part of the experiment. The time between the experiment and delayed recall was 7 days in the vast majority of the cases, but occasionally was one or two days shorter.4 Research on delayed recall is usually done after a week (de Groot, 2006) which provides a good comparison with immediate recall. If a participant forgot to call back, the first author called this person until contact was established. Three participants could not be reached after five attempts and had missing delayed recall data (1 in the control and 2 in the expertise group). Scoring was done afterwards based on the transcripts of the immediate recall data and notes taken during delayed recall data. A conservative scoring method was utilized by only awarding points for action items (1 point per item) that were recalled entirely and in the correct modality (i.e., ‘‘Putt to target A” would be awarded a point whereas ‘‘Putt to the target” would not be awarded a point). If an action item was recalled in the wrong modality, which happened occasionally, a half point was awarded to this item. 2.3. Design The study was a 2 3 2 mixed design, including the betweensubjects factor expertise (golfers, controls) and the within-subjects
3 Even though these targets do not all match targets in a golf match, they can be considered appropriate items for practice situations (e.g., putt to the leaf, or alongside the edge of the field). 4 This information was not recorded; therefore no statistical comparisons could be made.
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factors of modality (verbal, visual, or enacted) and item type (golf or everyday item). As from a theoretical point of view no higher order interactions were expected with time of recall, analyses were run separately for immediate and delayed recall.
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3. Results
4
6
# items
In order to test our hypotheses, we performed analyses of variance with the relevant target variables. Alpha level was set at .05 unless otherwise noted. The first hypothesis predicted combined effects of modality, expertise, and item type with highest expected recall for enacted golf items by golfers. Fig. 1 displays the data for immediate recall for golfers and controls, respectively. The 2 3 2 repeated measures ANOVA showed that the three-way interaction of expertise, item type, and modality was significant, F(2, 188)=3.84, MSe = 1.59, p < .05, g2 = .039. Whereas the modality by expertise interaction was not significant, (F < 1.4), the interaction between item type and expertise indicated that domain-relevant content (golf-related item content) was recalled better by experts than controls, as predicted, F(1, 94) = 5.830, MSe = 1.83, p < .05, g2 = .058. The interaction between modality and item type, F(2, 94) = 6.40, MSe = 1.59, p < .01, g2 = .064 demonstrated higher recall in the enactment than in the visual and verbal condition for golf, t(95) = 10.33, p < .001, t(95) = 14.28, p < .001 and everyday items, t(95) = 7.70, p < .001, t(95) = 19.69, p < .001, respectively; higher recall for golf items than everyday items in the verbal condition, t(95) = 5.32, p < .001, and marginally higher recall for golf items than everyday items in the enactment condition, t(95) = 1.78, p = .077. There was no difference in recall for golf and everyday items in the visual condition however (t < 1). This differential pattern for recall in the visual condition can be ascribed to differences between experts and controls in memory for golf items, t(95) = 2.10, p < .05, with experts demonstrating higher recall for golf items than controls in the visual condition. The three-way interaction supported the predicted superiority of domain-relevant content by experts in that domain, and the superiority of enactment over other modalities in immediate recall of golf-related and everyday stimulus materials. Rather than a strengthening effect of expertise and enactment, in combination with domain-relevant content on recall, a different pattern was observed. There was no overall difference in recall for golf-related
5
verbal
3
visual enacted
2
1
0 golf-related
golfers
everyday
golf-related
everyday
controls
Fig. 2. Delayed recall for golf and everyday items by golfers and controls.
and everyday items in the visual condition but higher recall for golf items by experts than controls. Regarding delayed recall, combined effects of modality, expertise, and item type were expected to occur. Fig. 2 displays the data for delayed recall among experts and controls. The three-way interaction between expertise, item type and stimulus organization was not significant (F < 1), nor was there a significant interaction between modality and expertise, (F < 1.1). There was a significant interaction between item type and expertise, F(1, 91) = 9.67, MSe = 1.11, p < .01, g2 = .096 demonstrating higher recall of golf items by experts as expected. There was also a significant interaction between modality and item type, F(2, 182)=7.506, MSe = 1.76, p = .01, g2 = .076, demonstrating, again, a superiority of recall in the enactment modality over the visual and verbal modality for both golf, t(92) = 10.16, p < .001, t(92) = 16.88, p < .001, and everyday items, t(92) = 6.09, p < .001, t(92) = 19.21, p < .001 and higher recall for golf than everyday items in the verbal, t(92) = 3.48, p < .001, and enactment condition, t(92) = 3.35, p < .001, but no difference in recall for golf and everyday items in the visual condition (t < 1.5). The pattern of results suggests no difference in effects of expertise and modality on delayed recall of domain-relevant or everyday items because the three-way interaction was not significant. However, higher recall for golf items by experts relative to controls and superiority of enactment for recall were replicated for delayed recall and were consistent with our predictions.
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4. Discussion verbal
# items
4
visual enacted
3
2
1
0 golf-related
golfers
everyday
golf-related
everyday
controls
Fig. 1. Immediate recall for golf and everyday items by golfers and controls.
Effects of expertise, modality, and domain-relevant item content were predicted and found on immediate and delayed recall of to-be-remembered materials. Specifically, enactment facilitated immediate and delayed recall of both golf items and everyday items. Moreover, experts recalled golf items better than everyday items. These findings support earlier research demonstrating effects of enactment (Bäckman, 1985; Bäckman & Nilsson, 1984; Cohen, Peterson, & Mantini-Atkinson, 1987; Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997), and expertise on recall (Starkes et al., 1987; Weber & Brewer, 2003). The predicted combined effect of enactment and expertise on recall of golf items was not demonstrated, however. Instead, a more complex pattern occurred. Experts had higher immediate recall of golf items in the visual modality than controls, whereas
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the enactment superiority tended to be a more general phenomenon that was observed in controls as well as experts. There may be several explanations for this finding. Better immediate recall of golf items in the visual condition may reflect golfers’ practice of observing golf actions performed by others (e.g., competitors), often for skill acquisition and refinement purposes. During the experiment, several golfers commented on the high degree of skill of the model in the video clips, a golfer with a 0 handicap. Thus, golfers may have found more meaning and information in the golf clips than the clips depicting everyday actions. They may have also been able to incorporate this information into existing schemas of golf exercises or golf-related knowledge in general. What may have contributed to facilitation of observing is the phenomenon of interpersonal body representation, the relation between the self and other body events (Thomas, Press, & Haggard, 2006). If a body event is observed in others, such as raising a hand, it would be followed by an association that is made between the body event and the person observing the body event (Thomas et al., 2006). For example, a golf expert who observes a video clip of a golfer performing the difficult task of putting a golf ball to stop on a square may imagine what movements he or she would make to accomplish the same task. A relation between the self and other body events has also been found in research on mirror neuron systems (Gallese & Goldman, 1998). Motor evoked potentials during grasping observation that were recorded from hand muscles increased relative to a detection task (Fadiga, Fogassi, Pavesi, & Rizzolatti, 1995). This increase only occurred in the specific muscles that participants would use themselves if they were in a situation that they would perform these movements in themselves. Moreover, stronger bilateral brain activation was demonstrated when expert dancers observed motor movements that were part of their own (expert) motor repertoire compared to movements they were never trained to do (Calvo-Merino, Glaser, Grèzes, Passingham, & Haggard, 2005). Moreover, Steffens demonstrated high recall of encoded verb-object phrases in a visual (observation) and an enactment condition relative to a verbal condition (2007), which is suggestive of a similar facilitation of visual and enactment encoding. One of the reasons that visual encoding was helpful in this particular study is that enactment may sometimes provoke item-specific processing at the expense of processing relations between items. If the stimuli materials include action sequences visual encoding may be as effective. We can relate those findings to the findings of the current study by assuming that experts show interpersonal body representation only when encoding domain-relevant material because of their skill and experience to transfer observed domain-specific action to a simulation of how they could execute this action. The process of observing, then creating a representation of the action within the relevant domain should strengthen the memory trace of the stimulus item of experts in that domain. Another explanation for the lack of expertise effect in conjunction with enactment could be due to possible overshadowing of enactment over other factors. In other words, enactment had such a strong effect on recall that all participants benefited from this modality when processing golf items as well as everyday items. According to Zimmer and colleagues (Zimmer, Helstrup, & Engelkamp, 2000), the automatic retrieval process is enhanced by enactment whereas this is not the case for other modalities. It is doubtful however, that item-specific processing occurred in this study at the expense of processing relations as was demonstrated elsewhere (Steffens, 2007). Expertise benefits in the visual modality were limited to domain-relevant stimulus materials and enactment benefits were profound and occurred for experts and controls in immediate and delayed recall.
The overshadowing of enactment could have had consequences for recall in the verbal modality. Immediate recall after verbal encoding was low and delayed recall was at floor levels of less than 12% recall performance. The higher facilitation of other modalities for recall could have taken up cognitive resources in a manner that left insufficient room for a distinctive memory trace to form. Low levels of recall in a verbal condition have been demonstrated before (Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006) in a study in which fewer items were processed (12 instead of the 36 items processed in the current study). In this particular study, there was competition of two relatively rich encoding environments, an enactment and autobiographical encoding environment, that may have contributed to overshadowing effects for recall in the verbal modality (Dijkstra & Kachak, 2006). Further research should be conducted to provide more definite answers, however. Although benefits of enactment, expertise, and domain relevance were demonstrated for delayed recall, a remaining question is why no three-way interaction of these factors occurred. Once stimulus items are successfully integrated with existing structures, long-term benefits could be expected (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). Long-term benefits of effective encoding were demonstrated in several studies (Noice & Noice, 1999; Noice et al., 2000). These studies did not vary domain relevance of the stimulus materials, however and therefore could not demonstrate long-term benefits of the integration of new, domain-relevant information with existing knowledge structures. The current study did support shortterm and long-term retention of domain-relevant information by experts, something that has not been demonstrated in this manner before. Other than expected, this long-term retention did not depend on encoding modality. Enactment appears to be a superior encoding modality with long-term benefits. It may even overshadow recall of stimulus items encoded in other modalities because of the rich memory traces that result from enactment at encoding. Expertise in conjunction with the modality in which stimulus materials are presented seems to have a selective rather than a general advantage on recall of these materials. The finding that immediate recall performance of golf items among golfers was higher in the visual modality is different from other studies that demonstrated only the superiority of the enactment modality for recall (Noice et al., 2000; Starkes et al., 1987). The possibility that interpersonal body representations and mirror neuron systems may have contributed to a stronger (immediate) memory trace of golf items among golfers in the visual condition is a novel finding that could be particularly relevant for expertise research. The application of the concepts of interpersonal body representations and mirror neuron systems could demonstrate a potentially successful way of encoding or learning of domain-relevant information that has not been attempted in this context in great detail yet. Enhanced recall of domain-relevant information could be considered a successful learning outcome in experts who seek to expand their expertise in various ways. Future endeavors should focus on how interpersonal body representations could facilitate learning practices among experts when they study domain-relevant materials.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank William Land for his appearance in the video clips, Len Hill for his assistance with generating golf items, and Lizmar Burguera, Michael Hill, Bridget Oulundsen, and Brittany Roberts for their help in data collection. Data were collected at Florida State University.
K. Dijkstra et al. / Acta Psychologica 128 (2008) 298–303
Appendix A List of items No.
Golf action
Start position
No.
Everyday action
1
1
19
1
20
1
21
Turn on the computer screen Point to the target with the mouse Press the space bar
2
22
Open and close the door
2
23
2 3
24 25
Pick up the file from the top drawer Put the file on the desk Turn-off the desk lamp
3
26
3
27
3
28
2
29
3
30
1
31
14
Putt to target A on the ramp Putt to target B on the ramp Putt to target C on the ramp Putt to the ‘‘square” Putt to the ‘‘triangle” Putt to the ‘‘X” Putt to the left of the basket Putt to the right of the basket Putt into the basket Putt between the lines Putt over the line Putt to the asterisk Putt to target ‘‘D” on the ramp Putt to the desk
3
32
15
Putt into the cup
2
33
16
Putt to the left of the cup Putt to target ‘‘K” Putt to the right of the cup
2
34
3
35
2
36
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
17 18
Close the book on the desk Put the book on the shelf. Put the picture frame one shelf higher Pick up the telephone receiver and put it down Put the hanger on the door handle Put the scissors into the pencil holder Touch the cup on the shelf Stamp the paper with the stamper Throw the soda can into the trash Switch the main light on and off Put the post-it on the computer screen
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