ABSTRACT
The survey of the learning process has emphasized throughout the paramount importance of the influence of past upon present experience. It is indeed the fundamental postulate in virtue of which alone learning is possible. Psychologists to-day prefer to talk rather of the processes of remembering and forgetting rather than of 'memory'. Reminiscence is defined as an improvement in the capacity to revive past experience. The opposite process of obliviscence, or the deterioration in the capacity to revive past experience, is a phenomenon with which we are unfortunately only too familiar. Woodworth summarizes the factors which operate in favour of whole versus part-learning, of spaced versus unspaced repetition and of the possible combinations of these methods. His conclusion is that while interest and emotional satisfaction would appear to be on the side of part and unspaced learning, yet the factor of meaning would appear to outweigh these in strength and to incline the balance towards whole and spaced learning.
