Memory for five novel naturalistic activities: no memory recall advantage for enactment over observation or pictorial learning

'Learning by doing' promises to lead to more efficient acquisition than other learning strategies. Indeed, much research has established that enactment leads to better recognition and recall of simple verb-object phrases (e.g., 'light the match', 'touch your nose') than intentional learning without enactment. Only few studies have compared the acquisition of novel naturalistic activities (e.g., 'to fold a paper frog') across different study conditions, and only a few different activities have been investigated overall. Two experiments tested whether five very different such activities can be carried out better after enactment learning than after observing a model or after pictorial learning instructions. No evidence of different performance across study conditions was obtained. Keywords: Enactment, observation, pictorial learning, action sequences, novel naturalistic activities, memory recall, performance recall
Every day, people perform naturalistic activities that consist of well-known goal-oriented action sequences, such as making coffee, preparing cookie dough, or changing a light bulb. Occasionally, people also need to [...]