Thanks for sharing my podcast episode with Tom Loveless! There's a comment about gist and verbatim memory in the Task Group Reports of the National Math Advisory Panel (Chapter 4).
"Memories occur in either verbatim or gist form. Verbatim recall of math knowledge is an essential feature of math education, and it requires a great deal of time, effort, and practice. Gist memory is the form of memory that is typically relied on in reasoning. A combination of gist knowledge and verbatim knowledge is critical for success in math."
Your discussion of memorization relates to the distinction between gist memory and verbatim memory. Gist memory is recalling the general idea of what was said, while verbatim memory is recalling what was said exactly, word-for-word. Most memories are stored in the brain as gist memory--remembering them exactly is not important. However, storing things as verbatim memory (“rote memorization”) is useful when the exact details matter. For example, it makes sense to recite a poem word-for-word rather than to paraphrase it. And 6 x 8 = 48, not “around 50.”
Hi Holly,
Thanks for sharing my podcast episode with Tom Loveless! There's a comment about gist and verbatim memory in the Task Group Reports of the National Math Advisory Panel (Chapter 4).
"Memories occur in either verbatim or gist form. Verbatim recall of math knowledge is an essential feature of math education, and it requires a great deal of time, effort, and practice. Gist memory is the form of memory that is typically relied on in reasoning. A combination of gist knowledge and verbatim knowledge is critical for success in math."
It's the chapter on learning processes. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED502980.pdf
Your discussion of memorization relates to the distinction between gist memory and verbatim memory. Gist memory is recalling the general idea of what was said, while verbatim memory is recalling what was said exactly, word-for-word. Most memories are stored in the brain as gist memory--remembering them exactly is not important. However, storing things as verbatim memory (“rote memorization”) is useful when the exact details matter. For example, it makes sense to recite a poem word-for-word rather than to paraphrase it. And 6 x 8 = 48, not “around 50.”