Personal Factors in Human Learning: I. Strategy Use by "Fast" and "Slow" Learners

An experiment was conducted to ascertain whether varying induced strategies of recall leads to differing rates of learning. The two chosen strategies (Formula and Graphic) were found to affect markedly the speed of learning a binary task administered in a group setting with the former enhancing and the latter somewhat retarding such learning. Similar results were obtained for both "fast" and "slow" learners (although performance of "fast" learners was superior throughout), demonstrating that such strategies are both transferable and effective. A post hoc finding was that "slow" learners tended to exhibit a considerable amount of anxious and avoidant behavior, the rate of which seemed to be greater in the complex strategy condition.