IMMEDIATE AND DELAYED RECALL OF LECTURE MATERIAL AS A FUNCTION OF NOTE TAKING

Randomly chosen halves of an undergraduate class were instructed either to take notes in their usual manner or to refrain from note taking while listening to a guest lecturer. Immediately following the lecture, notes were collected and a quiz on the lecture was administered. Ten days later, a second quiz was administered. Statistical analysis indicated that the note-taking group performed significantly better overall than the no-notes group on both the immediate and the delayed quizzes. Both groups showed a significant decline in performance on the latter quiz. Alternative explanations for these results were examined. © 1979 Taylor & Francis.