Incidental Vs Intentional Learning

It does not seem to matter whether people intend to learn the material; what is important is how they process it. This fact is illustrated in an experiment by Hyde and Jenkins (1973) in which participants were asked to perform what was called an orienting task while studying a list of words. For one group of par- ticipants, the orienting task was to check whether each word had a letter e or a letter g. For the other group, the task was to rate the pleasantness of the words. It is reasonable to assume that the pleasantness rating involved more meaning- ful and deeper processing than the letter-verification task. Another variable was whether participants were told that the true purpose of the experiment was to learn the words. Half the participants in each group were told the true purpose of the experiment (the intentional-learning condition). The other half of par- ticipants in each group thought the true purpose of the experiment was to rate the words or check for letters (the incidental-learning condition). Thus, there were four conditions: pleasantness-intentional, pleasantness-incidental, letter checking-intentional, and letter checking-incidental.
After seeing the words, all participants were asked to recall as many words as they could.
the results from this experiment in terms of percentage of the 24 words recalled. Two results are noteworthy. First, partici- pants’ knowledge of the true purpose of studying the words had relatively little effect on performance. Second, a large depth-of-processing effect was dem- onstrated; that is, participants showed much better recall in the pleasantness rating condition, independent of whether they expected to be tested on the ma- terial later. In rating a word for pleasantness, participants had to think about its meaning, which gave them an opportunity to elaborate upon the word.
The Hyde and Jenkins (1973) experiment illustrates an important finding that has been proved over and over again in the research on intentional versus in- cidental learning: Whether a person intends to learn or not really does not matter. What matters is how the person processes the material during its presentation. If one engages in identical mental activities when processing the material, one gets identical memory performance whether one is intending to learn the material or not. People typically show better memory when they intend to learn because they are likely to en- gage in activities more conducive to good memory, such as rehearsal and elaborative processing. The small advantage for participants in the intentional- learning condition of the Hyde and Jenkins experi- ment may reflect some small variation in process- ing. Experiments in which great care is taken to control processing find that intention to learn or amount of motivation to learn has no effect (T. O. Nelson, 1976).
There is an interesting everyday example of the relationship between intention to learn and type of processing. Many students claim they find it easier to remember material from a novel, which they are not trying to re- member, than from a textbook, which they are trying to remember. The reason is that students find a typical novel much easier to elaborate on, and a good novel invites such elaborations (e.g., Why did the suspect deny knowing the victim?).
■ Level of processing, and not whether one intends to learn, determines the amount of material remembered.