Back to the on-screen lesson ·
What a cue does, why a cued trial is logged as supported practice, and how to fade a cue one step at a time.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will use a category cue on a practice list, work out what a cue reached that a blank page did not, log each trial as cued or unaided, and fade a cue one step at a time.
In the free and delayed trials, some words did not come. The question this lesson asks is whether they were gone or only out of reach, and what the log should say when something helps you reach them.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Cue | Anything outside your head that points at what you are fetching: a first letter, a category, a picture, a place. |
| Cued trial | A practice attempt where a cue was used. |
| Unaided trial | A practice attempt with nothing but a blank page. |
| Supported practice | How the platform records a cued trial. |
| Fading | Showing less of a cue each time, one step at a time. |
| Available and accessible | Stored in memory, and reachable from where you are now; something can be the first without the second. |
Much of what will not come back on a blank page is still stored. It is just not reachable from where you are standing. A cue gives you another way in.
The classic demonstration (Endel Tulving and Zena Pearlstone, 1966) gave people word lists arranged in categories, such as types of birds or kinds of weapons, with the category names read out while they studied. At the test some wrote back with a blank page; others were handed the category names. The people with the names wrote back more, and the gap was widest for the longest lists. Since everyone studied the same lists, the extra words must have been stored all along. Tulving and Pearlstone called them available but not accessible.
So a cue is not cheating and not a crutch. It is a tool with a clear use: getting at what is there, while you build the routes to reach it without help.
Another way: story
Someone cannot name the movie they saw last week. A friend says, 'It started with a W.' Suddenly the title arrives. The title was stored the whole time; the letter was a route to it.
Another way: diagram
Picture a large storeroom with one door. A free trial means going in with no flashlight and finding what you bump into. A cue is a label on a shelf: you still have to walk there, but you know which aisle to try.
The recall trials in this course offer cues, first letters and then the category, and record whether you took them. A trial that used a cue is kept as supported practice. That is the honest description of what happened, nothing more: it is not a lower mark, and it is never compared with anyone.
The same rule is worth keeping in your own notebook. Write cued: first letters or unaided beside each practice attempt. Over a week the log then shows the thing that matters, the cue getting smaller.
To check your fading, read the log from the top: the cue column should shrink overall, with a step back only straight after a miss. A log where the cue jumps from the whole word to nothing has skipped the steps that keep the attempts mostly right. Attempts that stay mostly right are worth more than bold guesses, because a wrong guess you have said out loud tends to come back too.
Roger Brown and David McNeill (1966) read people dictionary definitions of rare words and caught them in the tip-of-the-tongue state, sure they knew the word but unable to say it. Even then, people could often report the word's first letter and its number of syllables better than chance. The word was partly reachable already; a small cue was often enough.
Work through a fictional case. At a school reunion, Maya sees a classmate and the name will not come. She runs a cue search in her head: first letters, A, B, C … at J it clicks: Jerome. Later, in her practice notebook of names from the reunion photos, she writes Jerome: cued (letter search). Next week she tries the photo with nothing but the face, and logs whether it came unaided.
Leaving the cue out. The words did come from your memory, so it is tempting to write unaided. But the cue chose which part of memory to search, and the log is only useful if it says so.
Refusing cues altogether, as if a cued trial were a failed one. A trial that reaches six words with a category is better practice than a trial that reaches two without, as long as the next attempt shows less.
Reading a cue as proof you did not know it. Tulving and Pearlstone's extra words were stored the whole time. Needing a route in says where the word is filed, not that it is missing. The same holds the other way: a word that comes only with a cue is not yet a word you can count on at a blank moment, which is why the cue is faded rather than kept.
Record the first attempt and what was showing.
Bus stops, map folded away: 5 of 8
Nothing pointed at the answers, so this is unaided.
Record the second attempt and its cue.
Map outline showing: 7 of 8
The outline points at the stops, so this is cued.
Write both lines in the log.
Unaided 5; cued (outline) 7
Naming the cue lets tomorrow's attempt show a little less.
Show the whole name and say it.
Rosalind → said right
The first attempt is right, so nothing wrong is practiced.
Show part of it next time.
Ros… → said right
After a success, one step less.
Show one letter; after a miss, step back.
R… → missed; next: Ros… again
A miss means the cue went a step too soon.
Step down again once it works.
Ros… → right; R… → right; nothing → right
Each step is taken only when the step before it has worked.
Subtract the blank-page count from the cued count.
16 − 9 = 7 words reached only with the names
The names add no words to memory; they only point.
Subtract the cued count from the list length.
You finished a practice list after using the name of the category the words came from. How should the attempt go in your practice log?
A fictional plan: one practice attempt a day at a new name. Day 1 shows the whole word, day 2 the first three letters, and then the first letter until an attempt at it is right. The first-letter step is missed on 1 day(s) before it is right. Complete the worked count of days.
Count the days on the first two steps.
Whole word: day 1. Three letters: day 2.
Each of these was right the first time, so each takes one day.
Count the days on the first-letter step.
1 missed + 1 right, so the first letter shows through day a
A step is repeated until an attempt at it is right.
Find the first day with nothing showing.
First unaided attempt: day b
The cue is withdrawn only after the step above it has worked.
A cued trial, for practice. Study the six words; after a short wait, write them back. The category and first letters are shown from the start, so this trial is supported by design, and it is recorded that way. It is practice, not a test of your memory.
Ask someone to read you the list, then cover it and write what you remember:
In a fictional practice group, people studied 24 words from six categories. On a blank page they wrote back 11 words on average. Given the six category names, the same people wrote back 15. On average, how many words were stored but not reached without the cue?
On average, n words were stored all along and reached only with the category names.
A fictional log of practice with a new coworker's name, Rosalind. The cue steps are: whole word, first three letters, first letter, nothing. Rule: after a right answer, show one step less next time; after a miss, go back one step. Attempt 1 showed the whole word and was right; attempt 2 showed the first three letters and was right; attempt 3 showed the first letter and was missed; attempt 4 showed the first three letters and was right. Fill in the cue each attempt leads to next.
| Cue to show next | |
|---|---|
| After attempt 1 (whole word, right) | |
| After attempt 2 (three letters, right) | |
| After attempt 3 (first letter, missed) | |
| After attempt 4 (three letters, right) |
A fictional shopping trip. Dev studied a list of 14 items at home and left it on the counter. Standing at the entrance, he could name 8. Walking past the store's aisle signs (produce, dairy, bakery, canned goods) brought the total to 12. How many items were reached only with the signs, and how many were still missing?
Reached only with the signs: x. Still missing: y.
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
Four practice trials. Label each one for the log: cued or unaided.
| What happened | Log it as | |
|---|---|---|
| Trial 1 | Wrote the six stops with the first letters showing | |
| Trial 2 | Named the new coworkers from memory in the parking lot | |
| Trial 3 | Said the vocabulary words with the cards face down | |
| Trial 4 | Listed the recipe steps after reading the headings 'prep, cook, serve' |
Without looking back: what did the category names show about words a blank page did not reach, and what is the next cue after a right answer and after a miss? Next: making cues of your own that will work later. A trial here is practice, not a test of your memory. What is kept is the list you wrote back on this device today, and it is never set beside anyone else's. You can stop at any point: closing the page is the whole of stopping, and the lesson reopens where you left it.
11. Your turn: on a blank page someone wrote back 9 of 24 words; with the category names, 16. How many were reachable only with the cue, and how many still did not come?, step 2
24 − 16 = 8 words still did not come
These are the words to look at when you check.