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This study presents absorbing material for the educational psychologist and for the teacher. It calmly raises serious implicit challenge to much of our current theory, a large part of school practice. Educators, however, are not alone in their concern and curiosity as to how we learn, either sense or nonsense, how we understand and how we retain knowledge. Hence Dr. Katona's
research and conclusions should, and hopefully will be of interest to workers in numerous other fields.
Approaching the processes of learning from the gestaltist point of view, Dr. Katona, now at the New School for Social Research, developed his experiments to throw further light on forgetting, grouping, memory traces, the transfer of learning, retention of principles and of facts. The experimental situations are presented in detail, as is his own thinking about purpose, problem and results. Dr. Katona's frequent references to the work of Dr. Max Wertheimer, leader of the modern school of gestalt thought, are enough to make us wish that more of Dr. Wertheimer's work was available in English.
A report of more than three hundred pages can scarcely be summarized; only hints can be suggested: 'Knowledge is acquired by a process of learning by understanding … which is to be distinguished from a process of memorization … '. The essence of learning by understanding is organization or reorganization of the given material by the learner… Meaningful organization is not restricted to immediate learning material; it often proceeds circuitously, utilizing various examples and cues; it results in integrated knowledge of principles rather than in the acquisition of specific information… What has been learned by understanding can be applied under varied circumstances and to new as well as to practised situations … [and] is retained for longer periods of time without substantial deterioriation' than what has been learned by memorizing.
Dr. Katona's scholarship is impressive, his organization clear, his w