Effort and active experiencing as factors in verbatim recall

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Abstract
Recent research has shown that professional actors’ learning strategies enable them to retrieve lengthy, complex material verbatim without line‐by‐line memorization. Two experiments were performed to determine the operative mechanisms behind this phenomenon and whether students would also demonstrate enhanced retention if instructed in the use of professional actors’ strategies. The first experiment appeared to rule out the effort involved in generating elaborations as the primary operative mechanism. The second experiment indicated that a specific form of perspective taking, which the experimenters call active experiencing, can produce enhanced verbatim retention in students compared to that produced by intentional memorization.