MEMORY FOR POETRY: MORE THAN MEANING?

Abstract

The assumption has become that memory for words' sound patterns, or form, is rapidly lost in comparison to content. Memory for form is also assumed to be verbatim rather than schematic. Oral story-telling traditions suggest otherwise. The present experiment investigated if form can be remembered schematically in spoken poetry, a context in which form is important. We also explored if sleep could help preserve memory for form. We tested whether alliterative sound patterns could cue memory for poetry lines both immediately and after a delay of 12 hours that did or did not include sleep. Twelve alliterative poetry lines were modified into same alliteration, different alliteration, and no alliteration paraphrases. We predicted that memory for original poetry lines would be less accurate after 12 hours, same alliteration paraphrases would be falsely recognized as originals more often after 12 hours, and that the no-sleep group would make more errors. Different alliteration and no alliteration paraphrases were not expected to share this effect due to schematically different sound patterns. Our data support these hypotheses and provide evidence that memory for form is schematic in nature, retained in contexts in which form matters, and that sleep may help preserve memory for sound patterns.