The Zeigarnik effect or what does it mean to “close the gestalt”?

Have you ever felt like a situation or problem that happened to you in the past still haunts you today? Everything seemed to be resolved, but some moments and experiences emerge in the memory again and again, sometimes causing not the most pleasant feelings. In psychological practice, this phenomenon is called an open gestalt. Let’s try to figure out how to “complete” experienced situations and why they can remain “open” in this article.

Classic experiment B.V. Zeigarnik

Kurt Lewin always enjoyed informal communication with his students and often played the so-called “search game” with them. One day, while having lunch in a cafe with his students, among whom was Bluma Vulfovna Zeigarnik, he turned to the waiter with a request to remember the order that several clients had just made at the next table. The waiter easily listed all the dishes they ordered. Then Levin asked to do the same, but with orders from customers who had already paid and left the cafe. The young man could not remember a single dish, explaining that the customers had already paid, and therefore their orders were no longer a priority for him. This situation has given rise to the assumption that we remember unfinished actions or situations much better than those that have already been completed.

The widely used results of Zeigarnik's (1927) classic experiment argue that interrupted actions or situations do acquire some special "status" in memory. In the experiment, participants were given about 20 tasks. These tasks included arithmetic, puzzles, and the use of hand motor skills, including constructing “buildings” from cardboard boxes and creating clay figures. During these tasks, the process was interrupted before participants could complete the action and were forced to postpone it. The interruption occurred "when the subject appeared most engrossed in work." The results of the experiment reported that this occurred when the subject discovered how a problem should be solved but did not yet foresee the final outcome.

Participants were allowed to complete the second half of the task.

After completing all tasks, subjects were asked to report any problems using a free recall method. Zeigarnik found that unfinished tasks were cited as examples of completion problems 90% more often than completed ones. Zeigarnik concluded that there is a significant advantage in retaining interrupted tasks in memory compared to those that have been completed. Although the theory of the "special status" of unresolved problems in memory is attractive, the results of Zeigarnik's experiment seem somewhat contradictory.

Any memorial advantage in Zeigarnik's experiment should be correlated with completed tasks, since a participant should logically, on average, spend more time on a completed task. But, nevertheless, using less time to process interrupted tasks, participants recalled them more often.

Zeigarnik explained this effect in terms of motivational factors, suggesting that when a subject intends to perform the required operations of one of the tasks, a “quasi-need” to complete the task arises. Thus, the “advantage” of interrupted tasks must be due to the continuation of this quasi-dependence, which motivates the person to find solutions to unfinished tasks.

Since then, it has been proposed to consider additional social, motivational, and personality factors in variations and modifications of the original experiment.

Bogoslavsky and Guthrie (1941) proposed that the tension that is present during problem solving increases the memorability of the problem.

However, other studies have found discrepancies with the results of the original experiment.

Rosenzweig (1943) hypothesized some form of repression to explain the discrepancy with Zeigarnik's results. In a study he conducted, subjects were told that the tasks consisted of an intelligence test. Again, participants remembered completed tasks more fully than those that remained unsolved. Rosenzweig explained this as a defensive reaction of the brain, in which a person wants to quickly repress situations or actions that characterize him as stupid, clumsy, inappropriate, etc. Other scientists proposed factors related to stress (Glicksman, 1949), individual differences (Appler, 1946), and subjective fatigue to account for the discrepancy between their results and Zeigarnik's original experiment. The use of theories based on social, motivational and other personality-related variables has been adopted with limited success.

Such theories have failed to explain numerous seemingly contradictory findings.

A higher degree of success may be achieved by attempting to explain Zeigarnik's original results and some subsequent experiments in terms of a cognitive model of problem solving. By reconsidering the Zeigarnik effect in terms of modern theories of problematic beliefs, goals, and contextual effects, perhaps we can explain the circumstances under which the effect will occur.

Modifications of the experiment B.V. Zeigarnik

In studying cognitive factors, many scientists have tried to explain both the original effect and various studies that sometimes did not replicate the original experiment.

One of these scientists were employees of the University of Colorado.

In the first experiment, they attempted to compare the methods used by Zeigarnik (1927). However, one of the necessary changes was the use of mental tasks only, without including a task related to hand motor skills in the study design. The subjects were 39 students (25 women and 14 men) from the University of Michigan. This study used twenty word problems, including mathematics, logic, and analysis (Mosler, 1977). All of them were divided into separate groups and required from 15 seconds to four minutes for a successful solution. Each task was presented on a separate sheet of paper and had its own short name, for example, "Bridge".

The next step was subjective assessment using a scale. For each previously given problem, subjects were asked to rate how confident they were that their answer was correct.

Subjects were given the following instructions: “You will have a series of tasks. Please work quickly and accurately. Do not solve tasks intuitively: try to analyze everything and give a clear answer. As soon as you finish one task, you will be immediately given the next one. Don't worry if you don't finish the solution."

Following these instructions, subjects were presented with the first two problems. One was easy and each participant completed it within a period of between 30 and 210 seconds. The second was quite complex, and each subject was successfully interrupted by the experimenter between 15 and 60 seconds. The experimenter followed this pattern throughout solving all 20 test tasks. The test tasks were presented in the same random order for all subjects.

Immediately after finishing all 20 tasks, participants were asked to write about the tasks they could remember. The experimenter also asked participants to note how correctly they solved each problem that they could remember, based on their subjective assessment of correctness.

The results showed that participants recalled almost equally well both unfinished tasks and tasks that they had completed, and were absolutely confident in the correctness of their solutions.

It was concluded that confidence regarding how well participants performed on a task generated a sense of satisfaction.

They also found that free recall of completed tasks was slightly better than recall of interrupted tasks. However, this is not surprising, given that the subject spends significantly more time both when solving the task correctly and when solving it incorrectly, compared to the time period spent completing the interrupted task.

In another study, American psychologist John Atkinson focused on the motivational aspects of task completion. He also found support for the Zeigarnik effect, but noted that memory for unfinished tasks was also affected by individual differences between participants. Atkinson came to the conclusion that those subjects who approached tasks with higher motivation to complete them try to solve as many of them as possible and, accordingly, the number of unfinished tasks under a time limit increases. In contrast, if the participant was less motivated, the unfinished task status was less interesting to the participant and therefore less memorable (Atkinson, 1953).

Another variant of the classic experiment was M. Ovsyankina’s study regarding the desire of subjects to return to completing an interrupted task.

Its essence was that subjects were given a simple task to complete - for example, putting together a figure from different elements. When the task was almost completed, the experimenter interrupted the participant and asked to perform a completely different action. At this time, the experimenter had to “neutralize the stimulus” - cover the stimulus material with newspaper, paper, cloth, etc. After the second action was completed by the participant, the experimenter had to pretend that he was very busy with something and did not hear the subject’s questions, but at the same time, had to observe him. It turned out that 86% of participants returned to the first activity that was interrupted at the beginning.

Levine, having read the results of this study, was initially outraged by why adults would return to performing meaningless and stupid tasks such as simply folding shapes. But then he came to the conclusion that the emotional and psychological stress that arises in the situation of solving a task of any complexity must be removed, otherwise our consciousness will constantly return us to this unfinished action. It was precisely this “charged” or tense system that Lewin called “quasi-need” or the intention to do something at the moment, which, in his opinion, differed from the true need that constantly exists in the human mind.

The concept of “closed gestalt”

Zeigarnik's fundamental work, based on experiment, became one of the starting points in the formation of the basic Gestalt principle - completeness and integrity. Based on the concept of K. Lewin, Zeigarnik explained her results as follows: an interrupted task or action leads to the emergence of psychological stress in the subject. In order for discharge to occur, the subject strives to complete a particular task, that is, he tries to make the image or memory complete, complete, and come to its logical conclusion. The concept of an unfinished task has often been used by Gestalt psychologists as an analogue to the unfinished perceptual and cognitive task introduced by Perls and Shepard.

Based on developed theories and conducted research, psychologists increasingly began to use the Gestalt principle in relation to situations. The concept of “closed gestalt” has acquired the connotation of an incomplete emotional or behavioral reaction of a person in a certain situation. Suggestions began to emerge that people tend to get “stuck” in events or experiences precisely because of an open gestalt. For example, a situation that happened to a person had an unsatisfactory ending for him. The tension that arises as a result of this is permanent and is not relieved by emotional release, since a person cannot change existing circumstances. However, there is one of the paradoxical principles of Gestalt therapy, which states that a situation or event could be interrupted due to the mechanism of avoidance as a defensive reaction of consciousness. The event may have been traumatic, and the experience of it caused the person to “withdraw” from the actions necessary for completion and subsequent internalization. But the subject constantly resorts to the same actions, unfinished in the past, is prone to fantasies and thoughts about the past situation, repeats the same scenarios of actions in parallel situations in the present time.

Therefore, they resort to the method of playing out situations and possible options for events that will allow them to “let go” of the situation. The task of a psychotherapist is to increase the awareness of a person’s actions, to draw his attention to what he is doing and why. That is, to transfer the gestalt from an unconscious to a conscious state. It is completeness, satisfaction from the “necessary” completion that allows a person to close the gestalt and, thereby, relieve psychological stress.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that B.V. Zeigarnik herself never practiced Gestalt therapy and had nothing to do with it. However, her research is still actively used by psychotherapists and psychologists of various directions. After all, it was the results of her experiment that led to the conclusion that a person’s personality constantly strives to complete situations or tasks. Interruption of such actions can cause psychological tension and may well form neurosis.

In psychology there are such patterns, the presence of which brings the shaky field of knowledge about the soul closer to more precise sciences. There are experimental data that have been repeatedly confirmed on a variety of people. I think this is useful for everyone to know. The Zeigarnik effect, or the phenomenon of unfinished actions, is for me in the forefront of such practical knowledge.

In 1927, Bluma Vulfovna Zeigarnik defended her thesis in Berlin under the guidance of Kurt Lewin on the topic “On the memorization of completed and unfinished actions.” Experimentally, she found that unfinished actions are remembered almost 1.9 times better than completed ones.

Briefly about her
Born in 1900 in the Russian Empire, she got married in 1919, left with her husband for Germany in 1921, studied at the epicenter of the development of psychology at the University of Berlin in 1924, and returned to the Soviet Union in 1931. The Jewish husband was shot before the Great Patriotic War. She raised two sons herself, one of whom was born after his father’s arrest. She developed the foundations of a new field of knowledge at the intersection of psychology and psychiatry - pathopsychology.

About the history of her discovery, Bluma Vulfovna recalled that Kurt Lewin, who was a little older than the group of his students, was informal, lively in his communication, and captivated his students with a “search game” in which he observed and explored everyday situations. For example, their seminars were sometimes held in cafes, and it was Levin who was the first to pay attention to the phenomenon of better memorization of unfinished actions. He asked the waiter to name without peeping what this or that visitor ordered. The waiter remembered each customer's order in full. When asked about the orders of those who had just left the cafe, he could not answer at all. “They’ve already paid,” was his answer.

Experiment

In what form did Bluma Zeigarnik decide to test the hypothesis about the influence of completeness on memorization?
The subjects were given a variety of tasks with a limited time for each, were randomly interrupted (saying that the time for the task had run out), and then asked to remember which tasks they were. Not only were the unfinished ones remembered better, but the subjects tried to at least somehow complete them. This phenomenon was called the Zeigarnik effect.

At the University, we also conducted such an experiment as part of a workshop. I was then amazed that my subject, whose task I had interrupted to sign all the sheets, after finishing the work, involuntarily sat and put his signatures on all the sheets. It was not “Last Name of I.O.”, but only a signature, but the unrealized need sought to be embodied in at least this form. When I asked why he was doing this, the answer was: “It’s just like that. I wanted to." This is how the need not only remained, but also went into the unconscious. I wonder how many of us have such charged aspirations?

conclusions

There are many useful conclusions from Zeigarnik’s discovery that will be useful in our daily affairs. Bluma Vulfovna has nothing to do with these conclusions. It was I who collected ways to use her discovery and summarized my experience in counseling and leading groups. You can add your own.

1. Finishing what you started

Unfinished tasks “hang” in our memory. When there are too many such things, our processor freezes and requires a reboot, that is, reset. In such cases, we begin to forget what we promised, we become inattentive to what is happening, because mental resources are wasted on previous tasks.

This means that it makes sense not to multiply the amount of unfinished work, but to complete what has been started. “Closing the gestalt” is an expression we often hear here and there about something unfulfilled. This is what is worth doing.
Yesterday, at a session with an osteopath, my body experienced the following image: when the doctor lightly touched the tips of my fingers, I felt like the nervous circuit was closing. As if this touch was once important to me, but it was not completed, and the whole system was in tension.

Important! In my experience (Zeigarnik didn’t say anything about this), if what you started has lost its relevance—let’s say you decide not to finish reading the book—it makes sense to complete this process, at least symbolically. Let go.

2. The desire to close the relationship

This is how not only things hang, but also unfinished relationships. Sometimes we are not even aware of them, but remain “loaded” to our list of tasks. A promised visit to mom, an intention to go to a play with a child, an understatement in a conflict at work, a forgotten desire to go on a long trip with friends, ruined joint plans with loved ones... Ellipsis... This is the sign that stands in the topics that await continuation. It’s as if we promised them “to be continued,” “to be continued.”

The conclusion about the influence of unfinished relationships on all subsequent ones, until the previous ones are closed, suggests itself. My psychological practice also confirms the correctness of this hypothesis. Of course, B.V. Zeigarnik did not mean this, and it is difficult to verify this experimentally. However, it is precisely such phenomena that psychotherapeutic practice often reveals. The first relationship of any person is the relationship in the parental family. Associations lead to them in one way or another, even when the person seeking help from a psychologist came to talk about other topics - about a husband or a child, or work.

“Am I already sinful in that I myself
Got a slightly bitter smell of vengeance
And all your non-returns
Signed according to the same scheme?
And life is like a miserable cockatoo
She stated the same thing:
“My darling, wait for me, my darling!
And I will come, I will come, I will come.”

Ivasi

In order to see, hear, feel everything that strives for completion, you should first of all pay attention to inadequate situations of feeling. Such feelings that seem to relate not to the current situation, but to something else. Having discovered such a feeling, no matter how strong, amazing, scary it may be, it is important to stay with it, give yourself and it time to live. I often use breathing and meditation practices for this, as well as spiritual conversation. What do you do with such experiences?

3. Attention to exciting new needs

In the early 1970s, J. Heimback of the Nationwide Research Center and J. Jacoby of Purdue University studied the possibilities of using the Zeigarnik effect in advertising. Interruption in experiments showed a positive effect on engagement and brand recall. Everywhere in the advertising and media sphere they are now using the findings from their research:
1) intrigue from the first seconds
So that when a person refuses to watch, a feeling of incompleteness arises;
2) understatement
To be remembered better.

This means that you should be attentive to such “hooks” so as not to waste time and not get involved. And this is facilitated by remembering your priorities.
To avoid the need to complete, it is better to carefully choose what to start.

4. Using the Zeigarnik effect for the right things

Knowing about the Zeigarnik phenomenon, we can make it easier for ourselves to complete some things. As the shortest guide for beginners says: “Get started!” If you have no doubt that this is exactly what you need, then it’s better to start right away. It will be much easier to return to what you started when you have already taken several steps towards your goal. The Zeigarnik effect will help you with this and keep you motivated.
According to Kurt Lewin's field theory, we experience needs associated with the field - if we see a mirror, we want to look into it, if there is a bell, then we want to ring it, etc. By starting to perform new tasks, it is as if we are sowing this field with seeds that we will be drawn to return to again.

And how are you? Tell us about your experience of unfinished and completed cases.

The Zeigarnik effect is the effect of an unfinished action.

Question

Experiment

The influence of the nature of the material on memorization.

1) The influence of the arrangement of elements in a row. If the material being learned consists of elements arranged in a row, then the elements located at the beginning and end are remembered faster than the elements located in the middle. The elements that are remembered the worst are those slightly offset from the center towards the end of the row.

Foucault: this is the result of the interaction of 2 inhibition processes that simultaneously act during learning and slow down the latter. The first process - progressive internal inhibition - is manifested in the fact that responses to previous stimuli have an interfering effect on responses related to subsequent stimuli. The second process, regressive internal inhibition, manifests itself in the fact that responses to subsequent stimuli have an interfering effect on responses related to previous stimuli.

* Interference – deterioration in the retention of memorized material as a result of the influence (overlay) of other material with which the subject operates.

The degree of homogeneity of the material (similarity and difference).

a) If 2 or more stimuli have common characteristics, then they are said to be similar. The number of trials required to achieve the same learning criterion increases with increasing similarity between elements of the material.

b) Regardless of the nature of the material, if in a memorized series heterogeneous elements are interspersed with a large number of homogeneous ones, then these heterogeneous elements are retained better than homogeneous ones. (von Restorff effect).

Meaningfulness of the material.

Well-understood material is easier to learn than poorly understood material.

Given the same exercise time, the higher the degree of meaningfulness of these stimuli, the greater the number of memorized stimuli.

To achieve the same learning criterion when learning meaningless material, a longer exercise is required than when learning meaningful material.

The role of exercise. Distribution of exercises and relative difficulty of tasks.

When it comes to memorizing material, when they want to achieve the maximum level of learning with a minimum duration of exercises, what is preferable - to repeat the exercises continuously until the mastery criterion is reached, or to distribute the exercises over time?

The results suggest that the number of trials required for repeated learning is somewhat greater when all repetitions fall on the same day.

Jost: by repeating series of syllables, the subject establishes associations between various elements of the material; with distributed learning, “old” associations are updated; the “oldness” of associations increases, the more time has passed from the exercise to the reproduction. With concentrated repetition learning, the newest associations are updated.

Thus, of two associations of equal strength, one of which is older than the other, upon subsequent repetition, the old association will be better updated (Jost’s law).

When the material is such that it can be learned with a relatively small number of repetitions, it is preferable to use the method of concentrated learning; if, on the contrary, a significant number of repetitions are necessary to master the material, then the distributed learning method will be the most economical.

The effect of activity breaks on memory.

Zeigarnik effect. The Zeigarnik effect is the effect of an unfinished action.

Question: how do remembering actions that were interrupted before completion compare with remembering completed actions.

Experiment: the subject was given tasks that he d.b. perform as quickly and as best as possible. However, he was not allowed to complete all the tasks: half were interrupted before they were completed. Completed and interrupted tasks followed in a random sequence. After the last task, the subject was asked to remember the tasks that he did during the experiment.

The result of the study showed that unfinished actions are remembered better than completed ones.

Unfinished tasks are 3 times more likely to be called first than completed ones. The number of remembered interrupted tasks is approximately twice as high as the number of remembered completed ones.

But it is not always observed. It turned out that with very strong interest, completed tasks were remembered better, and with weak motivation, interrupted tasks were better remembered. With adequate self-esteem, the effect of unfinished action was observed, but with increased or decreased self-esteem, it was not.

The role of attitudes, the nature and strength of motivation and emotional reactions in P. processes.

Along with the properties of stimuli and exercises in performing a task, the individual’s motives, his affective reactions, attitudes, habits, methods of organizing and perceiving stimuli, etc., acting at the level of learning and mnemonic activity. Ultimately, both the reproduction and inhibition of associations, as well as various P. disorders, are a product of the interaction of these factors.

Memorization and reproduction depend not only on the objective connections of the material, but also on the individual’s attitude towards it. This attitude is determined by the orientation of the individual - his attitudes, interests and the emotional coloring in which the significance of the material for the individual is expressed.

Human P. is selective. It is expressed in the fact that we remember essentially what is meaningful and interesting to us.

Memorization in a person significantly depends on the conscious intention to remember. Remembering is an act of will. The attitude to remember is an essential condition for memorization; without it, simply repeating the presented series has no effect. The setting can influence not only the fact of memorization itself, but also its duration.

In some cases, the direction of the individual is determined by unconscious attitudes that act involuntarily and unintentionally.

Emotional moments also play a role in remembering. All other things being equal, the emotionally rich will be more strongly imprinted than the emotionally neutral; but in some cases the pleasant will be better remembered, in others - the unpleasant, depending on what in this particular case is more relevant, more significant due to its relationship to the person’s personality. Memorizing an emotionally vivid impression will depend on its significance for a given individual, on what place it will occupy in the history of its development.

The importance of rhythmic and semantic grouping of material.

Memory and learning. How do we learn h-n? Exercise, study, training.

Obviously, in almost any D., difficult enough for there to be masters or professionals in it, years of study and practice are needed to achieve a high level.

How do we remember? Sometimes this happens very easily. Sometimes it is only difficult to remember.

To remember means to successfully cope with three tasks: assimilation, storage and re-retrieval of information. Not remembering means failing to cope with one of these tasks.

Learning and remembering are closely related. But learning is not just memorization, it is also the development of a skill, the ability to perform some task. Learning is associated with goal-directed recall and skillful action.

Cognitive learning is the process of retaining knowledge. The knowledge gained during training is perceived at first as something external to the individual, but then gradually turns into experience and beliefs.

Phenomenal P. and the problem of forgetting. The main difficulty in extracting information is associated with the structure of the document and the large amount of material contained in it.

For successful retrieval, it is not enough that the required information has been preserved. The required event d.b. described in a way that distinguishes it from all other similar events.

Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. Retention efficiency decreases rapidly within the first hour of learning; this rapid decline is then followed by a pronounced deceleration phase, during which the slope of the curve gradually becomes weaker and finally becomes completely insignificant.

Material, 60

saving

1 2 6 Time interval, days

You can see that immediately after initial memorization the curve drops sharply, but subsequently the rate of forgetting slows down and after two days memorization remains almost at the same level. And after 6 days less than 20% remains.

Results of Ebbinghaus research:

* Individual elements of information are remembered, stored and reproduced not in isolation, but in certain logical structures and semantic associations.

* If the number of members of the memorized series is increased to an amount exceeding the volume of short-term P., then the number of correctly reproduced members of the series upon a single presentation decreases, compared to the case when the number of units in the memorized series is exactly equal to the volume of short-term P.

* If such a series increases, at the same time the number of repetitions required for memorization increases.

* Preliminary repetition of the material to be memorized reduces the time it takes to memorize it later.

* Edge effect: when memorizing a long series, the beginning and end are better remembered.

* Repetition of memorized material in a row is less productive for its memorization than the distribution of such repetitions over a certain period of time.

* What a person is more interested in is remembered without difficulty, especially in adulthood.

* Rare, strange, unusual experiences are remembered better than ordinary, frequently occurring ones.

* Relatively simple events that make a strong impression are remembered quickly and for a long time.

Forgetting theory, retroactive and proactive inhibition.

Forgetting is a process characterized by a gradual decrease in the ability to remember and reproduce memorized material.

Forgetting is a process that leads to a loss of clarity and a decrease in the volume of material fixed in P., and the impossibility of reproducing.

Learning occurs especially intensively immediately after memorization. This pattern is general, although meaningful visual or verbal material is forgotten more slowly than, for example, sequences of numbers or nonsense syllables.

Having an interest in the material being memorized leads to longer retention.

The main content of the material is most fully and firmly preserved; minor details are forgotten faster.

Retroactive inhibition - 1) the negative impact of training that follows memorization on the subsequent reproduction of memorized material. 2) an integral nervous process that slows down learning as a result of the fact that responses to subsequent elements of memorized material have an inhibitory effect on responses related to its previous elements - forgetting of previously received material occurs under the influence of subsequent memorization.

R.t. the stronger the greater the similarity between m/d memorization and subsequent learning, both in content and in the conditions of their implementation. R.t. decreases if in two sequentially memorized materials the number of not similar, but identical elements increases.

R.t. It also occurs when D., performed after memorizing the material, requires great mental effort and causes fatigue, or if it is extremely entertaining and associated with strong positive or negative emotions.

Proactive inhibition is an integral nervous process that slows down learning due to the fact that responses related to previous elements of the material inhibit responses related to subsequent elements.

This is a forward-acting inhibition, difficulty in memorizing material under the influence of the previous memory. This influence is stronger, the greater the similarity in the previous memory with the subsequent memorization process.

The combined action of proactive and retroactive inhibition explains faster forgetting of the middle of the material being learned (if it is extensive and homogeneous in content) than the beginning and end, because the middle parts of the material experience the inhibitory influence of its preceding and subsequent parts.

Spontaneous forgetting and forgetting as an action.

Facts and theories of reminiscence. Reminiscence is a more complete and accurate reproduction of the material stored in the P. in comparison with what was originally imprinted (memorized), provided that from the moment of memorization the subject did not engage in additional exercises in performing this task.

The phenomenon of R. was studied within the framework of 2 particular questions. The first concerns the quantitative improvement in retention over subsequent recalls (the Ballard phenomenon), and the second concerns the quantitative improvement in retention over time in the absence of, in principle, any recall of the reproduced object (the Ward-Howland phenomenon).

These two approaches assume that P. is synonymous with “quantitative improvement of P.” However, the meaning of the term is too narrowed, because recall of previously unreproduced material may be accompanied by forgetting, short-term or complete, of other mnemonic responses that were correctly reproduced during previous reproduction.

Ballard phenomenon.

The subjects had to memorize various material (poems, passages of prose, etc.) in a time insufficient to achieve the criterion of complete assimilation.

The results showed that reproduction becomes maximum after 2 or 3 days.

Thus, R. is a process opposite to forgetting and can have a beneficial effect on mnemonic processes for several days.

Williams:

The improvement in long-term memory obtained by Ballard is largely caused by mental repetition of the material in the periods between memorization and reproduction.

G. Mak-Gech:

Subjects who probably refrained from repetition showed practically the same measure of P as those subjects who resorted to such repetition.

Brown's conjecture(the most satisfactory interpretation of the Ballard phenomenon):

The absence of long-term forgetting is the result of the accumulation of recollections, each of which contributes to the consolidation of reproduced responses, thereby increasing their disponibility, i.e. the likelihood of their recall during subsequent playback; this process favors the actualization of elements of a given task that have not yet been reproduced.

The most characteristic forms of pathology P.

P. disorders are a decrease or loss of the ability to remember, retain, recognize and reproduce information. The following P. disorders are distinguished: amnesia - absence of P., hypermnesia - strengthening of P., hypomnesia - weakening of P., paramnesia - deceptions of P.

One type of amnesia is progressive amnesia. Patients do not remember the past and confuse it with the present; shift the chronology of events; disorientation in time and space is revealed.

Hypermnesia - as a rule, is congenital in nature and consists of remembering information (visual, symbolic) in a larger volume than normal and for a longer period of time.

Hypomnesia - either occurs after various diseases (sclerosis of cerebral vessels, etc.), or is congenital.

Paramnesia is divided into P.'s deceptions of the “already seen” type, into confusion of P.'s traces, into the appearance of false memories that are repeated in nature.

P.'s disorders also manifest themselves in the processes of perception as misrecognition of familiar objects. In such cases, P.'s disorders are included in the agnosia syndrome.

Zeigarnik Bluma Vulfovna - Soviet psychologist. She received her psychological education in the 20s. in Germany in the laboratory of K. Lewin, where she carried out world-famous studies of forgetting completed and unfinished actions. These studies showed that unfinished actions are remembered 1.9 times better than completed ones, which is called the Zeigarnik effect. Later she studied the problems of pathopsychology, in particular the pathology of thinking, using the methodology of the activity approach.

Bluma Vulfovna Zeigarnik was born on November 9, 1900 in the Lithuanian town of Prienai. In the same city she graduated from high school. Unfortunately, it is not possible to refer to any documentary evidence from that period of her life, since it has not survived.

She got married quite early and in 1921 she and her husband went to Berlin. In Berlin, she entered the University of Berlin at the Faculty of Philology, where she immediately plunged headlong into studying the various dialects of the German language.

By chance, Zeigarnik went to a lecture by Professor Max Wertheimer and realized that she would devote her whole life to the study of psychology. In 1924, Zeigarnik began attending a seminar by Kurt Lewin, who was directly involved in the psychology of the individual, in particular the study of the driving motives of the individual, the behavior of the individual in his environment, the needs and quasi-needs of the individual and their dependence on the social environment.

Simultaneously with her classes with Levin, Zeigarnik continued to attend classes with other professors: for example, she studied in a psychiatric clinic with K. Goldstein, listened to a course of lectures by E. Spranger and a course of lectures on aesthetics by M. Dessoir. The latter, noticing her passion for Gestalt psychology, made a lot of efforts to dissuade her from studying in Levin’s circle, which did not lead to the desired result. It should be noted, however, that Lewin’s approach to the study of personality differed markedly from the approach accepted among Gestalt psychologists.

Around this time (more precisely in 1925), after conducting a series of experiments, Zeigarnik discovered an amazing pattern, which entered science under the name “Zeigarnik effect.” The essence of this phenomenon is that unfinished actions are stored in a person’s memory much better than completed actions.

During the experiment, Zeigarnik asked the subjects to solve a problem within a certain time. It turned out that if a problem is not resolved due to some factor (for example, due to lack of time), this unresolvedness causes a certain level of emotional stress, which does not receive its release in solving the problem and, in turn, contributes to the persistence of this “unsatisfactory” action in mind. Zeigarnik empirically derived the following pattern: the number of remembered unsolved problems is approximately twice as large as the number of remembered solved problems.

40 years after the discovery of the Zeigarnik effect, it is estimated that more than 160 scientific papers have been devoted to clarifying and interpreting the Zeigarnik effect, and over 30 thousand people have been used as test subjects for relevant experimental studies to prove or disprove the existence of this phenomenon. Almost all directions and schools of psychology, with the exception of psychoanalysis, tried to interpret the Zeigarnik effect discovered in one way or another: to use it to serve their theories or to refute it.

In 1927, Zeigarnik graduated from the University of Berlin, successfully defending her thesis on the effect she discovered. However, her research was made public by Lewin back in 1926 in his report at the VIII International Congress of Psychology.

In 1931, Zeigarnik returned to Russia. She literally became involved in science from the very first moment. Zeigarnik becomes L.S.’s closest assistant. Vygotsky and works in the psychoneurological clinic of the Institute of Experimental Medicine. During these years, Zeigarnik managed to become a faithful ally and like-minded person for many prominent Soviet psychologists.

Since 1931, she worked in the psychoneurological clinic of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, being L. S. Vygotsky’s closest collaborator.

The 30s were very difficult both for young Soviet psychology and for each individual psychologist. After Vygotsky’s death in 1934, his students were persecuted, and the branch of science, not unsuccessfully researched and developed by Vygotsky and his students, was banned. In 1938, B.V.’s husband was arrested and died in the dungeons of the Lubyanka. Zeigarnik, and she was left with virtually no support with her young son.

During the Great Patriotic War, Zeigarnik was involved in the restoration of higher mental functions after traumatic brain injuries at the rehabilitation hospital in Kisegach (in the Urals) under the leadership of A.R. Luria. After the war (1943-1967), Zeigarnik headed the pathopsychology laboratory of the Institute of Psychiatry of the Ministry of Health of the RSFSR at the same time (since 1949) as a teacher at Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Since 1967, professor at the Department of Medical Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Moscow State University. Zeigarnik is the organizer of the system of retraining and advanced training of practical pathopsychologists of the country, the head of the All-Russian pathopsychological seminars (since 1960), an honorary member and member of the Presidium of the Society of Psychologists of the USSR, chairman of the section of medical psychology. She participated in international psychological congresses, at the XVIII International Psychological Congress in Moscow and the XIX International Congress in London, she was the organizer and co-chairman of the pathopsychology sections. Zeigarnik's outstanding contribution to the development of psychological problems was appreciated by the American Psychological Association, which awarded her the Kurt Lewin Prize (1983).

Zeigarnik is strengthening his contacts with many of the country's leading psychologists - A.R. Luria, A.N. Leontyev, A.V. Zaporozhets, S.G. Gellerstein, during communication with whom her ideas about pathopsychology as a special branch of psychology took shape.

In the post-war period, Zeigarnik headed the psychology laboratory at the Institute of Psychiatry, which was created with her direct participation. It was during this period that a special branch of psychology was formed at the intersection of general psychology and psychiatry - experimental pathopsychology.

Theoretical observations and practical experience were summarized by Zeigarnik in the following books. “Thinking disorders in mentally ill patients” (1959), “Pathology of thinking” (1962), “Introduction to psychopathology” (1969), “Fundamentals of pathopsychology” (1973), “Pathopsychology” (1976).

In 1978, Professor Zeigarnik was awarded the 1st degree Lomonosov Prize for a series of works devoted to the problem of mental disorders in various mental illnesses, correction and rehabilitation of people suffering from mental illnesses. The works in this series provide a theoretical and methodological basis for the psychological study of mental pathology in mentally ill patients; it is shown that in various mental illnesses, fundamentally the same patterns of mental functioning are revealed as in normal conditions: only the conditions under which these patterns are revealed change. Both normally and in cases of mental illness, the main source of development is the social environment, the world of human culture surrounding the sick. The patients' own activity is the main symptom-forming factor. Psychological mechanisms are involved in the formation of the psychopathological picture of the disease, therefore, psychological correction and rehabilitation of patients is a necessary condition for their return to a full social life, a condition for restoring their mental health. Zeigarnik’s research shows that the disintegration of the psyche is not a negative of its development; theoretical and experimental justification for this position is given. The latter is important both for solving research problems in the field of pathopsychology and for the practical work of psychologists in this area.

Among Zeigarnik’s works, a special place is occupied by the textbook “Pathopsychology” (1986), addressed to students studying psychology. This is the first publication in Russian psychology, containing in a systematic form a holistic idea of ​​pathopsychology as a special field of knowledge; it discusses the place of pathopsychology in the system of other sciences, the importance of pathopsychological research for solving general theoretical problems of psychology.

Zeigarnik and her followers described the personality and thinking characteristics of people suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, alcoholism and other mental disorders. The results of these studies coincided with Leontiev's theory, according to which personality is largely determined by the hierarchy of motives, and demonstrated that this hierarchy is significantly disrupted in mentally ill people.

Zeigarnik was extremely skeptical about the mass use of psychotherapy. In her opinion, a mediated personality, that is, a person who critically evaluates himself and is able to independently cope with internal problems, does not need psychotherapy, since a developed, harmonious personality should be able to independently “repair” his internal “problems.” Immature people, with an unformed system of mental self-regulation, according to Zeigarnik, need psychotherapists.

Bluma Vulfovna Zeigarnik gained worldwide fame thanks to the phenomenon she discovered, named after her and included in all psychological encyclopedias, dictionaries and textbooks, as well as thanks to the separation of pathopsychology from a disparate field of knowledge into a special branch of science with its own problems, terminology, subject, method, system and area of ​​practical application.

B.V. Zeigarnik died in 1985.

Zeigarnik Bluma Vulfovna

(1900–1988) - Russian psychologist. Working at the school of K. Levin, she revealed the dependence of memorization productivity on the dynamics of the subject’s needs (“completeness” of actions), which became known in psychology as the “Zeigarnik effect.” Subsequently, she studied the problems of pathopsychology, in particular the pathology of thinking, using the methodology of the activity approach. Her research showed the role of motivational mediation of cognitive impairment in personality anomalies. The genesis and dynamics of the formation of pathological needs, the structure of violations of the hierarchy of motives, their mediation, awareness and control, and the regulatory function of self-esteem were described.

Essays:

Impaired thinking in mental illness. 1957;

Pathology of thinking. M., 1962;

Introduction to pathopsychology. M., 1969;

Personality and pathology of activity. M., 1971;

Fundamentals of pathopsychology. M., 1973;

Pathopsychology. M., 1976;

K.Levin's theory of personality. 1981;

Theories of personality in foreign psychology. 1982

In the last years of her life she was engaged in the development of general psychological problems of personality.

The Zeigarnik phenomenon

One of the well-known phenomena, now described in all psychological dictionaries and textbooks, was discovered in the 20s by B.V. Zeigarnik is named after her. What is interesting, however, is not only the discovery itself, but also how it was made.

In those years, Zeigarnik interned in Berlin with the famous psychologist Kurt Lewin. One day she and her teacher went into a crowded cafe. Her attention was drawn to the fact that the waiter, having accepted the order, did not write down anything, although the list of ordered dishes was extensive, and brought everything to the table without forgetting anything. When remarked about his amazing memory, he shrugged, saying that he never writes down and never forgets. Then the psychologists asked him to say what the visitors he had served before them and who had just left the cafe had chosen from the menu. The waiter was confused and admitted that he could not remember their order in any detail. Soon the idea arose to test experimentally how the completion or incompleteness of an action affects memorization. This work was done by B.V. Zeigarnik.

She asked subjects to solve intellectual problems in a limited time. She determined the solution time arbitrarily, so she could allow the subject to find a solution or at any moment declare that the time had expired and the problem had not been solved.

After several days, the subjects were asked to recall the conditions of the problems that were offered to them for solution.

It turned out that if the solution to a problem is interrupted, it is remembered better compared to problems that were successfully solved. The number of remembered interrupted tasks is approximately twice as large as the number of remembered completed tasks. This pattern is called the “Zeigarnik effect.” It can be assumed that a certain level of emotional stress, which did not receive a release under conditions of incomplete action, contributes to its preservation in memory.

An interesting improvement on this experiment is due to Paul Fresse. He asked subjects twenty problems, but only allowed them to solve ten, and then asked how many problems the subject thought he had solved. It turned out that people who are self-confident and success-oriented tend to somewhat exaggerate their achievements and believe that they have successfully completed most tasks. Those whose self-esteem is low tend to downplay their successes. So this experiment resulted in an interesting form of personality diagnostics.

Similar experiments are carried out to this day in various variations. And few people remember that their origins were an unknown Berlin waiter.