Lincoln's Memory and Rhetoric

[David Lockmiller]

Reading Information Aloud to Yourself Improves Memory
Neuroscience News - DECEMBER 1, 2017

A recent Waterloo study found that speaking text aloud helps to get words into long-term memory. Dubbed the “production effect,” the study determined that it is the dual action of speaking and hearing oneself that has the most beneficial impact on memory.

“This study confirms that learning and memory benefit from active involvement,” said Colin M. MacLeod, a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Waterloo, who co-authored the study with the lead author, post-doctoral fellow Noah Forrin. “When we add an active measure or a production element to a word, that word becomes more distinct in long-term memory, and hence more memorable.”

Lincoln’s Rhetoric
By Douglas L. Wilson

Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association
Volume 34, Issue 1, Winter 2013, pp. 1-17
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0034.103

Much to Herndon’s annoyance, it was Lincoln’s regular practice to do his office reading aloud, which he justified by saying that both hearing and seeing what he read enabled him to remember it better.[32] To get inside the distinctiveness and effectiveness of his rhetoric, we must come to terms with the sound and rhythm of Lincoln’s compositions.

Lincoln seems to have had an early and long-standing attachment to the sounds of words. Learning to read in “blab” schools, where all the students read aloud (and at the same time), may have been instrumental in starting him in this direction. If true, this would suggest that it was perhaps as fundamental as his early fascination with crafting letters, words, and phrases. Working with words may well have been an aural experience from the beginning that became ingrained in his thought process. These are speculations, to be sure, but there is abundant evidence that Lincoln had long made a practice of reading his writings aloud to test them. One of his law students remembered him saying as early as 1845, “I write by ear. When I have got my thoughts on paper, I read it aloud, and if it sounds all right I just let it pass.”[33]

He certainly punctuated by ear, much to the chagrin of John Defrees, who fought a losing battle trying to purge the excessive commas from the state papers Lincoln sent to the government printing office.[34] As president it was still his custom, according to one of his secretaries, “to read his manuscript over aloud, ‘to see how it sounded, as he could hardly judge of a thing by merely reading it.’”[35] The suggestion common to these and other recollections is that he couldn’t pass on the acceptability of what he had composed until he had heard it uttered aloud. In addition, we have evidence that he read virtually every one of his major presidential writings to a confidant before release or delivery.[36]

31. Roy P. Basler, “Abraham Lincoln’s Rhetoric,” American Literature 11, no. 2 (May 1939): 176.
32. Ibid., citing William H. Herndon’s October 21, 1885, letter to Jesse W. Weik.
33. Gibson William Harris, “My Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Woman’s Home Companion (January 1904), 13. I am indebted to Michael Burlingame for calling my attention to this recollected remark.
34. See Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 86–90.
35. William O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times: Memoirs and Reports of Lincoln’s Secretary, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 172.
36. See Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 180–81.

[RJNorton]

In Lincoln In The Telegraph Office David Homer Bates wrote:

"On one occasion when in the office with Lincoln alone, he began to talk of the functions of the eye and brain when one was reading aloud from a printed page. He said that in his boyhood days he had come across a book in which it was stated that as each letter of the alphabet and each word or sentence appeared before the eye, it was pictured upon the retina so that each particular word could be spoken aloud at the exact moment when its printed form in the volume was reflected upon the eye. He discoursed at some length upon this marvel, remarking upon the curious fact that the eye is capable of receiving simultaneously several distinct impressions or a series of impressions constantly changing as one continues to read across the page, and that these numerous and sometimes radically different impressions are communicated from eye to brain and then back to the vocal organs by means of the most delicate nerves; for instance, said he, the eye may rest at the same instant not only upon a single letter of the alphabet, but upon a series of letters forming a given word, and upon a moving procession of words in a sentence, and not only that, but the resultant record of all these numerous and different impressions is translated by the brain into thought and sent back; telegraphed as it were, to the organs of speech, each organ selecting its own particular message, the whole sentence then being spoken aloud even while the eye is still resting upon the printed page. The skilled accountant casts up a long column of figures as fast as his eye moves down the page, and at the instant he reaches the end of his column his ready fingers jot down the total. In other words, he added, communications are being transmitted continuously and simultaneously in both directions between the outer and inner senses. He likened this mysterious, instantaneous and twofold operation to the telegraph, although as regards the dual process it should be remembered that the invention of duplex telegraphy was not brought into use until more than ten years after this interesting discourse of Lincoln in the presence of his solitary auditor."

[David Lockmiller]

(12-03-2017 12:52 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  In Lincoln In The Telegraph Office David Homer Bates wrote:

"He likened this mysterious, instantaneous and twofold operation to the telegraph, although as regards the dual process it should be remembered that the invention of duplex telegraphy was not brought into use until more than ten years after this interesting discourse of Lincoln in the presence of his solitary auditor."

This statement would tend to cast some doubt on the rest of the discourse.

[Gene C]

(12-03-2017 11:55 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Reading Information Aloud to Yourself Improves Memory
Neuroscience News - DECEMBER 1, 2017

A recent Waterloo study found that speaking text aloud helps to get words into long-term memory. Dubbed the “production effect,” the study determined that it is the dual action of speaking and hearing oneself that has the most beneficial impact on memory.

“This study confirms that learning and memory benefit from active involvement,” said Colin M. MacLeod, a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Waterloo, who co-authored the study with the lead author, post-doctoral fellow Noah Forrin. “When we add an active measure or a production element to a word, that word becomes more distinct in long-term memory, and hence more memorable.”

I have little voices inside my head that repeat the words as I'm reading. Does that count?
"Yes it does"
Good, I was a little concerned
"Don't worry you're as normal as we are"
"That reminds us of a song, (and it's hard to find one we can all agree on) just click 'show more' for the lyrics so you can sing along with us in your head
&

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLCfb54e_kM
Voices - by Chris Young