Bulletin Summer 1988

Psychology is therefore rather useful to anyone majoring in practically any of the social sciences. Students of social work, political science, economics, business administration, even communications, should all find a knowledge in psychology useful in their future respective fields of work. This is perhaps the main reason why students studying other majors choose to study psychology as a minor subject. Q: I believe psychology is still a misunderstood subject: people often think it mysterious and abstruse. Could you explain in the simplest terms what exactly the study of psychology is about? A: Basically, what the study of psychology tries to understand is mainly the mental processes behind human behaviours, as we observe them in our daily life. Let me cite an example. It takes no more than half a second of our time to figure out the sum of ‘6+2' . Yet psychological studies reveal that, in that very short instant of time, the man's mind follows a procedure such that he would first of all select the larger figure of the two, namely 6 ， and then increase the quantity of it twice by the unit increment, i.e. 1. This gives 8 as a result. The procedure of calculating, say ‘5+2 ’， is identical to calculating '6+2', as both follow more or less the same procedure of thought, and they should take about the same time. Experiments have confirmed this. I hope this example explains in the simplest way what the study of psychology is about. Q: You are in particular well-known for your extensive study of human memory and cognition. Could you tell us something about your latest research in a way that we as layman can understand it? A: It is true that I have spent much time in the study of cognition and memory, as my principal areas of research. Perhaps it is easier for me to give an example with respect to word comprehension. Let me relate this to a research that I am currently conducting. I believe many of us will reckon that it is easier for us to comprehend the meaning of a Chinese word than an English one, as we come to visual contact with the word. Many believe that because a Chinese character has its unique 'form', which tends to be more discriminable from one another, that renders it easier to be memorized. But our experimental research does not support this suggestion. Our finding is that it is not necessarily slower to identify and comprehend the meaning of an English word than a Chinese one. Q: Yet it seems that Chinese words are more easily memorized. How do we explain this? A: Perhaps I should tell you about the finding of a related experiment. This experiment indicates that it is quite effective for people to memorize Chinese words after ‘reading' them, but far less so after ‘hearing' them. With English words, the result is just the opposite. English words are easier memorized via hearing than reading. Our experimental finding is that, the main reason why Chinese words are easier to memorize than its English counterparts is that a Chinese character has, as its constituent, the 'radical', the element that often serves to convey its meaning. Therefore, when one is allowed insufficient time to recall what have been presented visually or auditorily, the visual modality effect disappears because there is not enough time to utilize meaning-conveying graphical features as retrieval landmarks to facilitate recall. It can be seen that the effects of visual modality and 7