Biographical Memoirs Volume 79 (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Benton J. Underwood
Benton J. Underwood
Pages 376-395
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secondary eclucation in Albion, a small town serving the farming community in central Iowa, where his father own e cl en cl operated the local lumberyard. His mother was particularly supportive of her chilciren's education, providing each with the opportunity to take special music lessons and expressing great ad377
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From page 378... ...
that "it was of much greater interest en cl challenge to teach an academic subject to reluctant mincis than to try to teach a pivot shot to wouicI-be athletes lacking in basic coorclination." With his new bricle, Louise Olson UnclerwoocI, the couple headed west, where he planned to enroll in the summer session of ~ 939 at the University of Oregon. Unclerwoocl was experiencing clifficulty in choosing between graduate work in education or in psychology, which was resolved when he took a psychology course offered by John Dashiell, who was a visiting professor from the University of North Carolina.
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From page 379... ...
By all accounts, Iowa was a stimulating environment for graduate students to grow and develop. There were theoretical battles being waged on a number of important fronts: hammering out positions in a philosophy of science appropriate to psychology, debating and arguing critical theoretical points in animal learning, and developing research based on MeTton's recent proposal of the unlearning of associations.
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From page 380... ...
Neal F Johnson, a speaker at Underwood's memorial service, poignantly described Underwood's reaction to a new empirical fincling or theoretical analysis: When a clever experimental approach to an issue was outlined, he would show the quick flash of a radiating smile; then would come the look of intense concentration as you described the details of the methods and procedures that were used; but when you came in with that final bit of confirming data as the clincher, he would give an exclamation slap his knee and then his face would literally explode into his marvelous warm
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Two remarkable publications provicle summaries of Unclerwoocl's research contributions. The first is the chapter prepared by Leo Postman, his frequent collaborator on a number of important papers clearing with interference en c!
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forgetting by testing subjects who Earned en cl later recallecl a single list of verbal materials, he found forgetting to be in the range of 20-25 percent, rather than the 75 percent usually reporter! in multi-list studies.
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In aciclition to the 1982 retrospective book, the flavor of Unclerwoocl's approach to research is also reflected in his research books en cl monographs. In these more generous formats, he was able to describe the clevelopment of icleas en cl to cle tall the careful analyses of incliviclual research protocols that were a hallmark of his empirical work.
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with John l. Shaughnessy in 1975, was aciciressecl to the unclergracluate student majoring in psychology, providing detailed discussions of the issues that confront a researcher in the design of common experimental elusions emolovecl in osvcholo~v en cl in the 1 o 1 J 1 J OJ · .
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I observed him on numerous occasions in this unclergracluate course generating a productive class discussion with different examples of research problems and designs bogus experiments in which critical design flaws were cleverly embecIclecI. He was brilliant at encouraging students to stretch their newly acquired knowlecige to the next step in the design process, by drawing out an incorrect answer to the point that the student en c!
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I doubt that Ben's students knew or cared that they were taking a test that was made 'fresh' for them. I know that Ben cared about his students so much that he wanted to make a test that would best teach them.7 His graduate students remember him best not only as an unflagging critic of their research designs, ciata analyses, en cl theoretical interpretations but also as an infectiously enthusiastic connoisseur of research.
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Although the direction en c! thrust of the research was his, Unclerwoocl usecl me as a souncling board for his ideas and proposed research designs.
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, president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association, (Experimental Psychology, 1959-60, and General Psychology, 1969-70) , and chair of the Psychology Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ~ ~ 964)
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To illustrate, memory researcher Arthur P Shimamura proviclecl the following assessment of these lasting contributions, en cl incluclecl some recent applications of his work: During the rise of cognitive psychology in the 70s and 80s, Underwood's empirical and theoretical contributions were influential in a variety of domains, including issues of semantic release from proactive interference, part-list cueing, the fan effect, encoding specificity, and the effect of misleading information in eyewitness testimony.
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In computational models of memory, it is important to establish basic properties studied by Underwood, including effects of proactive interference and the distinction between massed and distributed practice."3 In short, Unclerwoocl's influence on research in the fielc! of human learning en cl memory continues to be felt through the citation of his formal publications and through the research en c!
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Comments presented at the memorial service for Benton T Underwood, December 16, 1994, held in the Alice S
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1961 Ten years of massed practice on distributed practice. Psychol.
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55:362-70. 1965 False recognition produced by implicit verbal responses.
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Chicago: Scott, Foreman. Studies in Human Learning and Memory: Selected Papers.
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