Emotion and Memorizing Qur'an Ability: The Factors That Affect

Verbal Working Capacity

Evi Afifah Hurriyati

1,2

, Efi Fitriana

, Surya Cahyadi

, Wilis Srisayekti

Psychology Department, Faculty of Humanities, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, 11480 Indonesia

Psychology Faculty, Padjadjaran University, West Java 45363 Indonesia

Keyword: Emotion, memorize, Qur’an, ability, factors, verbal, working, capacity

Abstract: This study aimed to explore the factors that affect verbal working memory capacity of Qur'an memorizing

students. There were 48 students (25 female and 23 male) and 4 teachers (1 female and 3 male) of two

Tahfidz institution in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, who participated in this study. The study used survey

and interview techniques. Individual has different response to the phonological loop phenomenon because

they have differences in working memory capacity. Emotion, executive attention ability and motivation are

factors that affect the increase or decrease in working memory capacity.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the theory of Baddeley and Hitch (as

cited in Baddeley, 2012), working memory is an

active storage to store and manipulate information.

Baddeley’s model is useful for describing and

organizing duration, capacity, and mechanisms in

working memory. Working memory is a multi-

component system with multiple domain-specific

component of short-term storage under control of

central executive unit. The approach from working

memory proposed by Baddeley showed that working

memory is not a passive storage but the new

information and the information on the long-term

memory was combined, modified, and manipulated

so that it can be used for a variety of cognitive

activities (Matlin, 2013). Working memory consists

of (1) the slave system (which is responsible for the

short-term information storage) and (2) central

executive which is responsible for coordination of

complex cognitive processes and direct the relevant

information at the time inhibits irrelevant

information. Baddeley working memory split into

two storage buffers, which arephonological loop for

verbal information and visuospatial sketchpad

fornon-verbal information.

One of behaviours that describe the activity of

cognitive and verbal skills and keep working is to

memorize the Qur’an or hifzul Qur’an. Memorizing

and retaining the text of Qur'an is high-level

cognitive activities. Even though, Qur’an is a text of

Considerable length. It consists of 30 Parts, and 114

Chapters of varying length. The total number of

verses in the Qur’an are 6666. According to the

fluency, reading style and speed of the Reciter.

Qur’an reciter is identicalwith the ability of

verbal working memory. The length of time required

to read the_Qur'an from sheet to sheet can be varied

in accordance with fluency, reading style and speed

of reading. How does the process of becoming a

hafidz so as to Qur'an reciter as much as 30 chapters

and keep memorizing 30 Juz Qur'an? Differences in

the response from the processing of information both

during encoding and recall of the Qur'an text,

indicating the existence of individual differences.

Whether it is influenced by factors such as

psychological factors, physical or environmental

factors? Anything that affects the process of

memorizing the Qur’an? Does that affect the

capacity of verbal working memory in the Qur'an

memorizers? Important to know the factors that

affect the performance Qu'ran reciters.

2 METHOD

2.1 Design and Participant

This research is the ex-post factor field study

quantitative research, which is the non-experimental

Hurriyati, E., Fitriana, E., Cahyadi, S. and Srisayekti, W.

Emotion and Memorizing Qur’an Ability: The Factors That Affect Verbal Working Capacity.

DOI: 10.5220/0010000100002917

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social Sciences, Laws, Arts and Humanities (BINUS-JIC 2018), pages 64-67

ISBN: 978-989-758-515-9

quantitative research design. From the aspect of the

research objectives, the research is explorative

descriptive research. Methods of data collection

were of two types; the first are a structured and

detailed interview for Qur’an teachers and students.

The interviews were conducted to explore the

process of Qur’an memorizing and the possible

factors or processes influencing the process of

memorization of the Quran. In an attempt to view

the process holistically, the interview questions

included open-ended questions on the possible

human factors (iman or faith, self-discipline,

emotion, motivation, fatigue), environmental factors

(food, noise), memory control processes (repeating,

writing, understanding, etc.) and Quranic text

characteristics (rhythm, writing style etc.). The

second method for data collection are the survey on

people that are involved in the Quranic

memorization process. Strengthen the findings from

interviews as well as to explore for the factors that

influence verbal working memory conducted with

open questionnaire. The population of this research

was 48students in TahfidzFalakiyah (25 students)

and TahfidzKhoiruUmmah (23 students) Bogor

West Java, Indonesia. The data collection technique

used questionnaire that distributedamong 48 students

of the Qur’an reciters (the average of age is 16.5

years).

3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The capacity ofthe working memory refers to the

ability tomaintain, manipulate and access the mental

picture thatis requiredto support a complex

cognition. Working memory capacity is closely

linked to the ability tomaintainattention and as a

predictor of achievement (Gathercole, Brown and

Pickering, 2003; Jarrold and Towse, 2006). Besides

variations in working memory capacity can predict

high-level cognitive abilities such as solving the

problem of general fluid (gf) intellegence (Broadway

and Engle, 2011). Individuals with greater capacity

tend toperformbetter on cognitive tasks

thanindividualswith a lower capacity. Research on

individual differences and variations in working

memory, explaining that each individualhas limited

working memory capacity and relatively fixed and

consistent (Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood and

Elliot, 2009; Jarrold and Towse, 2006). Also, some

individual differencesin working memorycan

beexplained by the storage capacity. The

fundamental characteristic is that working memory

capacityislimited, which limits cognitive

performance (Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood and

Elliot, 2009). Some variance in working memorycan

beattributed to normal cognitive development

ofindividualsas they age. Working memory capacity

increased from childhood to adolescence, and at the

adult stagehas been reached (Jarrold and Towse,

2006).

What factors are affecting verbal working

memory capacity of Qur'an reciters? Survey the data

results can be seen in the graph below.

Figure 1: The percentage of factors that increase the verbal

working memory capacity.

Figure 2: The percentageof factorsthat decrease the verbal

working memory capacity.

From figure 1 and figure 2, the big four factors

are influential both in increasing or decreasing the

verbal working memory is (1) Focus (2)

Environment (3) Emotions (4) Motivation. Factors

focus or lack to focus has the highest percentage

Focus

Calmneighborhood

Roterepetition

Positiveemotion

Motivation

Havetarget

Neutralemotion

Healthy

Understandingthe…

123456789

Percentage

Notfocus

Emotions

Nomotivation

Sleepy

Noise

shortversus…

123456

Percentage

Emotion and Memorizing Qur’an Ability: The Factors That Affect Verbal Working Capacity

levels, to improve or worsen verbal working

memory.

According to one student stated that if individual

keep concentration, it will ignore distractions. This

is called selective attention (Eysenck and Keane,

2007) stated that selective attention process occurs

when multiple stimuli appear, but only one is

focused or given attention (dichotic listening

experiment).

Environment interference that their concentration

is noise. Students find it hard to concentrate when

they heard a noise in the form of continuous noise,

the noise that comes from the sound that grade noise

did not falter, in this case the sound of their friends

who also memorize the Qur'an.The class noise

stimulus will become irrelevant information and will

act as an additional stimulus to the phonological

loop. This would make a person difficulty in

processing the relevant information. However, on

the other hand there are also students that feel

disturbed.

Individual differences in maintaining the relevant

information related to working memory capacity.

Individuals with working-memory capacity of a low

have difficulty to ignore information that is not

important, so that people with working-memory

capacity low, more easy to be distracted from the

work being done.Suspected that differences in

working memory capacity of individualsrelated to

differences in attentionexecutive system, which acts

as a supervisor in coordinating both processing and

storage could also include working memory variants

that occur im cognitive tasks of high level. In

addition executive control individuals associated

with emotion regulation (Miyake and Shah, 1999).

However, everyone has a different ability to

control your thoughts and actions. Miyake et.al had

examined individual difference in executive function

(Santrock John, 2014). The study focused on three

capabilities: (1) updating (constantly monitored and

rapidly increase or decrease the working memory

content), (2) shifted (flexibly changed between tasks

or mental sets), and (3) inhibition (deliberate

overriding of dominant or prepotent responses).

Target executive function should be attached to the

context of a specific task (that can be

operationalized), a score derived from the

completion of the task of executive function.

A survey was conducted on the kinds of

emotions that can increase and decrease verbal

working memory. The results of the survey to 48

students showed that emotions affect verbal working

memory. Figure 3 shows the emotion that can

increase verbal working memory and Figure 4 shows

the emotion that can decrease the verbal working

memory.

Figure 3: Graph the percentage of emotion that increase

the capacity of verbal working memory.

In Figure3. it can beseen that not only positive

emotions, like happiness, but a number of negative

emotions was found to increase working working

memory capacity, such as sadness, remembering

parents who have died according to reports two

students and a teacher can improve verbal working

memory capacity.While negative emotions are

relatively dominant in reducing verbal working

memory capacity (Figure 4).

Figure 4: the percentage of emotion that decrease the

capacity of verbal working memory.

Emotion is one of the affective function of

humans. In general, the emotion can be defined as a

feeling or affect what happens to humans when

involved in an interaction that is important to them,

especially for welfare (Myers, 2010; Gray, 2001)

stated that emotions arise because of external factors

that are human involvement with environment.

Emotions can affect working memory capacity.

According to Yang, Yang and Isen (2013), positive

emotions were able to sharpen or reinforce verbal

working memory, but weaken or reduce spatial

57,14

23,81

14,85

4,76 4,76

Happy Sad Angry Sincerity Neutral

Percentage

52,38

38,09

33,33

4,76

Sad Angry Worry Happy

Percentage

BINUS-JIC 2018 - BINUS Joint International Conference

working memory, the study found that positive

emotions compared to neutral, capable of improving

the operating performance on verbal working

memory span task (Ryan and Deci, 2000).

The survey results showed that motivation is

another factor that affected the increase and decrease

in working memory capacity. The research in

educational settings reported that people who have

the desire itself in completing the task, while it is an

intrinsic motivation, the results showed the

individuals who have a high intrinsic motivation is

associated with increased learning and achievement

(Oberauer, 2009).

Motivation relationshipto working memory

capacity is as assumed that working memory is a

system that provides access to an overview of goal-

oriented processing (Ryan and Deci, 2000). At least

in humans it involves processes such as language

comprehension, reasoning, planning, thinking

hypotheses, and creatively solved problems. The

process of memorizing the Qur’an involved working

memory. Students who have the intrinsic motivation

to achieve the target to memorize several chapters of

Qur'an will be able to maintain attention and ignore

irrelevant information as a nuisance.

4 CONCLUSION AND

SUGGESTION

It can be concluded that the individual difference are

because of differences in working memory capacity.

The executive attention ability, emotion, and

motivation are factors that affect the increase or

decrease in working memory capacity. Both positive

and negative emotions can improve working

memory capacity however, negative emotions

dominantly decrease working memory capacity.

The limitation of the current study was limited

sample size. For future study the number of samples

had to be increased. To this end, future studies are

recommended to examining how emotion can affect

working memory capacity of Qur’an memorizing

students.

REFERENCES

Alloway, T.P., Gathercole, S.E., Kirkwood, H. and Elliot,

L. (2009) ‘The working memory Rating scale:A

classroom-based behavioural assessment of working

memory’, Learning and Individual Differences,

vol.19, pp. 242-245. Available at: EBSCO host

[Accessed 9 September, 2009].

Baddeley, A.D. (2012) ‘Working memory: Theories,

models, and Controversies’, Annual Review of

Psychology, vol. 63, pp. 1-29.

Broadway, J.M. and Engle, R.W. (2011) ‘Individual

differences in working memory capacity and temporal

discrimination’, PLoS One, 6(10): e25422.

Eysenck, M.W. and Keane, M.T. (2007) Cognitive

psychology: A student handbook. 5

ed. Sussex:

Psychology Press.

Gathercole, S.E., Brown, L. and Pickering, S.J. (2003)

‘Working memory assessments at school entry as

longitudinal predictors of National Curriculum

attainment levels’, Educational and Child Psychology,

20(3), pp. 109-122.

Gray, J.R. (2001) ‘Emotional modulation of cognitive

control: Approach-withdrawal states double-spatial

dissociate from the verbal two-back task

performance’, Journal of Experimental Psychology:

General, 130(3), p. 436.

Hendricks, M.A. and Buchanan, T.W. (2016) ‘Individual

differences in cognitive control processes and Reviews

their relationship to emotion regulation’, Cognition

and Emotion, 30(5), pp. 912-924.

Jarrold, C. and Towse, I.N. (2006) Individual differences

in working memory Neuroscience, 139, pp. 39 to 50.

Available at: EBSCO host [Accessed 5 October,

2009].

Maehler, C. and Schuchart, K. (2009) ‘Working memory

functioning in children with learning disabilities:

Intelligence does make a difference?’, Journal of

Intellectual Disabilities Research, vol. 53, pp. 1-10.

Matlin, M.W. (2013) Cognition. 8

Ed. United States of

America: John Willey & Sons, Inc.

Miyake, A. and Shah, P. (Eds.) (1999) Models of working

memory: mechanisms of active maintenance and

executive control. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Myers, G. (2010) Psychology. 9

Ed in Modules. United

States of America: Worth Publisher.

Oberauer, K. (2009) ‘Design for a working memory’,

Psychology of Learning and Motivation, vol. 51, pp.

45-100.

Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000) ‘Self-determination

theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation,

social development, and well-being’. American

psychologist, 55(1), p. 68.

Santrock, J.W. (2014) Adolescence. 15

Ed. New York:

McGraw-Hill Education.

Van der Molen, M.J., Van Luit, J.E.H., Jongmans, M.J.

and Van der Molen, M.W. (2007) ‘Verbal working

memory in children with mild intellectual disabilities’,

Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 51(2), pp.

162-169.

Yang, H., Yang, S. and Isen, A.M. (2013) ‘Positive Affect

improves working memory: Implications for

controlled cognitive processing’ Cognition and

Emotion, 27(3), pp. 474-482.

Emotion and Memorizing Qur’an Ability: The Factors That Affect Verbal Working Capacity