Correct Recall Research Articles

Using pictographs to enhance recall of spoken medical instructions II

The first study in this series [Houts PS, Bachrach R, Witmer JT, Tringali CA, Bucher JA, Localio RA. Patient Educ. Couns. 1998;35:83–8] found that recall of spoken medical instructions averaged 14% but that, when pictographs (drawings representing the instructions) accompanied the spoken instructions and were present during recall, 85% of medical instructions were remembered correctly. Those findings suggested that spoken instructions plus pictographs may be a way to give people with low literacy skills access to medical information that is normally available only in written form. However, there were three important limitations to that study: (1) the subjects were literate and perhaps literate people remember pictograph meanings better than people with low literacy skills; (2) only short term recall was tested and, for medical information to be useful clinically, it must be remembered for significant periods of time and (3) a maximum of 50 instructions were shown in pictographs, whereas managing complex illnesses may require remembering several hundred instructions. This study addresses those limitations by investigating 4-week recall of 236 medical instructions accompanied by pictographs by people with low literacy skills. Subjects were 21 adult clients of an inner city job training program who had less than fifth grade reading skills. Results showed 85% mean correct recall of pictograph meanings immediately after training (range from 63 to 99%) and 71% after 4 weeks (range from 33 to 94%). These results indicate that people with low literacy skills can, with the help of pictographs, recall large amounts of medical information for significant periods of time. The impact of pictographs on symptom management and patient quality of life remains to be studied.

Children's Serial Recall Errors: Implications for Theories of Short-Term Memory Development

Three experiments examined developmental changes in serial recall of lists of 6 letters, with errors classified as movements, omissions, intrusions, or repetitions. In Experiments 1 and 2, developmental differences between groups of children aged from 7 to 11 years and adults were found in the pattern of serial recall errors. The errors of older participants were more likely to be movements than were those of younger participants, who made more intrusions and omissions. The number of repetition errors did not change with age, and this finding is interpreted in terms of a developmentally invariant postoutput response inhibition process. This interpretation was supported by the findings of Experiment 3, which measured levels of response inhibition in 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds by comparing recall of lists with and without repeated items. Response inhibition remained developmentally invariant, although older children showed greater response facilitation (improved correct recall of adjacent repeated items). Group differences in the patterns of other errors are accounted for in terms of developmental changes in levels of output forgetting and changes in the efficiency of temporal encoding processes.

Retrieval latency and "at-risk" memories.

Does retrieval latency reflect variations in the strength of associations in episodic memory? In three experiments, subjects were given a single study and test trial on each of five lists of 10 paired associates. Spoken recall latencies were measured. When the subjects were later given a second test, initial recall latency was systematically related to intertest retention--that is, the faster the initial correct recall of a pair, the more likely a pair was to be recalled at the second test. This effect occurred at retention intervals of 5 min, 30 min, and 24 h and was present in the data for individual subjects. The results are consistent with the classical view of latency as a measure of trace strength and stand in sharp contrast with results reported by Benjamin, Bjork, and Schwartz (1998) that showed that fast retrievals from semantic memory were more poorly retained than slower ones.

The effects of rime on auditory recency and the suffix effect

Two experiments are reported that consider the role of rime as the content of Precategorical Acoustic Storage (PAS). It was hypothesised that with auditory presentation of lists the rime component of the final item (the final vowel and, optionally, terminal consonant cluster of a word) was preserved in PAS and this served as a recall cue to identify the final item. Experiment 1 compared recall performance when the terminal or penultimate words rhymed with an irrelevant stimulus suffix. A suffix that shared a rime with the terminal word was found to attenuate the suffix effect, in line with Carr and Miles (1997) and consistent with the use of PAS as a positional code. However, contrary to the hypothesis that PAS information is automatically used to reconstruct the final item, the suffix effect was no greater when the suffix rhymed with the penultimate item than when no relationship existed between the suffix and the final item. Experiment 2 demonstrated that when the terminal and penultimate words shared a rime there was a drop in recall performance for the final item but a corresponding increase in correct recall of the penultimate item. No such changes were observed when the rime was shared between terminal and antepenultimate items. It is suggested that adjacency of identical rimes allows improved reconstruction of item information at the expense of order information.

Recency and suffix effects with immediate recall of olfactory stimuli

In contrast to our understanding of the immediate recall of auditory and visual material, little is known about the corresponding characteristics of short-term olfactory memory. The current study investigated the pattern of immediate serial recall and the associated suffix effect using olfactory stimuli. Subjects were trained initially to identify and name correctly nine different odours. Experiment 1 established an immediate correct recall span of approximately six items. In Experiment 2 participants recalled serially span equivalent lists which were followed by a visual, auditory, or olfactory suffix. Primacy was evident in the recall curves for all three suffix conditions. Recency, in contrast, was evident in the auditory and visual suffix conditions only; there was a strong suffix effect in the olfactory suffix condition. Experiment 3 replicated this pattern of effects using seven-item lists, and demonstrated that the magnitude of the recency and suffix effects obtained in the olfactory modality can equate to that obtained in the auditory modality. It is concluded that the pattern of recency and suffix effects in the olfactory modality is reliable, and poses difficulties for those theories that rely on the presence of a primary linguistic code, sound, or changing state as determinants of these effects in serial recall.

Recollection, testimony, and lying in early childhood

Recognition as the Basis of Recall The Chronological Development of Recall and Testimonial Ability False Testimony -Mistaken Recollections, Pseudo-Lies and Lies Recognition Correct Recollection Purposive Recall Mistaken Recollections Experimental Studies on Testimony in Early Childhood The Falsification of Testimony Through Fantasy Pseudo-Lies and Lies Educating Young Children to Report on Their Experiences The Origins of Lying and its Prevention The Capability of Small Children as Witnesses in Legal Proceedings.

Errorless and Effortful Processes Involved in the Learning of Face-name Associations by Patients with Alcoholic Korsakoff's Syndrome

In Experiment 1, Korsakoff patients were asked to learn fictitious face-name associations under each of four study conditions that differed from one another in the error and effort required to fulfil the task demands. Recall performance gradually improved over four training sessions and was affected by the error factor. The paired associate and the vanishing cues methods led to superior recall in comparison with the target selection and the initial letter methods, demonstrating an advantage of errorless learning. In contrast, the effort factor was found to have little effect. In Experiment 2, the effectiveness of the vanishing cues method was further examined over five additional training sessions. As indexed by a delayed test, the gradual acquisition of face-name associations was confirmed, but some patients consistently made no correct recall throughout the sessions. The roles of error and effort in the memory rehabilitation of amnesic patients are discussed.

The effect of impression formation on memory of trait words: relation between coding and retrieval process

Three experiments investigated the effect of impression formation of a person on the recall and recognition of trait words. The subjects were assigned to one of four groups: Impression, Memory, Impression-Memory, and Incidental groups. Each subject performed an orienting task followed by free recall and recognition tests. In a recall test, false recall of antonyms of targets occurred more often in the Memory group than in the Impression group. There was no difference in the correct recall. In a multiple choice recognition test and a yes-no recognition test, false recognition to antonyms of targets occurred more often in the Memory group than in the Impression group. Hit to targets occurred more often in the Impression group than in the Memory group. These results were interpreted as showing that formation of an impression for a person had different effects for recall and recognition tests. The results were discussed in terms of a relation between encoding and retrieval processes.

Memory for Movement Sequences in Gymnastics: Effects of Age and Skill Level

The authors studied the performances of 8- to 13-year-old skilled (n = 30) and less skilled (n = 30) gymnasts on a gymnastics routine recall task by examining the role of memorization strategies and imagery ability. Subjects had to reproduce 3 movement sequences presented on videotape. The number of trials needed to achieve correct recall, the strategies employed, and the subjects' imagery ability were analyzed. Recall performance improved with age and skill level. Movement labeling was the most prevalent strategy used; its frequency increased with age, although it did not lead to better recall performance. Performance was higher, however, among subjects with better imagery skills. The role of strategy development in the age-related improvement in memory performance was not clearly demonstrated. The effect of skill level is interpreted in terms of knowledge bases and kinesthetic movement encoding.

The effects of participation and presentation media on the eyewitness memory of children

The effects of participation and presentation media on eyewitness memory were examined in children aged 5 to 6 and 11 to 12 years. The children witnessed a staged event in one of three conditions: live-bystander, live-participant, or a video of the live-participant event. Older children recalled more correct information and provided a higher proportion of correct recall than did younger children. Age differences also emerged for the yes/no recognition responses, and were influenced by the presentation condition. The older children had a higher recognition rate than the younger children in the live-participant and video conditions, but no differences emerged in the live-bystander condition. Participation effects were found across both age groups, as both younger and older children in the live-participant condition recalled more correct information than did those in the live-bystander and video conditions. Further research is warranted to investigate the ecological validity of laboratory findings based on witnesses who are tested using live-bystander or videotaped events.

Recall Accuracy and Illusory Memories: When More is Less

In two experiments it was revealed that manipulations that increased recall of studied list items also increased false recall of theme-related, critical nonpresented words. In Experiment 1 subjects listened to a series of short word lists, each containing items associatively related to a theme, while engaging in either semantic or nonsemantic processing. On an immediate free recall test semantic processors demonstrated greater correct recall as well as more illusory memories of critical nonpresented items than nonsemantic processors. In Experiment 2, the short study lists were combined to form longer lists that were presented either blocked by theme or in a random presentation order. Retention interval was also varied as participants were tested either immediately, one week after, or three weeks after the study phase. Presenting the target items in a blocked, as opposed to random, format increased recall accuracy, but this was at the expense of a higher intrusion rate for theme-consistent items. Interestingly, the level of false memories was not affected by retention interval even though typical decrements in the recall of study items were observed over time. The results of these experiments highlight the persistence of the false memory effect, as well as pointing to several factors, primarily semantic processing, that may lead to the creation of false memories. Interpretations are offered within the theoretical frameworks of source monitoring and fuzzy trace theory.

The cognitive interview: A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis was performed on the effects of the cognitive interview on correct and incorrect recall. The database comprised 42 studies with 55 individual comparisons involving nearly 2500 interviewees. A strong overall effect size was found for the increase of correctly recalled details with the cognitive interview compared to a control interview (d = 0.87). The overall effect size for the increase in incorrect details, although considerably smaller, was also significant toward the cognitive interview (d = 0.28). However, the accuracy rates (proportion of correct details relative to the total amount of details reported) were almost identical in both types of interview (85% for the cognitive interview and 82% for standard interviews, respectively). Taking methodological factors into consideration it was found that effect sizes for correct details were larger if staged events were used as the to-be-remembered episode (as compared to video films) and if the interviewees actively participated in the event. With regard to incorrect details effect sizes were larger for adults as compared to children. Furthermore, the enhanced version of the cognitive interview produced more errors than the original version.

Pretesting Spanish-language educational radio messages to promote timely and complete infant immunization in California.

California's Hispanic infants have lower immunization levels than non-Latino white infants, 53.7% versus 65.2%, respectively. Spanish-language radio is an effective mass media venue for imparting information to Latino populations. It has been demonstrated that lack of parental knowledge of infant immunization timing is associated with delayed immunization coverage. In an effort to improve Latino parent knowledge of immunization timing, two Spanish-language radio commercials were developed to be used in conjunction with community-based educational efforts. In order to gage the potential educational impact of the two commercials, they were pretested with a group of low-income Spanish-speaking Latino parents who represented members of the target population for whom the commercials were created. Both commercials were rated favorably by parents, and elicited immunization-specific responses. Although correct recall of the simplified, basic immunization schedule was low, the level of immunization response consistency and overall approval of both commercials appear to support their use as part of Latino infant immunization educational outreach in California.

The cognitive interview: A survey of its forensic effectiveness

The cognitive interview has been shown to have the potential to enhance witness recall. Consequently, it has been adopted by all police forces in England and Wales. The present paper surveyed 96 police officers trained in the cognitive interview and 65 untrained police officers, using a questionnaire. Officers rated how frequently they used and how useful they found components of the cognitive interview. Trained officers were significantly more likely to use instructions to mentally reinstate context, use different orders, change perspectives and imagery. Amongst trained officers there was a consensus that some components of the cognitive interview were used more frequently and were believed to be more useful than others. Rated as most useful and most frequently used were establish rapport, report everything, encourage concentration, witness compatible questioning, and mental reinstatement of context. Rated as less useful and less frequently used were recall in different orders, imagery, change perspectives and transfer control. Further responses indicated that the cognitive interview was generally perceived to be a useful procedure that increases correct recall, although officers were still aware that incorrect information can also be generated. However, a major problem for many officers was that they do not have the time to conduct a full cognitive interview.

Remembering Deese’s 1959 articles: The Zeitgeist, the sociology of science, and false memories

Two contemporaneous reports by J. Deese—one concerned with correct recall (1959a), the other with recall intrusions (1959b)-have differed dramatically in their citations to date. The differences represent an unusually compelling instance of the operation of the scientific Zeitgeist. The article dealing with correct recall was congruent with the Zeitgeist of memory research when it was published. Hence it flourished. Just the opposite was true of the article on intrusions, which by the mid 1970s had gone into eclipse. A markedly different Zeitgeist in the 1990s, however, led two investigators simultaneously and independently to adapt Deese’s intrusion method to the investigation of false memories.

Presentation modality affects false memory

Roediger and McDermott (1995) rejuvenated interest in Deese’s (1959) paradigm for producing reliable intrusions and false alarms. Using this paradigm in three experiments, we demonstrated that visual study presentation dramatically reduces the rate of false memories. Only auditory study presentation resulted in equal production of studied and critical items. Correct recall and recognition were unaffected. The suggestion that visual presentation provides a means for discriminating between false and true memories was supported by Experiment 3: Pleasantness rating of study items significantly reduced the creation of false memories regardless of modality.

Dynamic cortical involvement in implicit and explicit motor sequence learning. A PET study.

We examined the dynamic involvement of different brain regions in implicit and explicit motor sequence learning using PET. In a serial reaction time task, subjects pressed each of four buttons with a different finger of the right hand in response to a visually presented number. Test sessions consisted of 10 cycles of the same 10-item sequence. The effects of explicit and implicit learning were assessed separately using a different behavioural parameter for each type of learning: correct recall of the test sequence for explicit learning and improvement of reaction time before the successful recall of any component of the test sequence for implicit learning. Regional cerebral blood flow was measured repeatedly during the task, and a parametric analysis was performed to identify brain regions in which activity was significantly correlated with subjects' performances: i.e. with correct recall of the test sequence or with reaction time. Explicit learning, shown as a positive correlation with the correct recall of the sequence, was associated with increased activity in the posterior parietal cortex, precuneus and premotor cortex bilaterally, also in the supplementary motor area (SMA) predominantly in the left anterior part, left thalamus, and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, the reaction time showed a different pattern of correlation during different learning phases. During the implicit learning phase, when the subjects were not aware of the sequence, improvement of the reaction time was associated with increased activity in the contralateral primary sensorimotor cortex (SM1). During the explicit learning phase, the reaction time was significantly correlated with activity in a part of the frontoparietal network. During the post-learning phase, when the subjects achieved all components of the sequence explicitly, the reaction time was correlated with the activity in the ipsilateral SM1 and posterior part of the SMA. These results show that different sets of cortical regions are dynamically involved in implicit and explicit motor sequence learning.

Using pictographs to enhance recall of spoken medical instructions

Pictographs have been used in nonliterate societies to help people remember spoken instructions and, today, they could be used to help nonliterate people remember spoken medical instructions. This study tested the hypothesis that pictographs can improve recall of spoken medical instructions. Twenty-one junior college subjects listened to lists of 38 actions for managing fever and 50 actions for managing sore mouth. One of the action lists was accompanied by pictographs during both listening and recall while the other was not. Subjects did not see any written words during the intervention and, therefore, relied entirely on memory of what they heard. Mean correct recall was 85% with pictographs and 14% without ( P<0.0001) indicating that pictographs can enhance memory of spoken medical instructions – often to a very high level. For this technique to be clinically useful, further research is needed on how to achieve accurate recall of large amounts of medical information for long periods of time by nonliterate patients. By viewing illiteracy as a memory problem, the large body of research on learning and memory can be utilized in designing education materials for this group.

Using Encoding and Retrieval Strategies to Improve 24-hour Dietary Recalls Among Older Adults

Objective To examine whether using an encoding strategy and/or providing more support at the time of retrieval improves the accuracy of 24-hour dietary recalls among the elderly. Design Posttest-only control group design. Setting The sample was recruited through advertisements and at senior centers and a low-income apartment building in rural central Pennsylvania. Subjects Study participants were 21 men and 73 women aged 58 years old and older. Everyone completed the study. Intervention The treatment group was unobtrusively guided in use of an encoding strategy before consuming the prepared meal. Main outcome measures A 24-hour dietary recall and recognition tests were administered the next day for the foods consumed at the meal and for serving sizes of 5 of the foods. Memory tests were also administered. Statistical analyses performed Linear regression was used to examine differences between the treatment and control groups and to identify variables that explained variation in the number of foods correctly recalled or recognized. The χ 2 test was used to examine correct vs incorrect recall or recognition of the serving sizes of the 5 foods between the groups and to identify explanatory variables for this task. Results Subjects remembered more foods when they used an encoding strategy and when recognition replaced free recall; they performed best when both strategies were used. Use of this encoding strategy did not improve accurate recall or recognition of serving sizes of 5 foods; however, performances did improve when recognition replaced free recall. Conclusions Among older adults, use of an encoding strategy and provision of support at the time of retrieval enhances memory of foods consumed but not of amounts consumed. To strengthen memory of foods consumed, older adults need to perform effortful memory tasks when they are eating. J Diet Assoc. 1998;98:989-994.

Children's knowledge, expectation, and long-term retention

To examine the influence of prior knowledge on children's immediate and delayed recall of the details of a physical examination, 4- and 6-year-olds received a specially constructed check-up that included some typical, expected medical features (e.g. listening to the heart), while omitting others, and incorporated several atypical, unexpected procedures (e.g. measuring head circumference). Using a combination of open-ended and more specific probes, the children were assessed for their recall of expected and unexpected features that had been included in or omitted from the examination. Expectation based on prior knowledge affected three aspects of performance. First, correct recall of typical features that had been experienced exceeded that of unexpected features. Second, after a 12-week delay, spontaneous incorrect recall of expected-but-omitted features was considerable, with 42% of 4-year-olds and 72% of 6-year-olds making at least one intrusion, and essentially zero for atypical procedures that were unexpected and omitted. Third, when questioned directly about medical procedures not included in the examination, correct denials were high for atypical features, but at chance levels for those that were expected. The positive and negative influences of knowledge raise questions about children's abilities to differentiate clearly between experience and expectation and have implications for understanding their testimony.