Long-term Retention Of Information Research Articles

Hypertext support for remedial students and students with learning disabilities.

Student use of pop-up text windows that support or extend information found in a high school social studies text provides a detailed look into the instructional effectiveness of a set of hypermedia study guides. Twenty-five students, 19 male and 6 female, with a mean age of 14.6 years participated in this study. Thirteen were students with learning disabilities and 12 were remedial students. Findings from the study indicate that hypertext (text-only) support provides adequate reinforcement to move remedial students and students with learning disabilities toward continued, unprompted use of a hypermedia study guide, and that short-term and long-term retention of information can be expected from text-only information support. Students who had access to the hypermedia study guides exhibited better information retention than students who did not use the hypermedia study guides.

Academic success through quality-managed course design

Principles of quality management (which focus on defect prevention rather than defect correction) are applied to course design. These principles mandate that 1) the mission of the course be clearly stated and reviewed in context of the total program of study, 2) the objectives for the course or program of study be clearly defined and known to the students, 3) there be numerous intermediate steps leading to the objectives, 4) students be given immediate feedback about their performance on each step, and 5) corrective action be initiated immediately when a student fails to achieve an intermediate step. These principles apply to both individual courses and to an entire course of study. The authors found that a course incorporating these principles led to an increase in student performance and long-term retention of information.

The impact of disease severity on the informed consent process in clinical research

To assess the efficacy of informed consent in subjects differing in disease severity, ranging from those with immediately life-threatening disease to healthy volunteers. A total of 127 subjects, enrolled in four types of clinical research protocols, were tested. Subjects completed questionnaires before entry into the protocol, within 24 hours of signing the primary protocol's consent document, and 4 to 6 weeks after entry. Healthy volunteers retained the most information about risks and side effects, and severely ill Phase I subjects retained the least (P <0.0001). Phase I and II subjects had the best long-term retention of information about procedures, whereas Phase III subjects and healthy volunteers retained the least (P <0.001). Information about the scientific purpose and confidentiality of data were retained best by symptom-free, Phase III subjects (P <0.05). Phase I subjects entered the study primarily for treatment purposes, and the consent document was rated less useful by subjects with more advanced disease (P <0.05). Subjects with differing disease processes and illness severities focused on and retained different aspects of experimental protocols for dissimilar reasons. During the informed consent process, research staff should inquire of potential subjects' personal goals for participating in experimental protocols and develop means for ensuring subjects' understanding of the inherent risks and alternative interventions available.

Development of children's long-term retention

It is well known that much of everyday cognition relies on both the ability to acquire information and the ability to retain it over extended time intervals. Theories of memory development must, therefore, include assumptions about the processes that govern long-term retention of information as well as processes that regulate its acquisition. Unfortunately, while much is known about the development of acquisition processes, considerably less is known about the ontogeny of long-term retention. In this article, we discuss reasons for this discrepancy, and we review extant research on children's amnesia and hypermnesia. As the review unfolds, a number of methodological and measurement problems are examined, and a new theoretical framework is presented that is implemented in a mathematical model. We show how application of this framework eliminates the indicated problems.

Perceptual units in the acquisition of visual categories.

A series of experiments provided evidence that the representational structure of categories comprising dot patterns is based on pattern parts and pattern configuration rather than on pattern elements. We found that similarity judgments and postacquisition classification data could not be explained in terms of element-level perceptual units, even for categories of dot patterns with seven of their eight dots in the exact same relative location. The importance of higher order perceptual units was indicated by evidence that the long-term retention of information specific to previously learned category exemplars, which is typical of natural objects, can also be obtained for artificial dot patterns, providing their structure reflects the perceptual characteristics identified in Tversky and Hemenway's (1984) study of natural objects: Members of the same category had to be perceptually distinctive at the level of pattern configuration and perceptually similar at the level of pattern parts. The level of within-category similarity for a set of categories (relative to between-categories similarity) did not predict whether item-specific information would be retained; long-term retention appears to require both within-category similarity and dissimilarity, but at different levels of perceptual structure.

Long-term retention of information about presentation modality by children and adults.

A mixed-modality continuous recognition task followed by a final recognition test after 0 h, 4 h, 1 day, or 7 days was administered to third- and fourth-grade children and adults. Subjects gave recognition responses and reported presentation modalities. Forgetting rates for both words and input mode were invariant with age. The decay functions for presentation modality were affected, however, by the initial input mode, with modality identification declining more rapidly for words heard first than for words seen first. Information about whether a word was seen or heard remained in memory for at least 4 h. The results demonstrate that long-term-memory representations contain a great deal of information about input mode and suggest that the theoretical distinction between automatic and effortful processing may be a useful one.

Single-Subject Analyses of Three Study Methods

Three common study methods (reading, reading with underlining, and reading with notetaking) were used by the same subject to study passages of text. The study methods had no differential effect on comprehension of the passages, even when time to study the passages was statistically controlled. Although study methods did not affect comprehension measured immediately after completion of each passage, there was evidence that these methods differentially affect long-term retention of information from the passages.

Long-term Retention of Information Following Learning from Prose

The long-term retention of information is important for a variety of reasons. It is often important to remember information for its own sake (e.g., one's spouse's birthday). Also, known, retrievable information forms a basis for many cognitive processes, such as comprehension, implementation of intellectual skills, creative thinking, and attitude change. It is difficult to explain these cognitive processes completely without first explaining the retention of relevant information. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some factors that have been proposed to be necessary for the long-term retention of information and to review available studies in light of these factors with the hope of identifying important areas for future research. For two reasons, this review focuses primarily on long-term retention following learning from text as opposed to other instructional modes such as lectures. The first reason is that text is a major medium of learning in literate cultures. It is a relatively cheap, accessible, and flexible source of learning and hence will probably continue to be a major source of instruction for some time to come. The second reason is that there is a substantial body of data already available on learning from prose (cf. Frase, 1972, 1975; Carroll, Note 1), and many of the powerful variables affecting this form of learning are known (Rothkopf, 1976). Recently, several systems of formal analysis of the prose stimulus

Five Teaching Methods: A Comparative Study in Nurse Education

The relative instructional effectiveness of five teaching methods, Reading, Lecture-traditional, Lecture-audiotape, Programmed Instruction and Multimedia, was studied. Comparisons were based on test scores obtained by trainee nurses on three different occasions following instruction on a topic in renal physiology. The Multimedia method appeared to be most immediately effective, and the two Lecture methods least effective, in terms of students' ability to recall information following an instruction session. On short term retention of information with no reinforcement of material presented during the instruction session, the situation apparent on immediate recall persisted but differences in effectiveness were less marked. On long term retention of information, with no reinforcement, the effect of the five teaching methods was virtually indistinguishable.

Long-Term Retention of Information Following Learning from Prose

Long-Term Retention of Information Following Learning from Prose

Long-term retention of information as a function of its organization.

Long-term retention of information as a function of its organization.

Long-term retention of information as a function of its organization.

Long-term retention of information as a function of its organization.