Long-term Retention Test Research Articles

Measuring infant memory

Abstract Existing memory measures L / I , L / B , L /( L + I ) and L /( L + B ) are defined in terms of baseline response rate, B , response rate immediately after acquisition, I , and response rate at a long-term retention test, L . These measures are compared to a new measure S = ( L − B )/( I − B ). S , the fraction of acquired kicking rate remaining at the end of the retention interval, is preferred to the existing measures. S graphically portrays the forgetting function. Point estimates and confidence intervals can be used to describe the proportion retained and to test hypotheses about the memory level. This is an improvement over the ordinal tests performed with the existing measures. ANOVAs can be performed on S values to compare retention over days and between treatment groups. S estimates provide the basic data for fitting candidate forgetting laws to the obtained data. S appears to be a virtually unbiased estimator of the true proportion retained and has sensitivity comparable to that of the best of the existing measures.

Contextual control of memory retrieval in infancy: Evidence for associative priming

The aim of these experiments was to explore the effect of contextual information on memory retrieval during early infancy. Eighty-two 3-month-old infants were trained for 2 consecutive days to kick their feet to produce movement in an overhead mobile. A distinctive training context was created by draping the sides and ends of a crib with a brightly colored cloth liner. Two to 4 weeks after the conclusion of training, independent groups of infants received a brief reminder treatment with the training mobile in the training context or with the training context alone. All infants were tested 24 hours later with their training mobile in their training context. Control infants received identical training and testing but no exposure to a reminder prior to the long- term retention test. The results demonstrated that reminding with the context alone was as effective as reminding with the mobile and the context presented together in alleviating forgetting for as long as 4 weeks after the completion of training. Furthermore, infants tested with a novel mobile following the context-only reminder discriminated a change in the mobile during the long-term retention test. These data underscore the importance of environmental context in learning and memory during early infancy, and the results have important implications for theories of memory development and infantile amnesia.

Longitudinal comparison of multimedia textbook instruction with a lecture in radiology education

The purpose of this prospective randomized study was to compare the long-term instructional effectiveness of a computer-based radiology multimedia textbook (MMTB) with that of a traditional lecture. Volunteer faculty/fellows and residents were randomly assigned to either a computer-based MMTB group or to a lecture group. The course content for each instructional group was the same. Pretests, posttests, and 1-year long-term retention tests were administered to both groups. The same 10 questions were on all tests. The resulting data were analyzed using analysis of variance procedures available on the Statistical Analysis System. A comparison of the long-term instructional effectiveness of an MMTB versus a lecture showed that the MMTB computer instructional method was at least comparable in spite of the initial short-term appearance of lecture superiority. These results suggest a promising future for MMTB and other forms of computer-based education in radiologic instruction for medical students and radiologists.

A Comparison of Knowledge of Results Scheduling Methods for Promoting Motor Skill Acquisition and Retention

Providing knowledge of results (KR) to a learner about each trial in a series of trials only after the series is completed is termed summary KR. A variation of summary KR is average KR, in which KR is presented as an average value about the series of trials. This study compared groups receiving either average KR, summary KR, or KR following every attempt in acquisition of a force production task. Following acquisition, groups performed no-KR immediate and long-term retention tests. Analysis of variable error revealed group main effects and group by block interactions in acquisition and long-term retention. Post hoc tests indicated that differences were due primarily to inconsistent performance of the group receiving KR following each acquisition attempt. Post hoc tests did not, however, indicate differences between the average KR and summary KR groups in acquisition or retention. It was concluded that average and summary KR promote consistency in performance in acquisition, with this stability in responding carried over to retention performance.

Conditioned hippocampal cellular response to a behaviorally silent conditioned stimulus.

Multiunit activity (MUA) was chronically recorded in the hippocampal CA3 field of rats using a blocking paradigm with conditioned suppression of lever pressing for food as the measure of conditioning. In Experiment 1, a classical blocking paradigm demonstrated the good conditionability of 2 stimuli (a light and a tone) and their respective ability to block each other. In Experiment 2, MUA was recorded in CA3 cells in rats submitted to a similar paradigm. Four groups received either tone (groups B and B1) or click (groups BC and B1C) conditioned stimulus (CS) presentations that were followed immediately by an electrical footshock (unconditioned stimulus, US). The rats were then given either 40 (groups B and BC) or 1 (groups B1 and B1C) tone + light-footshock presentations. During test sessions, the animals showed MUA responses to the added CS (light), with no conditioned suppression of lever presses occurring during CS presentations. The results of Experiment 3 strongly suggest that hippocampal increase in cellular activity to the light appeared at the first compound trial presentation. Conditioning to the light obtained by increasing the US intensity after the single compound trial suggests that the hippocampal response reflects a redundant CS-US association (light-shock). Long-term retention tests given 45 days after the end of conditioning revealed that behavioral and hippocampal responses could still be detected but only in response to the stimulus that had elicited a behavioral response during learning.

Discriminative long-term retention of rapidly induced multiunit changes in the hippocampus, medial geniculate and auditory cortex

Multiunit activity was chronically recorded in the hippocampus (CA3 field), the magnocellular medial geniculate (MGm) and the auditory cortex (AC) of rats during acquisition (12 daily sessions, 10 trials per session) and long-term retention of differential classical conditioning (tones paired with footshocks). Marked increases of multiunit discharges to CS + presentations were first detected in the MGm (5–10 trials) followed (10–20 trials) by the emergence of discriminative responses in the hippocampus and in the AC. During long-term retention tests, 45 days after the end of conditioning, CS + selective responses were observed in the 3 structures. We propose that learning-induced changes in the conditioned stimulus (CS) sensory pathway can have the same temporal stability as the sensory plasticity observed during development or post injury in adult animals.

Inferencias e importancia de la información: efectos de las implicaciones y de los conocimientos previos

ResumenEn esta investigación se someten a prueba tres hipótesis sobre la mayor facilidad de recuperación inferencial de las frases principales de un texto que de las secundarias. La probabilidad de reconstrucción inferencial depende de (a) el número de implicaciones en un texto, (b) la presencia de implicaciones en la macroestructura que construye el lector, y (c) los conocimientos previos del lector. A partir de cuatro textos se reescribieron cinco versiones incompletas de cada uno, borrando en cada versión una frase principal y otra secundaria, para crear la oportunidad de que pudieran inferirse. Cada sujeto leyó dos textos y posteriormente realizó una prueba de reconocimiento a los 15 minutos (exp. 1 y 2) y a los siete días (exp. 2). También se tomaron medidas de sus conocimientos previos, de las implicaciones en el texto y en la macroestructura. Los resultados indicaron, primero, que las frases principales fueron objeto de más falsas alarmas que las secundarias, a corto y a largo plazo, pero los tiempos de respuesta fueron equivalentes. Segundo, que las implicaciones en el texto y los conocimientos previos fueron mayores para las principales que para las secundarias. Tercero, que la probabilidad de falsas alarmas de las frases principales fue similar a la de las secundarias cuando se controlaron sus diferencias en cuanto a número de implicaciones en el texto. Estos resultados permiten concluir que las frases principales se inferen más que las secundarias porque las primeras están más implicadas que las segundas por otra información presente en el texto. El hallazgo complementario, relativo a los tiempos de respuesta equivalentes cuando las frases estaban presentes en el texto (aciertos) y ausentes (falsas alarmas), sugiere que las inferencias observadas se produjeron durante la lectura o codificación y no sólo durante la recuperación.

Crying and retrograde amnesia in young infants

The delay gradient associated with crying-produced retrograde amnesia in infants was investigated using an operant conditioning paradigm. Three- to 4-month-old infants learned to produce movement in an overhead crib mobile containing 10 identical components and were switched to a mobile containing only 2 components during a third daily session. Independent groups of infants experienced delays of 0, 2, 5, 15, or 30 min between mobile switches. Infants who cried in response to the shift in mobiles when the interval between exposure to the two mobiles was between 0 and 15 min but not 30 min failed to show evidence of retention 1 week later. The relation between the preshift/postshift delay interval and retention test performance in the crying infants was linear. In contrast, non-crying infants in all groups continued to respond above operant level during the 1-week retention test. The existence of this retrograde amnesia gradient for crying is consistent with that seen for other amnesic agents and supports the view that infant forgetting results from a retrieval failure engendered by a lack of consistency between the contexts present at the conclusion of a learning experience and during the long-term retention test.

Transitions between short-term and long-term memory in learning meaningful unrelated paired associates using computer based drills

Two computer-based instructional design experiments, modeled after the traditional flash card drill, investigated optimum queuing for reintroducing missed items in paired associate learning. In the first investigation, the number of items intervening between a word and its later review (the insertion gap) was manipulated to determine the drop-off points (i.e., the points at which information fades from memory). Data from Experiment 1 showed that the use of two intervening items resulted in significantly higher correct recall ( P <.001) than the use of 3, 4, 5, or 6 intervening items. Furthermore, contrast coefficients confirmed two intervening items as the drop-off-point. The second experiment took the findings from the first experiment as a constant, using two intervening items as the first insertion gap. The number of intervening items in the second insertion gap (second drop-off point) was manipulated. A long-term retention test was administered seven days later. With minimal cues, no group was more impervious to inaccessibility over time than any other group, and after a prompted reminder the groups reinstated their original levels of learning. Experiment 2 showed that the use of 2 or 3 intervening items resulted in significantly higher correct recall than the use of 4, 5, or 6 items (three intervening items were slightly better than two). Although prior research had indicated that the optimal insertion gaps for a missed item are 1, 3, and 5 later insertions, the present experiment demonstrates that a treatment that uses fewer, specifically two or three intervening items is more beneficial than one which arbitrarily uses varied schedules for review.

Long-term memory in adulthood: An examination of the development of storage and retrieval processes at acquisition and retention

Although it is generally acknowledged that decrements in long-term memory play an important role in the decline of everyday cognitive functioning in adulthood, problems have arisen in localizing the source of these memory deficits. In this article we address three of the methodological and measurement issues that have led to difficulties in interpreting research on adulthood developmental differences in acquisition and long-term retention. Specifically, these issues are stages-of-learning confounds, failures to separate storage and retrieval processes, and failures to separate forgetting from other factors that influence long-term retention tests. A general framework is presented in which each of these problems is dealt with. This model is subsequently applied to an experiment that examined the acquisition and long-term retention of pictures and words in associative memory in both young and old adults. The major findings were that (a) the picture-word manipulation had asymmetrical effects on acquisition and retention, (b) these asymmetries were different for the young and old adults, and (c) the locus (storage/retrieval) of age differences was different at acquisition than at retention. These results strongly suggest that the rules governing acquisition and forgetting are different, not only within age groups, but also across developmental levels in adulthood. More importantly, because the locus of developmental differences was different for acquisition and forgetting, it may be that different mechanisms underly the processing deficits experienced by the elderly when acquiring information than when trying to retain that information over extended periods of time.

Specificity in the reactivation of infant memory.

In three experiments the specificity of an effective reactivation stimulus, or reminder, was examined. Two weeks after learning to produce movement in a crib mobile by footkicking, 3-month-old human infants showed no retention of the response-reinforcer contingency. A reactivation procedure 24 hours prior to the long-term retention test was effective if the reminder was a brief noncontingent exposure to the original 5-component training mobile or a mobile containing one novel substitution. When more than one novel component were substituted into the original mobile, the reminder was ineffective. This was predicted by the discrimination function 24 hours following training. A reminder containing only a single familiar (predictive) component and four novel ones was also moderately effective. In subsequent studies, we explored different interpretations of the reminder specificity effect. We hypothesize that reminder specificity is of particular adaptive value for developing organisms in providing a buffer against memory retrieval in inappropriate contexts.

On the Development of Forgetting

BRAINERD, CHARLES J.; KINGMA, JOHANNES; and HOWE, MARK L. On the Development of Forgetting. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1985, 56, 1103-1119. 3 conceptual issues are discussed that make the data of previous developmental studies of forgetting difficult to interpret, namely, stages-of-learning confounds, failure to separate forgetting per se from various performance factors that operate on retention tests, and failure to disentangle the relative contributions of storage-based forgetting and retrieval-based forgetting to retention test performance. A paradigm and model are presented that deal with these problems. Application of the model to the data of 4 experiments, 3 with elementary schoolers and 1 with adolescents, produced these major findings. (a) Contrary to previous studies, there were clear developmental trends in long-term retention that usually favored older children over younger children. (b) There were developmental trends in forgetting processes per se, again usually favoring older children, but these effects were confined to retrieval forgetting rather than storage forgetting. (c) There were developmental trends in the ability to relearn retrieval algorithms during long-term retention tests, with some types of relearning favoring older children and other types of relearning favoring younger children. (d) There were some important asymmetries between children's performance during acquisition of a list and their performance on long-term retention tests. This suggests that forgetting and acquisition are governed by quite different laws and hence require different theoretical assumptions.

Long-term retention of SNOS nonvolatile memory devices

Long-term retention tests on thin oxide SNOS (silicon gate nitride oxide silicon) nonvolatile memory devices have shown that the charge storage characteristics of these devices do not follow a simple logarithmic decay as many theories predict. The measured threshold voltage decay shows a break in the slope of retention data for both the WRITTEN and ERASED states with smaller rates of charge loss per decade of time for longer times.

Acquisition and Retention of Written Words by Kindergarten Children under Varying Learning Conditions

INVESTIGATES the effect of word acquistion by kindergarten children under two conditions of instruction: an isolated-word condition and a word-sentence condition. A review of the literature reveals inconclusive and contradictory findings. Previous studies in the area tend to introduce a teach/test bias, use oral rather than written contexts, and measure only immediate learning. The original contribution made by this study is that all words presented to the subjects were target words in written forms. In addition the teach/test bias was eliminated and the long-term retention period extended considerably. Results indicate that kindergarten children learn words in significantly fewer trials when the target words are presented in a meaningful sentence. When short-term retention was tested in a sentence condition, children learning via this method were significantly superior to children learning via an isolated word method. When tested in an isolated word condition, in new context, and on word designation tasks, no significant differences were noted between the two groups. The same pattern of results was obtained in tests of long term retention.

Metamemory and the transfer of an interrogative strategy by EMR children

EMR children were taught to produce an interrogative strategy as an aid to paired-associate learning. Interrogative training was spread over four sessions with experimenter guidance gradually faded; training was followed by tests of long-term retention for the trained items, strategy maintenance, and generalization. Metamemory was assessed prior to training and following generalization. Analysis of recall demonstrated successful maintenance and generalization of the interrogative strategy; the quality of elaborations produced by the trained children predicted recall accuracy. Importantly, metamemory pretest measures for the interrogative trained children were related to strategy use at generalization. Metamemory posttest reliably predicted recall during training, maintenance, and generalization sessions and strategy use at maintenance. Interrogative training did not noticeably improve general aspects of metamemorial knowledge.

Contingency Management in an Introductory Psychology Course Produces Better Retention

An approach to teaching based on a variant of the Keller contingency management method of instruction was investigated. Two matched sections of introductory psychology students were taught the same material by the same instructor. One group received the Keller method, while the other group was taught using a traditional lecture approach. Students taught by the Keller method performed significantly better on a post-course quiz than did those receiving the traditional lecture approach. Students taught by the Keller approach spent significantly greater time in preparation, enjoyed the text material more, and felt they learned significantly more than those receiving the traditional lecture approach. On a long-term retention test given 5 months after course termination, those receiving the Keller method retained significantly more material than did those receiving the traditional approach.

Parents as behavior therapy-technicians in treating reading deficits (dyslexia)

The present experiment was an attempt to discover whether parents of children with reading deficits could act successfully as therapy-technicians in helping their own children to overcome these deficits. Four children with reading problems were reinforced for appropriate reading behaviors with tokens backed up by monetary value. The children's parents administered the learning material following a 4-hr training period. All four Ss showed a positively accelerated rate of reading responses and made from 49,303 to 95,906 single word reading responses during the 35–65 hr of training. The number of new words learned ranged from 458 to 1040. At least 63 per cent of these words were retained on a short-term retention test and at least 53 per cent were retained on a long-term retention test administered 10–15 days later. The ratio of reinforcers to reading responses decreased markedly for all Ss despite the increasing difficulty of the material. Pre- and post-test comparisons indicated an increase (significant at the 0·05 level) in the children's reading ability. The results support the feasibility of parents providing complex behavior therapy to their children when they have standard procedures to follow and some supervision.