Two case studies of very long-term retention

Bibliographic Data

ID21640501
AuthorsAshleigh M Maxcey (0000-0002-6775-6836, Vanderbilt University, corresponding author), Richard M Shiffrin (0000-0002-3708-3212, Indiana University Bloomington), Denis Cousineau (0000-0001-5908-0402, University of Ottawa), Richard C Atkinson (University of California San Diego)
Year2022
Volume29
Issue2
Pages563-567
Publication date2022-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychonomic Bulletin & Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1069-9384 • E-ISSN: 1531-5320
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3758/s13423-021-02002-y
PMID34582031
OpenAlexW3202200142
LanguageEN
References cited27

Here, we present two case studies of extremely long-term retention. In the first, Richard C. Atkinson (RCA) had learned word sequences during experiments for his dissertation. Sixty-seven years later, RCA relearned the same words either in the original order or in a scrambled order. RCA reported no conscious awareness that the words were those used in the dissertation, but his relearning was considerably better for the words in the original order. In the second case study, Denis Cousineau had searched displays of objects for the presence of a target. The targets and foils had been novel at the beginning of training, and his search rate improved markedly over about 70 sessions. After 22 years, retraining showed retention of much of this gain in rate of search, and the rate was markedly faster than search for new objects with the same structure as the trained set. We consider interpretations of these case studies for our understanding of long-term retention

Cognitive psychology · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Retraining · Computer Science · Image Retrieval and Classification Techniques · Music and Audio Processing · Neural Networks and Applications · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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