The effect of varying levels of reinstatement on preschoolers' memory for location

Bryant, Lynn M. (1992) The effect of varying levels of reinstatement on preschoolers' memory for location. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Although there has been a recent increase in research concerning the possible beneficial influence of various factors on retention-test performance, most of these factors have been examined in isolation. The present experiment was conducted in order to compare within one study some of the factors which are known to affect performance on retention tests, permitting a direct comparison of these effects. -- Various types (or levels) of event re-presentation (reinstatement treatments) were employed, namely, a test trial, a study trial, a reactivation treatment, or no reinstatement treatment (control) during the retention interval. Although these factors involve differing levels of reinstatement treatments, the question was whether they would differentially affect subsequent recall performance. -- A paired-associate task involving the learning of the locations of 16 familiar objects (item-location pairs) by 3- year-olds was used. Three weeks later, three of the four groups of children were visited again and exposed to one of three reinstatement treatments. The reinstatement treatment was employed in all cases to only half of the original study set. The fourth (control) group was not visited during this interval. This was followed 1 week later by a retention test, consisting of four consecutive test trials, on the locations of all 16 items using a cued-recall procedure. It was found that: (a) reinstatement treatment, regardless of method, was shown to be an effective way of increasing the amount recalled; (b) study was the superior type of reinstatement treatment, with no significant differences between a test trial and a reactivation treatment; (c) reinstatement treatment applied to part of a list appeared to show some spread to other list items, but this effect did not reach significance; (d) hypermnesia was observed across test trials, independent of other factors. These results replicate previous findings that study is the best method of increasing future recall. In addition, the results also attest to the powerful effect of test trials on retention- test performance as well as point to the importance of using more than one test trial in order to fully assess the contents of memory.

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