This study was designed to investigate the effects of retrieval on memory for prose in second-graders and adults. Specifically, this study assessed the effects of retrieving an interleaved story in canonical form on the subsequent retrieval of that story in its originally presented interleaved form. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of five conditions. The critical comparisons were between the invalidation condition and its control condition. In the invalidation condition, the experimenter said that the initial instructions to recall the story were incorrect and that the subjects should now recall the story exactly as presented. Subjects in the control condition were asked to recall the story exactly as presented after recalling the story canonically. The results indicated that the nature of recall was greatly influenced by the demands of the retrieval task. Second-graders and adults made more theme-irrelevant elaborations in the invalidation condition than in the control condition. Second-graders' recall protocol was more congruent with the most recent recall instructions when their former recall instructions were invalidated than in the control condition. In contrast, adults' recall protocol was congruent with the most recent recall instructions whether or not their initial recall instructions were invalidated. Congruence was measured by episode clustering (ARC) and by input-output Spearman Rank Order Correlation. These findings suggest that conditions at retrieval and not at encoding appear to determine what form recall will take. Further, the findings of this study suggest that second-graders are more likely to internalize experimenter provided retrieval plans than are adults and are more likely to abandon these retrieval plans when provided with negative evidence for their internalized plan. Schmidt and Schmidt (in preparation) have recently argued that recall is influenced by a retrieval plan and that one of the sources through which a retrieval plan can be generated is through the retrieval context. They also argue that the retrieval context should have its most powerful impact when limited or inappropriate retrieval plans are available to the subject. The differences between second-graders and adults reported here serve to support this view. / Ph. D.

Kersten, Earles, and Berger (2015) reported a distinction between two kinds of motion representations. Extrinsic motions involve the path of a person or object, with respect to an external frame of reference. Intrinsic motions involve the manner in which the various parts of a person or object move. They found that intrinsic motions are encoded and remembered with the corresponding actor performing the motions in a unitized memory representation. Extrinsic motions are encoded as separate memory representations, making them more difficult to accurately associate with the correct actor. In the proposed experiment, I will examine the generality of this distinction in motion representation, and investigate whether the unitization of intrinsic motion with its corresponding actor occurs during reading comprehension tasks. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which learning and recall are facilitated by semantic and phonological targets. A list-learning paradigm was administered to 10 individuals with a history of traumatic brain injury. Participants were asked to recall and identify words that were present on the list. The lists consisted of semantically related associate words and phonologically related associate words. Participants recalled significantly more semantically related associates than phonological associates. Demographic factors such as age, time-post injury, and educational attainment did not have a significant effect on the recall ability for either word target type. Word recognition ability also was not influenced by target type. The results of this study found adults with TBI use a semantic network following brain injury and that semantic targets are more beneficial for recall than phonological targets. / text

This study sought to determine if there are any "cultural" or economic level patterns of behavior in responding to tasks involving categorizing pictures and recalling general knowledge. The Daberon School Headiness Device (1972), which contains subtests for general knowledge and categorization, was used to assess four groups of children: 1) lower-SES white, 2) lower-SES black, 3) middle-SES white, and 4) middle-SES black. This study involved thirty black and thirty white children between the ages of five years and five years, eleven months. All subjects were screened to determine race, age, auditory acuity, speech intelligibility, subject cooperation, and socioeconomic status (SES). Testing for intelligence was performed at the beginning of the testing situation.

The problem of this study is whether between-channel redundancy in an instructional audio-visual message enhances immediate recall of information more than within—channel redundancy. A secondary purpose was to compare three forms of between—channel redundancy! audio—video, audio—video—caption, and audio-caption with one form of within-channel redundancy: video-caption. These comparisons were designed to demonstrate which form of redundancy had a higher association with recall of information. The subjects were administered the Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Inventory to measure listening skills, and the Receiver Apprehension Inventory to identify subjects who experienced significantly high apprehension as receivers of information. Then the subjects were randomly divided into four treatment groups and shown an eight minute newscast. All four groups were presented the same instructional message, but the mode of presentation differed depending upon the treatment group. After viewing the instructional program each member of each group was given a forty item multiple-choice retention inventory based on the information presented in the newscast. The data were presented in terms of correct responses on the Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Inventory and the forty item retention inventory. Discriminate analysis was used to determine which items from the multiple-choice retention inventory accounted for the most variance. Thirteen items were found to account for the greatest amount of variance. Reliability estimates were calculated for all four story categories and for the forty items collectively. All reliability estimates were acceptable.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a training program in summarizing textbook articles on developmental English community college students’ ability to summarize text. Although previous research has documented improvement in reading recall when subjects were taught a hierarchical summary procedure, the study constitutes the first attempt to test whether this procedure can be used to train students to write better summaries. Developmental English students were chosen for study because students in this population typically do poorly at this important academic task. Because summary notes are often considered an aid to recall, the study also measured recall protocols of students who were trained in summary writing in contrast to those who received alternative training. Experimental group students were taught to identify the top three levels of importance and had guided practice with feedback once a week for five weeks. Control group students were given training in vocabulary and comprehension techniques. Passages were at least 1200 words. Scoring was based on inclusion of information from the top three levels of hierarchical structure in each passage. The basic questions of the study were: (1) Is there an interaction between group status and cognitive abilities on summary writing posttest scores? (2) Are students who received training in summarization more proficient at summarizing text than students who received another type of training? (3) Are students who received training in summarization more proficient at recalling text than students who received another type of training? (4) Do students trained in summarization score higher than students trained with other methods on a standardized reading test? Regression analyses indicated the following results: (1) There was no interaction between type of training and cognitive abilities on summary writing posttest scores; high and low students profited equally from instruction. (2) Students trained in summarization performed significantly higher than control group students on the summary writing posttest. (3) Treatment group students did not score significantly higher than control group students on the delayed recall test, but there was a trend towards Significance. (4) There was no significant difference between treatment and control group students’ standardized reading test scores. / Ed. D.

Review of life experiences for personal adaptation is a general tendency in older adults. A positive outcome of life review may be an increase in well-being. To test the hypothesis that reminiscence group activity, structured for life review, could increase well-being, a sample of 30 residents in a retirement community was studied, using a quasiexperimental, pretest-posttest design. Research subjects, average age 78 years, were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. All were pre- and post-tested by four instruments: Life Satisfaction Index Form A, Affect Balance Scale, Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale, and the OARS Activities of Daily Living Scale. Control subjects received testing only. Experimental subjects participated in small reminiscence groups, structured for life review by the Haight Life Review Experiencing Form (LREF). The reminiscence group activity constituted one complex independent variable. Group activity included opportunity to write in private journals about LREF topics, shared voluntarily. Data from the four dependent variables were analyzed separately, using scale score differences. Neither t-tests, nor one-way analysis of variance of differences in relation to frequency of group attendance revealed any statistically significant findings, although posttest scores showed some nonsignificant improvement. / Master of Science

Dual-process models of recognition memory propose that recognition memory can be supported by either a general sense of familiarity or the recollection of the encoding context. One source of evidence supporting dual-process models comes from event-related potential (ERP) studies of recognition memory, which have identified distinct patterns of neural activity associated with familiarity and recollection (the mid frontal and left parietal old/new effects, respectively). In this thesis, dual-process accounts of recognition memory were investigated in a series of ERP studies using three categories of stimulus: previously unknown faces, famous faces, and names. For previously unknown faces, familiarity was associated with activity over posterior scalp electrodes while recollection was associated with topographically dissociable activity over anterior electrodes. These dissociable patterns of activity support dual-process models. However, the typical pattern of old/new effects was only observed for stimuli associated with pre-existing representations (i.e., names and famous faces), suggesting that the presence/absence of pre-existing representations may determine the particular retrieval processes that support recognition memory. Furthermore, recollection was associated with two different patterns of activity (anterior and left parietal effects), suggesting that recollection is not a homogenous process. Dual-process theories may represent an important starting point for investigating recognition memory, but neither familiarity nor recollection appear to be functionally homogenous processes when theorizing is constrained by the analysis of scalp recorded electrophysiological activity.

The purpose of this randomized control trial (RCT) was to investigate the effects of a story-sharing intervention on older adults transitioning to long-term care (LTC). The specific aims were (1) to determine the effects of story sharing on the health transition outcomes of depression and well-being of adults transitioning to LTC; and (2) to determine if the sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, level of education (LOE), months living at LTC facility, choice to move, and health problem(s) that may have resulted in the move) predict depression and/or well-being. Story sharing was defined as the respectful space where one tells and listens to stories of others (Heliker, 2009) while being guided by another (the investigator). Meleis’ middlerange theory of transitions (MMRTT) (Meleis et al., 2000) was used as a guide to understand the transitioning process. A convenience sampling design was used to recruit 100 participants from 11 LTC facilities in Broward County, located in Southeast Florida. The sample included adults, age 65 years and older, who were transitioning to a LTC facility within the past two years. Participants were randomly assigned to the control group (n = 52), who received standard care, or to the intervention group (n = 41), who received story-sharing and standard care. The results indicated there was no significant greater improvement to suggest an Intervention and Time effect for depression and/or well-being. Overall, predictive ability of the sociodemographic variables for depression and well-being were not statistically significant. However, LOE (junior college) did account for a significant portion of unique variance for increased depression, and time, marital status, ethnicity, LOE, and choice to move did account for a significant proportion of unique variance for well-being. Months living in LTC (more months) and marital status (all but divorced) were significant for improved well-being while ethnicity (Hispanic), LOE (high school and junior college), and choice to move (no choice) were significant for reduced well-being. Similar studies using a larger sample size, including non-English speaking participants; lengthier storysharing sessions; and measuring for pain, health, and bereavement may offer additional insights to healthy transition outcomes for this population. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection