
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Date
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair
Philip Pavlik
Committee Member
Andrew Olney
Committee Member
Jeffrey Berman
Committee Member
Xiangen Hu
Abstract
Memory retention and forgetting are two interdependent aspects of the same cognitive phenomenon. To decelerate forgetting and improve long-term retention, researchers have investigated the effects of encoding factors such as the degree of initial learning and the meaningfulness of materials. However, these studies have yielded mixed results mainly due to varying preferences in the operationalization of forgetting rate. The present study investigated the impacts of both factors on forgetting rates and long-term retention in a paired associates learning context. Specifically, analysis of variance (e.g., ANOVA and GLMM) and modeling methods (e.g., power, exponential, and logarithmic forgetting functions) were employed to explore these effects comprehensively. A mixed factorial experiment was designed: the degree of initial learning was a within-participant factor with three levels (low, medium, and high), meaningfulness was a between-participant factor with two levels (low versus high), and four retention intervals (35 seconds, 1 hour, 1 day, and 3 days.) were employed as another betweenparticipant factor to measure learners’ retention performance and fit forgetting curves. The results indicated that noun-noun pairs with high meaningfulness exhibit superior long-term retention performance, a slower absolute rate of forgetting, and a slower relative rate of forgetting. In contrast, while a higher degree of initial learning led to better long-term performance, it did not significantly reduce the rate of forgetting, supporting the independence hypothesis regarding the initial learning degree and forgetting rate. Additionally, both power and logarithmic functions effectively model the nonlinear patterns of forgetting with fewer degrees of freedom.
Library Comment
Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.
Notes
Open access.
Recommended Citation
Chu, Wei, "EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF INITIAL LEARNING DEGREE AND MEANINGFULNESS ON THE RATE OF FORGETTING IN PAIRED ASSOCIATES LEARNING" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3646.
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/etd/3646
Comments
Data is provided by the student.