Maintenance of knowledge: Questions about memory we forgot to ask.

Abstract

Memory research has contributed little toward understanding acquisition, maintenance, or loss of complex knowledge systems. This is so because such systems are acquired and maintained over long time periods that cannot be accommodated by traditional research methods. Acquisition of semipermanent knowledge typically involves repeated exposure to information, with losses of information during intervals between exposures. Continued maintenance of knowledge depends on periodic access. Two methods are described to investigate these processes.The method of successive relearning is a laboratory method illustrated in a study in which English-Spanish word pairs are periodically relearned and the effect of varying the intersession interval from a few seconds to 30 days is established. It is shown that indefinite access to the acquired information remains highly probable if the retraining interval does not exceed the access interval. If the access interval is much longer than the retraining interval, much of the acquired information becomes inaccessible during the access interval.The method of cross-sectional adjustment is a nonlaboratory method designed to investigate the acquisition and maintenance of complex knowledge systems under ecologically realistic conditions. This method can be used if a large number of individuals acquired the same information, if the time of acquisition dates back from a few months to many years, and if both the original level of knowledge and the degree of rehearsal during the retention interval can be estimated with acceptable reliability. The method is illustrated in a study in which maintenance of knowledge of a city is related to the frequency, recency, duration, and distribution of visits during a 46-yr. retention interval.Subjects are assigned to time groups based on how long ago they acquired the information; average retention performance for various time groups yields an unadjusted retention curve. Such curves must be corrected for differences among the groups in the degree of original learning and in the amount of rehearsal. These adjustments are made on the basis of multiple regression equations that reflect correlations of rehearsal variables and retention performance. It is shown that the adjustment process can correct for major inequalities among groups. The multiple regression equations are used further to obtain estimates of the amount of rehearsal necessary to maintain the original level of knowledge.

Skill Maintenance: Literature Review and Theoretical Analysis

“…This finding is in marked contrast to those from suidies showing strong effects of practice distribution in many cognitive skills and, in particular, to the work of Bahrick (1979).…”

“…Retention of Knowledge he most important recent work this area has been conducted by Bahrick (1979Bahrick ( , 1984 ancd, therefore, this work will be reviewed in some detail. Bahrick knowledge over retention intervals considerably longer than tho.e typically used in laboratory experiments.…”

On the very long-term retention of knowledge acquired through formal education: Twelve years of cognitive psychology.

“…The purpose of the present study is to extend Bahrick's (1979) cross-sectional methodology to a new knowledge domain and explicitly contrast memory for conceptual knowledge with memory for more specific knowledge. If Neisser's (1984) schema theory interpretation is correct, then different types of knowledge should yield different retention functions.…”

Unprepared Retesting of First Year Knowledge: How Much Do Second Year Medical Students Remember?

“…Due to the compressed curriculum, many topics are dealt with only once during undergraduate education, and this may be insufficient for students to establish a firm base of readily available knowledge. In any case, all other things being equal, students are less likely to recall knowledge they have been exposed to only once or twice than knowledge they have seen more frequently [8][9][10]. If no or very infrequent rehearsal is the norm for knowledge acquired in undergraduate medical education, a major loss of this knowledge before students enter the wards may not come as a surprise.…”