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

Abstract

Former students (N = 373) of a course in cognitive psychology (CP), conducted between 1978 and 1989, completed memory tests to assess retention of CP. Memory for proper names of researchers, concepts, and conceptual relations varied with retention interval (RI), and memory performance declined over the first 36 months of retention and then stabilized at above-chance levels for the remainder of the retention period. Memory for general facts from the course and research methods did not, however, vary with RI and remained at the same above-chance level across all RIs sampled. The recall and recognition of proper names showed a more rapid decline than the recall and recognition of concepts. These findings suggest that knowledge structures formed at acquisition mediate the very long-term retention of CP. Also, Ss with higher grades retained more knowledge than Ss with lower grades. Finally, a dissociation between memory performance and confidence ratings indicates that at the longer RIs, Ss were unaware that course material was accurately remembered.During the process of formal education many topics are learned in great detail, some even to expert levels, but subsequently many of these knowledge domains are utilized only rarely or remain wholly unused. What is the fate of such knowledge? Is it rapidly forgotten? Is it selectively forgotten with, for instance, details being lost first and more general aspects being retained longer? Does initial depth of learning determine the period of retention? And do such factors as motivation or interest in a knowledge domain significantly influence retention? Finally, is retention affected by the process of aging? For example, after a long retention period, does a person's age at retrieval influence memory performance? The cross-sectional study reported in this article addresses these questions by investigating the retention of cognitive psychology acquired by university students who took a course in cognitive psychology in one of the years between 1978 and 1989 (inclusive). However, before considering the study in detail, we first review the seminal work of Bahrick (e.g., 1979Bahrick (e.g., , 1983Bahrick (e.g., , 1984 that has already begun to provide answers to some of the aforementioned questions and that provided the impetus for the present research. Very Long-Term Retention of KnowledgeIn their research, Bahrick and his colleagues investigated the very long-term retention of various types of knowledge acquired outside laboratory settings. For example, Bahrick, This research was supported by Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain Grant R000231158.All of us contributed equally to the study. We thank Philip Levy for considerable help with the analyses reported in the article. We also thank Harry P. Bahrick and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the article.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Martin A. Conway, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA 1 4YF England. Bahrick, and Wittlinger (1975) ...

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