Schema theory and prose retention: Boundary conditions for encoding and retrieval effects

Hypermnesia for Prose

“…It should be pointed out that the literature contains ample evidence that organization of the material (i.e., relational processing) facilitates reading comprehension (Bransford & Johnson, 1972;Fass & Schumacher, 1981;Fletcher & Bloom, 1988;Yekovich & Thorndyke, 1981). The present results, therefore, are consistent with much of the literature on prose comprehension.…”

Text memory: Recalling Twice, using different perspectives

“…This suggests that Homebuyer words are slightly less accessible than either «Burglar" or «Others words. This is consistent with preceding research done with the same material: Homebuyer recall has always been worse than Burglar recall (Anderson & Pichert, 1978;Fass & Schumacher, 1981;Flammer & Tauber, 1982;Borland & Flammer, 1985). There is a clear relationship between completion and the number of words recalled after squeezing with the «incomplete» subjects simply completing their unfinished first recall during the squeezed recall task.…”

“…In addition, the relative loss due to perspective shift compared to the normal loss due to forgetting over time increases with the delay between reading and recall. Thus Fass and Schumacher (1981) found that the amount of recall not only was generally worse when perspective was shifted after the reading, but that relative deterioration of the recall, with a shift of perspective, became even greater over time.…”

“…Although shifting the perspective from reading to recall allows the recalling of some otherwise not recallable items, on the whole recall from a given perspective is worse if the reading was done from a different perspective than the recall (Fass & Schumacher, 1981;Flammer & Tauber, 1982;Niegemann, 1982;LUthi, 1983;Borland & Flammer, 1985). In addition, the relative loss due to perspective shift compared to the normal loss due to forgetting over time increases with the delay between reading and recall.…”

Long‐term prose retention: Is an organizational schema sufficient?

“…For example, encouraging more controlled or elaborative encoding of individual idea units by deleting letters from words comprising the idea unit (Einstein et al, 1984;McDaniel, 1984) or by randomly ordering the words comprising the idea unit (Glover & Burning, 1982) can increase recall for those idea units. In keeping with Einstein et al (1984), we will label this type of processing propositionspecific to distinguish it from the more organizational or interrelational processing thought to be predominant in schema-related effects (Fass & Schumacher, 1981).…”