Acquisition and forgetting of hierarchically organized information in long-term memory.

Abstract

Taught 60 undergraduates a simple hierarchy of connections between letters. Ss were given a retention test and a subsequent relearning period. Both acquisition and retention were better when the hierarchy was learned graphically (i.e., a visual presentation of the entire hierarchy) rather than as a list of associations, although the effects were greater on acquisition than on retention. Neither acquisition nor retention was affected by whether the ordering of connections in the hierarchy changed or remained the same across learning trials, suggesting that the internal representation of the hierarchy is not an isomorphic "photographic" image of the physically present hierarchy. Relearning performance and the pattern of retention-test errors suggest the manner in which a hierarchy disintegrates during forgetting from long-term memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)