Benefits of immediate repetition versus long study presentation on memory in amnesia.

Abstract

Objective-To resolve discrepant findings in the literature regarding the effects of massed repetition and a single long study presentation on memory in amnesia.Method-Patients with amnesia secondary to anoxia or herpes encephalitis and matched controls participated in two experiments. They studied words under three presentation conditions -single short presentation, single long presentation, and massed repetition -and then performed a recognition test. In experiment 1, study conditions were intermixed, whereas in experiment 2 they were blocked.Results-In experiment 1, control participants showed benefits associated with both types of extended exposure, and massed repetition was more beneficial than long study presentation, p<.001, partial η 2 =.45. In contrast, amnesic participants failed to show benefits of either type of extended exposure, F<1. In experiment 2, control participants again benefited more from massed repetition than from long study presentation, p<.001, partial η 2 =.58; amnesic patients showed equivalent benefits of both types of extended exposure, p=.015, partial η 2 =.41.Conclusions-These findings suggest that previous inconsistencies in the literature were due to procedural differences across studies. We discuss group differences in terms of the mechanisms by which both forms of extended exposure facilitate performance in each group. Keywords amnesia; repetition; recognition memoryExtensive research in individuals with intact memory shows that multiple study presentations lead to better recall and recognition performance than does a single study presentation. In an effort to elucidate the processes that mediate this repetition benefit, many studies have compared performance following massed (i.e., immediate) and spaced (i.e., distributed) repetitions. The typical finding is that spaced repetition is more beneficial than massed The authors have no financial or other relationships that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest affecting this manuscript. Publisher's Disclaimer:The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/pubs/journals/neu NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptNeuropsychology. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 July 1. Published in final edited form as:Neuropsychology. 2010 July ; 24(4): 457-464. doi:10.1037/a0018625. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript repetition, although massed repetition also yields better performance than does single presentation (Bird, Nicholson, & Ringer, 1978;Greene, 1989).Like individuals with intact memory, patients with selective amne...