Semantic processing and recall improvement of EMR adolescents.
Semantic processing, in the form of stories linking to-be-remembered words, was compared with cumulative rehearsal in a free-recall task. Educable mentally retarded adolescents were either taught to generate a story, provided with a story, taught to rehearse cumulatively, or assigned to no-strategy control groups. Semantic-processing subjects showed better recall at original learning and, to a lesser extent, at a 20-week retention test. Results were discussed with reference to the mechanism of recall improvement and the generalizability of semantic training to a diversity of tasks.
D000293:Adolescent; D004495:Education of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning