Encoding and retrieval in schizophrenics' free recall.
It was hypothesized that schizophrenics' typically poor free recall performance resulted from their failure to adopt the efficient encoding and/or retrieval strategies routinely used by college students. Process schizophrenics, reactive schizophrenics, and students learned 18-item lists containing words from three taxonomic categories. Blocking was used to induce categorical encoding and cues were used to induce categorical retrieval. In the absence of these strategy control manipulations, schizophrenics' recall was low and significantly worse than students' recall. Efficient encoding improved the recall of both process and reactive schizophrenics, but their performance was equivalent to students' performance only when explicit retrieval cues were provided. The role of retrieval cues in improving schizophrenics' performance was discussed.
D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology