A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

training sessions. She responded promptly and confidently on all occasions and
did not make any semantic or phonemic errors. P1 performed equally well on all
assessment tasks and all of the creature details were equally easy for her to
learn and recall.
4.4.3.2 Delayed recall
The materials for all stimuli remained with P1 following the final training session.
This was to allow P1 to rehearse and consolidate her learning. It also served to
reduce possible ‘recency effects’ contaminating the delayed recall assessments.
Five days following the fourth training session, P1 was assessed using the same
assessment tasks as with immediate recall to ascertain how much information
was retained from the previous week’s training. It was thought that this would
indicate if the newly learned vocabulary had been retained in long-term storage
to be retrieved at a later date. P1 replicated her performance during the
immediate recall tasks for all 20 creatures names, skills, habitat and food, again
achieving 100% correct on all assessments. All stimuli were returned following
this assessment.
4.4.3.3 One month delayed recall
P1 was assessed again one month after the delayed assessment session to
ascertain the length of time that the new learning could be retained. She knew
that this assessment was planned but did not have any access to the stimuli
between the delayed recall assessment and this assessment one month later.
As Table 4.4 below indicates, P1 recalled all 20 creature names and skills but
had some difficulty recalling the habitat and food items where she recalled 16
out of a maximum of 20. This was also reflected in the categorisation tasks for
habitat and food. P1’s performance indicated that the training and assessment
procedure not only facilitated immediate short-term memory recall but also
retention and retrieval from long-term memory.
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