A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

she had retained from the previous week’s training. As can be seen from Table
4.9 above, P2 recalled 30% of total items assessed, retaining 36% of the
knowledge that she had learned in the training sessions (immediate recall
assessments).
In comparison to P2’s ability to recall the new information, P1 recalled 100% of
the new information after a delay of five days and 83% recall after a further onemonth
delay. This could be a reflection of the longer consolidation time given to
P1 between the fourth training session and the delayed recall (see section
4.4.3.2) or possibly a reflection of P2’s reported long-term memory difficulties. It
was decided not to request a one-month delayed recall session as firstly, there
was a substantial reduction in P2’s ability to retain the learned information.
Secondly, the focus of the investigation was on the learning of new vocabulary
rather than how long a person could store this new learning for and a further
assessment was considered to be more a memory than a learning test.
4.5.3.3 Timing of sessions
The timings of the screening assessment session, presentation of stimuli and
delayed recall session were the same as with P1 (see Table 4.5). P2 chose to
take the full 30 minutes for each independent learning session to rehearse and
consolidate her learning.
4.5.4 Summary of pilot study two
Although P2 volunteered to participate in the investigation her approach to
learning was negative and throughout the training sessions claimed that she
would not be able to learn or remember anything. Her self-rating of depression
(see section.4.5.2) reflected this overall negative outlook. During the
independent learning time P2 did not use observable learning strategies,
choosing only to look at the creature details silently for the 30-minute duration.
Table 4.8 demonstrated that P2 did learn some of the new vocabulary and could
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