A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

ecency and primacy effect, however, as Appendix 5.6 indicates the words most
easily recalled and the ones which appeared most difficult to recall were spread
throughout the four sessions, indicating that there were no recency or primacy
effects in the immediate or delayed recall of the new words.
5.18.3.3 Learning performance in relation to learning assessment tasks
The various assessment tasks are listed in Appendix 5.7 in descending order
beginning with those tasks at which participants performed most successful. The
easiest assessments for participants to correctly perform appeared to be the
listening and reading recognition of the new words and the syllable completion
tasks, both for immediate and delayed assessment tasks. These tasks did not
require spoken or written output by participants and the provision of the new
words or part of the new words may have facilitated access of the correct
information. These tasks are thought to involve the phonological and
orthographic input lexicons and phonological output lexicon from the cognitive
neuropsychology model. The most difficult tasks appeared to be recalling the
spoken naming and skills of the new words for both immediate and delayed
recall. Participants with severe aphasia would not have been able to score
highly on spoken naming tasks by the very nature of their language impairment.
To demonstrate learning through this task, participants would have had to
access their semantic system, the pathway from semantics to phonological
output lexicon, phonological output lexicon and phonological output buffer
according to the cognitive neuropsychological model. Participants with
impairments throughout this pathway would not have scored well on this task.
As participants could have recalled the skills either in spoken or written form,
even those participants with severe spoken aphasia could have demonstrated
this learning in written form. According to the cognitive neuropsychology
framework there were two optional pathways, including that for the naming task
described above and also where this pathway diverges from the phonological
output lexicon to the orthographic output lexicon and graphemic output buffer.
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