A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

after training). Unlike Lotto and de Groot’s (1998) investigation, they found that
word frequency had very little effect on performance. In addition, the results
observed that participants demonstrated better recall when assessed on
comprehension rather than production tasks and the words that were initially
easy to learn also left more permanent memory traces. The authors assert that
the results indicate that concerns that participants might not be motivated to
learn nonsense material is not warranted. Basso, Marangolo, Piras and Galluzzi
(2001) also evaluated the ability of healthy adults to learn to match 30 paired bisyllabic
non-words and pictures, employing repetition, reading aloud and
orthographic cueing to facilitate learning. They report that orthographic cueing
was significantly more successful than the other two methods.
As we continue to learn throughout our lives and acquire new information and
vocabulary as we participate in education and learn new skills for employment
and leisure pursuits, it would be expected that healthy adults would have little
difficulty in learning new words. However for this investigation it is important to
review those studies that incorporate the learning of vocabulary by people who
have acquired brain damage. While many people with aphasia also present with
memory processing difficulties following a stroke (see section 2.6.3.3) it would
be useful to ascertain if people with memory processing impairments alone are
able to demonstrate new learning. If not, any difficulty learning new vocabulary
by people with aphasia could be due to memory processing impairments rather
than language difficulties alone. The following studies investigate new learning
with memory-impaired participants.
2.8.5.2 Adults with memory impairment learning vocabulary
A small number of investigations have been carried out with people who present
with memory impairments to assess their ability to learn new vocabulary and
evaluate the best methods to facilitate this learning. Downes et al., (1997)
included memory impaired participants (due to brain injury) in their study with
59