Two case studies of very long-term retention

• Published in: Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 29; no. 2; pp. 563 - 567
• Main Authors: Maxcey, Ashleigh M., Shiffrin, Richard M., Cousineau, Denis, Atkinson, Richard C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Brief Report; Cognitive Psychology; Dissertations & theses; Experiments; Humans; Learning; Memory; Mental Recall; Psychology; Retention; Permastore; Long-term memory; Permanence of memory; Memory for skilled search; Skill retention
• ISSN: 1069-9384; 1531-5320
• DOI: 10.3758/s13423-021-02002-y

Here, we present two case studies of extremely long-term retention. In the first, Richard C. Atkinson (RCA) had learned word sequences during experiments for his dissertation. Sixty-seven years later, RCA relearned the same words either in the original order or in a scrambled order. RCA reported no conscious awareness that the words were those used in the dissertation, but his relearning was considerably better for the words in the original order. In the second case study, Denis Cousineau had searched displays of objects for the presence of a target. The targets and foils had been novel at the beginning of training, and his search rate improved markedly over about 70 sessions. After 22 years, retraining showed retention of much of this gain in rate of search, and the rate was markedly faster than search for new objects with the same structure as the trained set. We consider interpretations of these case studies for our understanding of long-term retention.