Retrieval patterns

Results:

Both subjects are Chinese native speakers.

Result of Subject A, read to mostly in Chinese, with all the letters and two line of words in English.

Results of Subject B, read to in English only.

Patterns

The recalling of the numbers has the highest accuracy rate. The longest lists of random letters and random words have the lowest rate of accurate retrieval.

The results also indicate that the numbers, letters, words at the beginning and at the end of the lists have an accuracy rate close to 100%. And both subjects reported that it was easier to recall the items at the beginning and at the end of a list. They also claimed that the backward interference was most obvious for the items in the middle.

When read to using the first language, the subject performed much better on the longer word list than on the shorter list read in English. This is also true for the lists of numbers.

Semantic cue was very helpful in recalling. When one subject realized that one of the lists is actually a sentence, the recall rate was much higher than the previous lists. The other subject who failed to realize the semantic cue of this list did not perform distinguishably better on this longer list of words.

Both subjects also pointed out that when they were able to chunk the information down into groups using whatever cues there are, they would find retrieval more convenient.

Conclusions: Factors that might play an important role in retrieval

Encoding and retrieval cues

Numbers and letters are much more abstract than words. However, the task of recalling numbers was reported as the easiest. As an exception, when the letters and words can be chunked or regrouped based on semantic cues, the subjects find it easier to recall. Thus, when clues are present for encoding, the storage and retrieval can be carried out more smoothly.

When the subjects are exposed to information in a second language, extra time and effort are needed to encode the same amount of information presented in first language. This indicates the fact that prior knowledge is important in the encoding of new information. And both subjects reported that there was an involuntary tendency to translate the second language into their mother tongue, costing more time and resulted in the interference of receiving other incoming words. Therefore, the subjects' prior knowledge in this case affected their performance negatively.

One subject reported that she was trying to visualize the words I read to her, and performed better on the list of words that can be visualized.

So both semantic and visual cues can be used in encoding and retrieval. There might be an individual difference on the preference of these strategies.