Cue discrimination and forgetting

Subjects learned paired associate fists in which word triads were paired with nouns to a partial criterion; they were then given both an immediate and a 1-week delayed recognition test for discrimination among the triads and a cued recall test. Recall after 1 week was slightly poorer than that occurring immediately, but it was unaffected by various patterns of element identity among the triads. Discrimination improved somewhat over the 1-week interval. Further experiments showed that the immediate test was responsible for both reducing forgetting and improving discrimination, but both effects were independent of identity structure. Forgetting cannot be attributed to loss of differentiation of cues.