Forced recall an exercise in tedium
At the request of a friend, I volunteer to participate in a human research study at Montana State University. Mark Quinn, chairman of the Institutional Review Board, whatever that is, says it should take less than two hours and I’d be paid $15.
Okay, who can turn down easy money? And I generally like doing memory tests, crosswords, mind-bending puzzles and the like. Well, let’s put that in the past tense for now.
As a subject, I am randomly assigned to one of four different experimental conditions, and asked to study words on a computer screen. Not the whole list, where one might make associations, but single words flashing individually for about one second each.
No big deal, I think.
After 20 words flash, however, I’m given a sheet of math problems to solve in three minutes. Aargh! Oh, well, they’re all multiplication. I can do this.
But . . . after the timing bell rings, the experimenter reads from a sheet of instructions about how I’m meant to write down the words I recall. By now I’m not sure I’ll recall any. He says to write all the words I can remember in any order and rate the confidence of my accuracy from one to four. There is a penalty, I’m told, for guessing incorrectly. But those participants who perform well on the memory test will be entered into a prize drawing that will take place after the research project is complete. Yeah, right. That would be limited to those who live long enough and at this point, it’s unlikely.
Now I’ve completely forgotten all but about nine of the words and feel pressured not to include a few more that I’m not sure of. This is getting tedious.
The exercise is repeated a half dozen times. Each time, the experimenter reads the instructions again, every time faster than the last, just as I’m trying to remember the words. Why won’t he shut up? I remember everything he said before instead of the words I saw on the screen.
My math scores are always the same but I do noticeably better on the lists that have related words. Tools, birds or animals, for example. When the words are unrelated, I fail miserably. I’ve had no breakfast. I’m getting cranky.
If I say the words aloud as they pop on the screen, I score higher. And, I know, if I didn’t have to keep switching from left to right brain with the damn math problems, it would help. And if I dared to guess, better still.
Turns out the math is in my long-term memory, well, duh, I learned that in third grade. But the real test is for short-term memory, the kind all us old folks fear losing. Both sides of my brain ache. Even my hair hurts.
Then the experimenter gives me a multiple choice test of synonyms and tells me I can take as long as I like. Well, I ace that part even though there’s no correct synonym given for one word: abet. I would guess “aid” or “assist” (as in driving the getaway car in a bank robbery) but those are not offered. I circle “incite” as the only possible choice and this time there’s no penalty for guessing.
Whew, it’s over. I want my latte. Not so fast. We have a “debriefing” to do. The experiment is called “Forced Recall in Young and Older Adults.” Well, I bet I did better on the synonyms than the young adults.
The debriefing sheet says one group is asked to recall the stimuli (word) under standard instructions, or to recall as many as possible without guessing. Another group is told their recall is scored for correct items with no penalty for guessing and another that their recall is penalized for guessing. The final group is told to produce a given number of responses even if they know they’re guessing (forced recall).
It is expected that accurate recall increases under forced recall instructions, but only for the categorized lists. No differences between retrieval instructions are predicted for the unrelated lists. Well, that’s encouraging. I probably score in the early Alzheimer’s group on those.
The researchers say they are interested in differences between how young and older adults approach a recall task and with the different retrieval instructions.
I am now bored almost to aggravation. This is not fun.
It’s also not worth an hour and a half of my time, on an empty stomach, for 15 green ones. This subject asks the experimenter if nutrition is factored into the result. He thinks not.
I’m going to the Daily Coffee Bar. I might even get a donut.