Self-retrieval and articulatory retention

The effect of training in self-retrieval on articulatory recall was examined. Elementary school children practiced the syllables /ciks/ and /colt/ under two conditions: imitation and self-retrieval. In the latter condition subjects were asked to say the test object rather than to imitate its name. Over intervals of one day and five days there was no difference in retention as a function of the type of pretraining. Imitative responses decayed little over time and were, in general, always higher than self-retrieval responses regardless of the type of training during acquisition (self-retrieval or imitation).