Retention of trained performance in consistent mapping search after extended delay.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Performance

Background:

• Consistent mapping (CM) training is used to improve search performance.
• Previous studies on the retention of CM-trained search performance have yielded conflicting results.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the long-term retention of performance in memory, visual, and hybrid memory/visual search tasks after extensive CM practice.
• To investigate the influence of the amount of CM practice on retention over intervals up to one year.
• To assess category activation for untrained words within trained categories at various retention intervals.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted to assess retention of search performance.
• Experiment 1: Retention of memory scanning after one month.
• Experiment 2: Retention of visual search after one month.
• Experiment 3: Retention of pure visual and hybrid memory/visual semantic-category search tasks at 1, 30, 90, 180, and 365 days post-training.

Main Results:

• No decay in CM-trained memory search performance was observed.
• Minimal decay was found in pure visual search performance.
• Significant decline in CM performance was primarily observed in the hybrid memory/visual search conditions.
• Category activation remained stable across retention intervals.

Conclusions:

• Retention of CM-trained search performance is dependent on the task type (memory, visual, or hybrid).
• Memory search performance is highly durable, while hybrid search performance is susceptible to decay.
• These findings reconcile previous conflicting results regarding CM training retention.