Semantic processing and recall improvement of EMR adolescents

Semantic processing, in the form of stories linking to-be-remembered words, was compared with cumulative rehearsal in a free-recall task. Educable mentally retarded adolescents were either taught to generate a story, provided with a story, taught to rehearse cumulatively, or assigned to no-strategy control groups. Semantic-processing subjects showed better recall at original learning and, to a lesser extent, at a 20-week retention test. Results were discussed with reference to the mechanism of recall improvement and the generalizability of semantic training to a diversity of tasks.