CUED RECALL: A PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST OF MEMORY RECALL PERFORMANCE

Mahratun Tanha

North South University

 Abstract

According to theories, the presence of cues help to recall knowledge easily and absence of cues
may result in inability to recollect knowledge. This research tries to test whether or not the
theory is accurate. It was expected that participants would recall more accurately and more
quickly when memory cues were present compared to when they were absent. A participant
was provided with flashcards containing the names of 20 countries (with and without cues) and
was asked to remember the capitals of these countries. The results of this experiment indicates
the theory’s accuracy as the participant took less time while answering the ones with cue.
 CUED RECALL: A PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST OF MEMORY RECALL PERFORMANCE

Memory refers to the psychological processes of accumulating, storing,

maintaining, and subsequently retrieving information. Encoding, storage, and
retrieval are the three primary activities that comprise memory. Memory
capability comprises the ability to store and retrieve information. This method is
imperfect, however. People occasionally forget or misremember things. In other
circumstances, incorrect encoding prevents the initial storage of data in memory.
Retrieval, an essential aspect of memory, effectively places stored information
and brings it to conscious awareness when needed. In other words, specific
information from long-term memory storage is extracted throughout the retrieval
process. Frequently, retrieval cues essentially serve as guides when attempting to
retrieve information from long-term memory (Ackerman, 1987).
Memory cues are objects or events that can be utilized to initiate an action or
stimulate a memory of that action. The cued recall involves retrieving information
from long-term memory with the aid of cues or other prompts. Any external
stimuli with a connection to the data that has to be remembered (the goal) can
serve as a cue (Aue, Criss, & Fischetti, 2012). Examples include words, phrases,
incomplete images, symbols inside words, and many more. These cues can be
unintentional, such as a product at the grocery that prompts us to remember
something we did not include on our grocery list, or they can be something we
intentionally set up beforehand, like a phone reminder. The current paper's main
goal was to look into whether cues help to remind faster and more accurately.
The experiment that has been done here on a 21-year-old girl, illustrates that
cued materials assist in recalling things comparatively more quickly than non-cued
materials.
 Methods
Participants
A 21 years old adult female took part in this experiment. She is an undergraduate
student at North South University. She was chosen as she is a friend of the
experimenter. The participant was offered a cup of coffee during the experiment.
Materials
Twenty flashcards containing twenty country names were provided. Cards with
even numbers had cues; the others (odd-number cards) did not. A mobile phone
stopwatch determined the time to answer each card. The softcopy of the
flashcards is given below:
Procedure
The procedure started by taking the consent of the participant through a consent
form. Then one card was provided at a time to the participant. She was asked to
name the capitals of the countries written on each card. The cards with even
numbers had the cues, and the cards with odd numbers had no cues. The time
she took to remember each capital was recorded separately. It was done to
compare the average recall time between cued cards and non-cued cards. The
participant was debriefed after the experiment was done.

Results
The number of correct recall and response times in the presence and absence of
cues is given below:
Correct Answer (cued): 09 out of 10.
Correct Answer (non-cued): 05 out of 10.
Average Response Time (cued): (5+11+2+5+11+2+4+4.5+6+3)/10 = 5.35
Average Response Time (non-cued): (7+6+28+15+2+1.5+8+3+5+2)/10 = 7.75
There were 10 cued flashcards and 10 non-cued flashcards. The response times
for cued flashcards are added and divided by ten to find out the average response
time. The same has been done with the non-cued ones. The average response
time is calculated to compare two situations (cued and non-cued).
 Discussion

From the results, it is evident that cued recall is more accurate and faster than
non-cued recall. The purpose of this experiment was to analyze the difference
between cued and non-cued recall. The participant was able to answer 9 out of 10
questions that had cues. But she only answered 5 out of 10 questions which had
no cues. This shows that cues help to remember something more correctly. The
average response time for cued cards is less than that for non-cued cards.
This experiment clearly supports the hypothesis that cues help an individual to
recall something quicker and almost correct. Cued recall is an absolutely stunning
process of remembering small and significant things in daily life. Cued recall ought
to be helpful for neuropsychological assessments of enduring memory and
learning capacity. The process of cued recall helps in bringing up details from
long-term memory. Cues can be any external stimuli that have a connection to
the information that has to be remembered (the target), including words,
sentences, incomplete images, letters inside words, and many more (Buschke,
1984). A piece of information that was stored in memory long ago, could be
difficult to remember when needed. Cues do not always have to be specific or
given. Ambiguous cues might help in situations when an individual is unable to
recall something (Fey et al,2016).
There were some limitations in implementing the experiment. The stopwatch may
have been paused only a few times, which has caused slight differences in the
answer sheet. The average response time could have been one or two seconds
more or less. The experimenter has forgotten to record the time on the data
sheet one or two times. This may have caused changes in results too. However,
the current result supports the hypothesis regardless of the limitations.

Cues could be both external. Here in this experiment, external cues have been
used to perform the experiment. However, there are also internal cues. For
example, in order to cue retrieval of a target, individuals may be asked to consider
what they were thinking, their emotions, or the spatiotemporal context at the
moment they met it (Hingham & Guzel, 2012). The performance of recall with
signals that were congruent with the encoding of the target was superior to that
of free recall (Roediger & Payne, 1983). Cued recall is intended to provide a
clearer differentiation between memory impairments caused by
contemporaneous variables and those caused by the neurodegenerative process.
Cued recall process helps patients who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In
the early identification of Alzheimer's disease, a cued recall test that eliminates
the ceiling effect is at least as effective as delayed-free recall tests (Ivanoiu et al.
2005).

This experiment was meant to find out whether theories about the cued recall are
correct or not. Memory-stored information inhibits the recall of other memory-
stored information (Feldman, 2018). Nonetheless, cues help recall a piece of
information from the brain faster and quicker. Through this experiment, it can be
concluded that the hypothesis about the cued recall has been proven to be true.