Free and cued selective reminding and selective reminding in the elderly

Free and Cued Selective Reminding (FCSR) differs from Selective Reminding (SR) because of a study procedure which controls cognitive processing and a reminding procedure which allows for cued recall. Performance on FCSR and SR was compared in two studies to determine which test produces better recall and to identify the factors that account for the superior recall. When the tests were administered to very elderly normal subjects using the standard clinical protocol, twice as many words were retrieved from long-term memory in FCSR than SR. The second experiment, which manipulated study and reminding conditions in a younger sample of normal elderly, suggests that the improvement in free recall was due to the study procedure and the method of reminding.