The free list, also written “freelist”, or “free recall”, is an ethnographic method that characterizes the local knowledge of a population about a given cultural domain. However, there is still much to elucidate about the variables that can influence the number of items that participants cite using this technique. This study applied a casual-comparative experimental design to analyze whether 3 months’ time, age, and external stimuli influence the similarity of plant free lists applied at different times. Data was collected from 103 farmers from the rural community Alto dos Canutos, in the municipality of Picos, Piauí state, Brazil. Two free lists were conducted at two different times, with an interval of three months between them. Subsequently, the similarity between the first and second free lists of each participant was calculated using the Jaccard Similarity Index. The generalized linear model (GLM) with binomial errors and stepwise approach was used to analyze the effects of age and external stimuli on information collection when comparing free lists applied at different times. Participants’ age influenced the information that the free lists collected, demonstrating that the older the participants, the lower the similarity among the free lists. Among the external stimuli analyzed, only the presence of third parties influenced the content of the free lists at the time of the interview. However, contrary to expectations, third-party presence positively influenced the similarity of the lists. The results show that the studied variables age and third-party presence can influence the capture of knowledge. These findings warrant future research into the influences’ causes and their potential mitigation, e.g., by isolation or by breaking the medicinal plant domain into focused sub-domains and conducting simpler, successive free-lists, which can mitigate memory issues.

中文翻译：

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什么会干扰进行免费名单？种族植物学比较实验

自由清单，也称为“自由清单”或“自由召回”，是一种人种志方法，其特征是表征人口对特定文化领域的本地知识。但是，对于可能影响参与者使用此技术引用的项目数量的变量，还有很多要阐明的地方。这项研究采用了休闲比较实验设计来分析3个月的时间，年龄和外部刺激是否会影响在不同时间应用的无植物名单的相似性。数据来自巴西皮奥伊州皮科斯市农村社区Alto dos Canutos的103位农民。在两个不同的时间进行了两次免费列表，两次间隔三个月。后来，使用Jaccard相似性指数计算每个参与者的第一和第二个免费列表之间的相似性。当比较不同时间应用的自由列表时，使用具有二项式误差和逐步方法的广义线性模型（GLM）分析年龄和外部刺激对信息收集的影响。参与者的年龄影响了自由列表收集的信息，表明参与者年龄越大，自由列表之间的相似性越低。在分析的外部刺激中，只有第三方的存在影响了采访时自由名单的内容。但是，与预期相反，第三方的存在对列表的相似性产生了积极影响。结果表明，年龄和第三方存在的研究变量可以影响知识的获取。这些发现保证了对影响原因及其潜在缓解措施的未来研究，例如，通过隔离或将药用植物域划分为重点子域，并进行更简单的连续自由列表来减轻记忆问题。