While many memory disorders occur with normal rates of forgetting, an accelerated rate of long-term forgetting (ALF) may occur, sometimes in the absence of a learning deficit. Detecting ALF presents a problem as it is desirable that the learned material is re-tested after each of several delays. This may result in earlier retrievals confounding later tests, with evidence suggesting that both positive and negative interaction can occur between successive tests. An earlier study (Baddeley et al., 2019) tested cued recall of a series of four crimes or four visual scenes by probing a different sample of features from all four crimes/scenes at each delay. Even though no question was asked twice, the interpolated tests markedly reduced the rate of forgetting. We suggest that this decelerated forgetting effect may result from the retrieval of probed features activating other associated features within that episode, hence facilitating their recall on subsequent tests. If so, the effect should be removed when only single and separate episodes, or individual items, are tested at each delay. We test this by probing a separate episode at each delay (Experiment 1), or by replacing integrated episodes with recognition memory for isolated words (Experiments 2 and 3) or visual scenes (Experiments 4 and 5). As predicted, we find no reduction in the rate of forgetting, in contrast to our earlier studies. The theoretical and clinical implications of our results are discussed. We conclude that the previously developed Crimes and Four Doors Tests (Baddeley et al., 2019) and the present single item recognition tests are complementary and are both likely to be necessary to ensure the reliable detection of ALF.

虽然许多记忆障碍以正常的遗忘率发生，但长期遗忘 (ALF) 的加速率可能会发生，有时在没有学习缺陷的情况下。检测 ALF 存在一个问题，因为需要在多次延迟后重新测试学习材料。这可能会导致较早的检索混淆后来的测试，有证据表明在连续测试之间可能发生正面和负面的相互作用。较早的一项研究（Baddeley 等人，2019 年）通过在每次延迟时从所有四个犯罪/场景中探测不同的特征样本来测试对一系列四个犯罪或四个视觉场景的线索回忆。即使没有问过两次问题，插值测试也显着降低了遗忘率。我们认为，这种减速的遗忘效应可能是由于检索探测特征激活了该情节中的其他相关特征，从而促进了他们在后续测试中的回忆。如果是这样，则在每次延迟仅测试单个和单独的情节或单个项目时，应消除该影响。我们通过在每个延迟（实验 1）中探测一个单独的情节来测试这一点，或者通过用对孤立词（实验 2 和 3）或视觉场景（实验 4 和 5）的识别记忆替换集成情节来测试这一点。正如预测的那样，与我们早期的研究相比，我们发现遗忘率没有降低。讨论了我们结果的理论和临床意义。我们得出结论，先前开发的犯罪和四门测试（Baddeley 等人，