How similar is the effect of cueing in amnesics and in normal subjects following forgetting?

Verbal recognition and cued recall were compared in normal subjects after intervals of 15 minutes, one week and six weeks. When given cues subjects were encouraged to produce as many appropriate words as possible in a 30 second period and rate the words for familiarity. Guessing controls were used and subjects' skill at generating words without a memory component was also assessed. The results confirmed others in showing that cued recall declines more slowly over time than recognition. Further, although subjects cued well at six weeks they did not feel correctly cued words to be familiar. A similar effect has been noted with amnesic cueing. Also, at the six week interval, correct words tended to be generated later than after the shorter intervals, and there was a correlation between cued recall and cueing skill in general. These findings suggest that normal subjects who have largely forgotten and, probably, also amnesics use cues differently from normal subjects who are tested immediately after learning.