Day 99 of 120 Memory Difficulty 6/10
Schoolroom Spanish settles onto a 50-year permastore plateau
Quick answer
Schoolroom Spanish settles onto a 50-year permastore plateau. Today's question (Permastore and very-long-term retention) asks about a finding from Bahrick, H. P. in 1984. The correct option is A stable plateau ("permastore") of retained vocabulary lasting 25–50 years — full explanation, primary source, and glossary cross-links below.
Today's question
Bahrick (1984) tested adults on Spanish vocabulary they had learned in school decades earlier. Beyond the steepest forgetting curve, what did he find?
Reveal the answer and explanation
Correct: B — A stable plateau ("permastore") of retained vocabulary lasting 25–50 years
Across thousands of former Spanish learners spanning 1 to 50 years since the original course, Bahrick (1984) found that retention dropped quickly during the first 3–6 years, then settled onto a long, nearly flat plateau he called 'permastore'. Material that survived the early forgetting tended to remain accessible for decades, modulated by initial level of training and rehearsal opportunities. Permastore evidence demonstrates that long-term semantic memory is not simply a slowly decaying short-term store but contains material that has effectively cleared a consolidation threshold and become very difficult to forget.
About the source
Bahrick, H. P. (1984). Semantic memory content in permastore: Fifty years of memory for Spanish learned in school. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(1), 1–29.
Every Cognition Bible question cites a primary source — a paper, book chapter, or monograph that exists, that we can point to on Google Scholar, and whose finding the question accurately summarizes. No fabricated authority strings, no name-drops without paper-level grounding.
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