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Reaction time (RT) and response accuracy depend on the remoteness. in terms of time and number of intervening trials. of a previous response which serves as the stimulus for a present response. ProblelDMore than a single correct response was associated with each stimulus in a recent study (Morin & Forrin. 1963) of response equivocation and RT. As each stimulus occurred S attempted to select ran d 0 m I y from among the appropriate response alternatives. Mean RT with 4 stimuli and 2 responses per stimulus was approximately ·.25 sec. slower than with 2 stimuli and4 responses per stimulus.One suggested interpretation of the above result was that the former condition placed a greater tax on short term memory. Attempts to randomize responses to a particular stimulus probably involve efforts to'recall previous responses to that stimulus (Tune. 1964). With 4 stimuli the number of trials intervening between the occurrence of a stimulus and its recurrence would. on the average. be greater than ~ith only 2 possible stimuli. Hence the condition with 4 stimuli not only introduced greater opportunities for retroactive effects from intervening responses to other stimuli. but also created a situation in which the information to be recalled was. on the average. temporally more remote in memory. If it is reasonable that the time required to find an item in memory depends on its remoteness (both in terms of time and the number of items intervening since storage), the results of the response equivocation study would be understandable. The present investigation examined the influence of stimulus remoteness upon RT and response accuracy for a task in which performance clearly depended upon memory. MethodThe Ss were 20 males from an introductory class in psychology at Kent state University. All Ss were tested individually and served in both experimental conditions. Stimuli were projected from the rear on to a milk glass screen by a Kodak Carousel slide projector. Images were approximately 3 in x 3 in and were viewed from 2 ft. RT was measured by a Hewlett-Packard electronic counter and was printed on paper tape by a Hewlett-Packard digital recorder. A verbal response by S activated the voice key. terminated the projected image and initiated the automatic slide changing operation. The interstimulus interval was. 7 sec. Verbal responses of S were recorded by E.Two responses were associated with each of the four simple geometric figures which served as stimuli Psychon. Sci., 1964, Vol. 1. Robert E. Morin and Andrew Koniek KENT STATE UNIVERSITY(circle-beet. ball; square-box. book;trianglebarb. blade; cross-badge. brace). The S learned the associations to a criterion of errorless performance during a pretraining period.The first time a stimulus appeared within a sequence S responded with either of the two associated words. Thereafter the correct response was alwaysthe word not g i v e n the last time the same stimulus shape was presented. To correctly alternate responses without guessing. it was necessary that S recall his last re...