Temporal and interactional effects in short-term storage

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine whether temporal processes affect short-term storage (STS) in the missing scan (Buschke, 1963a), and if so, whether directly (decay) or through effects on interactional processes (interference). This is of interest because the missing scan may more clearly demonstrate processes operating in storage since it requires retention of information about all items presented while at least minimizing retrieval effects.Temporal effects in short-term memory (STM) have been studied by various methods, with conflicting results (

Comparison of associative strength effects in two different paired-associate transfer paradigms.

“…These findings about the distribution of errors of commission according to ordinal position supplement previous findings about their distribution according to serial position in the missing scan (Buschke & Lim, 1967). The occurrence of error gradients indicates that the curvilinear distribution of single errors as a function of position in the ordinal sequence is not due to either nonspecific bias in guessing or sequential scanning in numerical order for readout since, in either case, such errors of commission would be distributed randomly over the ordinal sequence.…”

Two kinds of short-term storage

“…Information about the sheer occurrence of events (regardless of their order) retained for same-order recall itself appears to be order-dependent. Moreover, since the kind of STS used seems to depend on the kind of retrieval anticipated, analysis of short-term storage may require the use of retrieval-free methods (Buschke & Lim, 1967).…”

Temporal factors influencing performance in the missing scan paradigm

“…In order to obtain information concerning those conditions under which an ordinal strategy would and would not obtain, input and response speeds were manipulated orthogonally. Since an effective ordinal strategy would seem to demand an ongoing reorganization of the items as they are presented, it was predicted that slow input would permit such a strategy but fast input would preclude it (Buschke & Lim, 1967). It was further hypothesized that reasonable response speed limitations should not substantially hinder the operation of an ordinal strategy, but should have a major impact on those conditions not permitting the material to be reorganized during presentation.…”

“…First, the present study made use of a 10-item set instead of the 13-item set usually employed. In this regard, it has been established (e.g., Buschke & Lim, 1967) that items presented more recently tend to be given less often as errors. Such a recency effect would account for a greater proportion of items in a 10than in a 13-item list, and might tend to obscure the operation of an ordinal strategy.…”