Readings in Human Memory John M. Gardiner in OF Peat METHUEN & CO LTD 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EEFirst published in 1976 By Methuen & Co Ltd 11 New Feter Lane, London ECAP 4EE Printed in Canada By Web Offset Publications Don Mills, Ontario Egitorial matter John M, Gardiner 1976 BF 371 ISBN 0.416 79210 5andback) ISBN 0 416 792200 (paperback) This book is available in both hardbound and paperback editions. The paperback edition is Sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, by lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding fr cover other than that in which itis published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.Contents Acknowledgements General introduction PART 1 TWO-STORE MODELS OF MEMORY Introduction N.C. WAUGH and D. A. NORMAN (1965) Primary memory R. C. ATKINSON and R. M. SHIFFRIN (1968) Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes M. GLANZER and A. R. CUNITZ (1966) Two storage mechanisms in free recall FI. M. CRAIK (1970) ‘The fate of primary memory items in free recall W. KINTSCH and H. BUSCHKE (1969) Homophones and synonyms in short-term memory H.G. SHULMAN (1970) Encoding and retention of semantic and phonemic information in short-term memory D. RUNDUS (1971) Analysis of rehearsal processes in fee recall PART 2 DIMENSIONS OF ENCODING Introduction M. I. POSNER, S. J. BOIES, W. H. EICHELMAN and R. L. TAYLOR (1969) Retention of visual and name codes of single letters N. E. A. KROLL, T. PARKS, S. R. PARKINSON, S. L. BIEBER and A. L. JOHNSON (1970) Short-term memory while shadowing: recall of visually and aurally presented letters 25 58 4 ” 10s psvi Contents 10 D. D. WICKENS (1970) Encoding categories of words: an empirical approach to meaning LM, ANISFELD and M. KNAPP (1968) Association, synonymity and directionality in fase recogaition 12. §. HYDE and J. J. JENKINS (1969) Differential effects of incidental tasks on the organization of recall of a list of highly associated words 13 EB. TULVING and $. OSLER (1968) Effectiveness of retrieval cues in memory for words IN, J, SLAMECKA (1968) ‘An examination of trace storage in free recall Introduction 15 E, TULVING (1966) ‘Subjective organization and effects of repetition in multi-tial free-recall learning 16 E, TULVING and Z. PEARLSTONE (1966) Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words 17 M. 4. A. HOWE (1970) Repeated presentation and recall of meaningful prose 18 J. D. BRANSFORD, J. R. BARCLAY and J. J. FRANKS (1972) Sentence memory: a constructive versus interpretive approach 19 A.M. COLLINS and M. R, QUILLIAN (1969) Retrieval time from semantic memory 20 B. SCHAEFFER and R, WALLACE (1970) ‘The comparison of word meanings 21 R. BROWN and D. MCNEILL (1966) ‘The ‘tip-of-the-tongue™ phenomenon sndex 130 145 184 164 m Iss 189 194 208 210 226 234 243 20Acknowledgements For permission to reprint the rings in this book, the editor and publishers thank the following sources; Reading 1 Reading 2 Reading 3 Reading 4 Reading 5 Reading 6 Reading 7 Reading 8 Reading 9 Reading 10 Reading 11 Reading 12 Reading 13 Reading 14 Reading 15 Reading 16 Reading 17 Reading 18 Reading 19) Reading 20 Reading 21 American Psychological Association and Nancy C. Waugh ‘Academic Press, Richard C. Atkinson and Richard M. Shilfin ‘Academie Press and Murray Glanzer ‘Academic Press and Fergus IM. Craik American Psychological Association and Walter Kintsch ‘Academic Press and Harvey G. Shulman ‘American Psychological Association and Dewey Rundus ‘American Psychological Association and Michael I. Posner ‘American Psychological Association and Neal E.A. Kroll ‘American Psychological Association and Delos D. Wickens American Psychological Association and Moshe Anisfeld American Psychological Association and James J. Jenkins ‘American Psychological Association and Endel Tulving ‘American Psychological Association and Norman J. Slamecks ‘Academic Press and Ende! Tulving Academic Press and Endel Tulving American Psychological Association and Michael J.A, Howe ‘Academie Press and John D. Bransford ‘Academie Press and Allan M. Collins ‘American Psychological Association and! Benson Schaeffer ‘Academie Press and Roger BrownGeneral introduction ‘The study of memory processes has undergone a profound transformation during the last ten to fifteen years. During this time, we have witnessed the partial replacement of one general theoretical structure by another. At present, there is no single accepted view Which spans the entire field. We are, perhaps, in the midst of what Kun (1970) has termed a paradigm shift. This shift is due largely to the wholesale importation of information-processing concepts from the field of computer science, Traditional as- sociationism, with its stimulus— response orientation, no longer dominates the study of memory processes. ‘This transformation manifests itself in several ways. I is reflected inthe inereasing usage of the term ‘memory’ itself, rather than the more traditional label “verbal learn- ing’. Itis reflected in the terminology and language employed in the journals. Twenty years ago words such as storage, buffer, code, capacity search, and retrieval would have ‘conveyed litle tthe student of memory processes, The journals then were crowded With {erms such as acquisition, retention, interference, and response competition, However, ‘more is involved than the simple exchange of one set of verbal labels for another. In essence, what has changed is the ideational framework, or set of orienting attitudes, Which govern the direction and Flavour of research in the area ‘Thus questions and problems which seem of central relevance to the traditional associationist may have litle or no relevance to the information-processing theorist New questions, new problems, take their place. Hence the adoption ofthe information: processing view of memory has led to the discovery of a wide variety of previously ‘unknown phenomeng, to the introduction of a new range of experimental techniques, and to a considerable broadening in the scope of what appear to be the relevant and important theoretical issues would be misleading to imply, however, that the more traditional associationist approach has undergone anything like a total eclipse. As Tulving and Madigan (1970) point out in their trenchant review, the two ‘sub-cultures’ coexist side by side. Nor should it be imagined thatthe ‘conflict’ between the two approaches is ofthe kind which permits any empirical or theoretical resolution oftheir differences. While there may well be areas in which some ‘dialogue’ between the two can be useful, essentially the differences are a matter of strategy, reflecting considerations as to which general approach is likely t0 be of greater heuristic value in furthering our understanding of memory processes. ‘This set of readings is concemed exclusively with the fruits of the information: processing approach. The readings have been grouped, somewhat arbitrarily, under three major headings: two-store models of memory; dimensions of encoding: organiza- tion and semantic memory. The rationale behind this division is the notion that these2 General introduction, sections reflect some of the most umportant “growth areas" of esearch in human nemory ‘during the last ten or so years. Separate introductions are provided for each ofthe three parts, and it is hoped that the articles selected will prove a useful basis for semirars and tutorial teaching, as well as for privat study. To this end, the atiles within eachsection fare, in many cas, grouped in «wos or threes centeing around faiely closely related topics. Inall butone ease (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) the articles are reprintedhere in their entirety, as published originally by the authors Tris book is intended also to be a companion volume to Peter Hertot's Attributes of ‘Memory (1974), The main purpose of Hertiot's text isto provide second and thin! year undergraduate students with an up-to-date account of those recent developments in ‘memory research which stem from the information-processing approach, The present volume permits the student to consult, without the necessity of conducting Fis own * search’ throughthe journals, a selection ofthe original sources which Herriot discussed in his text. Broadly speaking, while Herriot’s account focuses mainly on the study of coding processes, the readings give greater weight to two-store models of memory Herriotdiscusses the readingsin Part | in chapters | and 7;those in Part 2in chapters 2,3, and 4; those in Part 3 in chapters $ and 6. Readings in Human Memory was initiated by Peter Herriot and Lam grateful tohim for hisadvice and encouragement throughout the preparation ofthe book. [am indebyed also to Grant Mcintyre for smoothing the path to publication, and to Mary Keme for secretarial assistance. Finally, I thank those whose co-operation made this book possi- ble: the authors and original publishers ofthe articles reproduced bere. References ATKINSON, R.C. and SHIFFRIN, &.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its ‘control processes, In KW. Spence and J.T. Spence (eds.) The Psychclogy of Learning and Motivation 2 New York: Academic Press eReior, p. (1974) Attributes of Memory London: Methuen. KUHN, Ts. (1970)The Structure of Scienific Revolutions (2nd ed.) Chicago: University Press. TULVING, E. and MADIGAN, 5.4. (1970) Memory and verbal leaming. Annual Review of Psychology 21: 437-84, 1974PART 1 Two-store models of memoryIntroduction ‘A major focus of research in human memory during the last tenor so years has been the construction of models of memory based largely on an analogy with computer informa- tion processing, Central to such models isthe division of memory into several stages of processing, or separate ‘stores’. Following sensory registration, two such stores have been commonly distinguished, the short-term siore, or primary memory, and the long-term store, or secondary memory. Iti important to note that these terms refer to theoretical constructs and not tothe time at which memory is tested. Thus short-term memory performance may reflect the operation of both short and long-term memory stores. Within this framework, research has been concentrated on defining the retention characteristics of each store, the format or code in which information is held in each store, and how information i transferred from one store to another. One of the frst full descriptions of memory processing which drew heavily on the computer analogy, and hich distinguished between sensory, short-term, and long-term stages in the memory system, was put forward by Broadbent (1958). Since then there hus been a spate of broadly similar models, the essential characteristics of which were well described by “Mundock (1967) asthe “modal” model. Among the best known and most influential of ‘wo-store models are those of Waugh and Norman (Reading I) and Atkinson and Shiffrin (Reading 2) ‘The two-store or dichotomous view of memory processing has not gone without its general crties. Melton (1963), Murdock (1972), and Tulving (1968) are among those ‘who have argued that the available evidence is equally compatible witha unitary view of ‘memory. The adequacy ofthe evidence adduced in support ofthe two-store position has also been challenged in recent critiques by Craik and Lockhart (1972) and Wickelgren 973), ‘Three of the strongest lines of evidence which favour the two-store position come from studies of serial position effets in free recall, studies of acoustic and semantic coding, and certain clinical data which show a clearly dichotomous breakdown in ‘memory performance. These lines of evidence are reviewed in chapter 7 of Herriot's Attributes of Memory (1974). ‘The papers by Glanzer and Cunitz (Reading 3) and Craik (Reading 4) are both concemed with serial position effects in free recall. In free recall it has been widely accepted that the last few items in the lst are retrieve from the short-term store and that the earlier items in thelist are retrieved from the long-term store. Thisconclusion follows from evidence which indicates that a number of variables, such as presentation rate, time of test, and wond frequency, have differential effec's on the serial postion curve.6 | Two-store models of memory Glanzer and Cunitz, for example, found that if recall is delayed by following list presentation with a rehearsal preventing task, then the superior recall of the last few items inthe list—the recency effect —was eliminated. Recall of earlier items i thelist, \Was not affected, Even more dramatically, Craik found that if an unexpected final recall, test followed a series of immediate free recall trials, recency items, though bestrecalled fon the immediate test, were recalled least well subsequently, While such evidence provides compelling support for the wo-store position, itis also possible t acount for ‘these results Without invoking the postulate of two storage mechanisms. Jaceoby and Barz (1972), forexample, argue that an interpretation in terms ofthe different encoding strategies adopted by subjects in order to meet the task requirements may be more appropriate Earlier studies by Conrad (1964) and Baddeley (1966 a; 1966 b) strongly stzgested that whereas in the long-term store information is coded semantically, the short-term sore utilized a phonemic form of coding, The paper by Kintsch and Buschke (Reading 5) ‘exploits the Waugh-Norman probe procedure to show that secondary memory was impaired by serntic similarity, whereas primary memory was impaired by acoustic similarity. Kintsch and Buschke followed eatlier similar studies by examining confusion errors following either semantic or acoustic similarity. Unlike Shulman’s paradigm (Reading 6), the task does not require a particular form of encoding. Shulman’s results suggest that the short-term store may utilize semantic coding iby so doing performance inthe ask is optimized, Further evidence has recently accumulated which suggest that the short-term slore may hold a variety of codes (e.g. Glanzer, Koppenaal, and Nelson, 1972) and coding differences no longer seem to be valid grounds for distinguishing short-term and long-term stores. ‘The final pager in this section, by Rundus, reports a series of studies on rehearsal processes in free recall. The notion of rehearsal as the process whereby items in ‘Short-term storeare transferred into long-term store is common to all two:store formula tions. Rundus's data show clearly that subjects do not rehearse in a simple mechanical fashion, While sarlier models (e.g. Waugh and Norman) focused on the ‘amount’ of rehearsal, thereis now good evidence that neither the length of time an item stays inthe short-term store, nor the number of times an item is repeated, determine how well twill be registered in secondary memory (e.g. Craik and Watkins, 1973). The Focus now ison type of rchearsi, rather than amount, and on the encoding strategies which subjects Ltlize in meeting various task requirements. Within the to-store position, perhaps the most general trend over the last few years has been an increasing emphasis on process” rather than ‘structural’ aspects ofthe modal ‘model. This reflects a shift away from interest in the basic limitations ofthe memory system towards: capabilites, in terms ofthe strategies which subjects utilize ins typical ‘memory task. The kinds of task which have been used in the laboratory in themselves ‘may lead to an overestimate of structural limitations and an underestimate of potential capability, in tems of coding strategy. A danger in box models is that we may tend to think of the model in too itera a fashion, We may tend to think that subjects ean only process 1o-he-remembered material through the "box sequence’. Evidence which sug {gests that information may be entered directly into the long-term store, without passing through the shee-term store, has been presented by Shallice and Warrington (1970) Current views of the short-term store emphasize control processes rather more than structural limitaions, and identify the short-term store with the information to which the subject is currently atending. Such information may include information retrieved fomIntroduction 7 the long-term store, and may be held ina variety of codes, depending on task constraints and task requirements. References BADDELEY, A.D. (1966 2) Te influence of acoustic and semantic similarity on long-term, memory for word sequences, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 18: 302.9. BADDELEY, A.D. (1966 b) Short-term memory for word sequences as a function of acoustic, semantic and formal similarity. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 18: 3625. BROADBENT, D.t, (1958) Perception and Communication London: Pergamon Press ‘CONRAD, 8. (1964) Acoustic confusions in immediate memory. British Journal of Psychology 88: 75-8, CRAIK, PALM. and LOCKHART, R.S. (1972) Levels of processing: A framework for ‘memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior M1: 671-84. (CRAIK, FAM. and WATKINS, M.J. (1973) The role of rehearsal in short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 12: 599-607. LANZER, M., KOPPENAAL, L., and NELSON, #. (1972) Elfects of relations between ‘word on short-term storage and long-term storage. Jowrnal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11: 403-6. sAccOBY. L.A. and BARZ, W.H. (1972) Rehearsal and transfer to LTM. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11: 561-5. MELTON, A.W. (1963) Implications of short-term memory for a general theory of ‘memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 2: 1-21 MURDOCK. 8.8. (1967) Revent developments in short-term memory. British Journal of Psychology 88: 421-33, MURDOCK, B.A. (1972) Short-term memory. In G.H. Bower. (ed.) The Psychology of Learning and Motivation § New York: Academic Press. SHALLICE, T-, and WARRINGTON, E.x. (1970) Independent functioning of verbal mem- ory Stores: A neurophysiological study. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 22: 261-73, ‘TULVING, E. (1968) Theoretical issues in free recall, In T-R. Dixon and D.L.. Horton (eds.) Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice-Hall, WICKELGREN, W.A. (1973) The long and the short of memory. Psychological Bulletin 80: 425-38.READING 1 N.C. Waugh and D.A. Norman Primary memory Reprinted from Psychological Review (1965) 72 (2):89-104, ‘A model for short-term memory ie described and evaluated. A variety ‘of experimental data are shown to be consistent with the following Statements. (a). Unrebearsed verbal stimuli tend to be quickly fore sotten because they are interfered with by later items in a series and fot because their traces decay in time. (b) Rehearsal may transfer an item from a very limited primary memory store to a larger and more stable secondary store, (c) A recently perceived item may be re- tained in both stores atthe same time. "The properties of these 2 Independent memory systems can be separated by experimental and analytical methods It is a well-established fact that the longest series of unrelated digits, let ters, or words that a person can recall verbatim after one presentation seldom exceeds 10 items. It is also true, how- ever, that one can nearly always'recall the most recent item ina series, no matter how long the series—but only if this item may be recalled immedi- ately, or if it may be rehearsed during the interval between its presentation and recall. Otherwise itis very likely to be lost. If we may assume that attending to a current item precludes reviewing a prior one, we can say that the span of immediate memory must hie limited in large patt by our inability to rehease, and hence retain, the early items in a Sequence while attempting to store the later ones, Our limited mem= ory span would then be but one mani- festation of our general inability to think about two things at the same time, Why should an wnrehearsed item in a list be forgotten so swiftly? Is its physiological trace in some sense writ ten over by the traces of the items that follow it? Or does this trace sim- ply decay within a brief interval, re- gardless of how that interval is filled ? Tradition, in the guise of interference theory, favors the first explanation (McGeoch, 1932; Postman, 1961), al- ‘though some psychologists ‘now think that new memory traces must fade autonomously in time (Brown, 1958; Conrad, 1957; Hebb, 1949).' Until nov, no one has reported any data which clearly contradict either of these jdeas. In fact, when we first consid~ cred the problem of the instability of recent memory traces, we thought it entirely possible that both decay and interference operate over brief reten- tion intervals to produce forgetting, and we therefore designed an experi- ment to weigh their respective effects,10 Two-store models of memory ‘The results of this experiment were wn- expectedly straightforward—and seem- ingly inconsistent with certain other existing data on immediate retention We have been able, however, to for- malate a simple quantitative model which relates our results to those re- ported by other investigators. What egan as an attempt to evaluate two very general hypotheses about the for- getting of recent events has therefore resulted in a specific theory of short- term memory. ‘We shall deserihe our experiment in Section T below. A major portion Of this paper, Section IT, will be con- cerned with the description and appli- cation of our model, In Section ITT we shall discuss this model in relation to the general question of whether short- and” long-term retention represent distinguishably different psychological processes. I. Paose-Dicrr Exrernent Our’ experiment vas designed to. meas swe the recall of 3 minimally rehearsed ‘verbal tem as a joint function of the nam ber of seconds andthe number of other items following its presentation. ‘The general pro- cedure was as follows, List of 16 single ‘igits were ‘prepared with the fd ‘of a Standard table of random numbers, under the Constraint that no digit should appear more than twice in a row. “The fast digit in every Tie was ene that ad occurred exactly once ‘efor, in Position 3,5, 7,9, 10, 1, 12,13 14,""On is second appearance, this “probe igi was a eve for the recall of the digit that had followed it inially, "The lists were recorded on two magnetic tapes; they were read in a monotone voice by'a' male Speaker at a constant rate of clther one of four digits per second. Each Of the. nine possible. prabe-digt postions Was tested 10°times, “The two. tapes ac ‘ondingly contained 90 tet list (pus 8 prac. lice lists) apiece, all read st the same rate. ‘The last digit in every Ist, she probe-digit, was accompanied by a high-fequeney tone to aid the subject in detecting. the end of thelist. "The postin ofthe inital presenta- tion of the probe varied randomly from list to list on each of the two tape. ‘The subject's task was to write down the digit that had followed. the probe digit in the Hist guasing if he ail sof know. Since the probedigit was unique in Postons through 15, there was only one possible cor- ect-answer on any trial.” Every subject, Iistened to thelist through earphones for a total of 12 experimental sessions, 6 with each tape, alternating between fast and slow list ‘The’ fest session ender each condition and the first ight Tiss listened to in each ses. fon were considered to be practise st, = known to the subject, were not scored "The subjects recived explicit instroctions to control rehearsal by “thinking only of the last digit you have heard and never of any of the earlier ones!" ‘These instructions were repeated before the second session, and cecasional reminders were given throughout the course ofthe experiment. Thus, the sub jects were to rchearse every item during the interitem interral immediately following i ‘Our instructions were aot designed to ela nate the rehearsal of single items a such, bt. rather to. eliminate the rehearsal of routs of digits. The experiment actualy {ested the retention of a digit pry the probecdigt and its successor.” The feten= om ofthis air shold be independent ofthe Intertem interval, i the instetons to avoid grouping were ‘followed faithfully. We Froped, in effet, to test the retention of tunehearsed pairs of digits under two rates Of presentation ‘The subjects were four Harvard under rratiutes thee males and ene female ‘The responses were scored and analyzed to yield a serial position curve for each rate of Dresetaton, relating the relative frequency fof an item's correct recall to its distance ‘rom the end of the li. A comparison of the wo functions allows us to acess the eela- tive effects of decay and. interference on ‘hortterm forgetting, according to the fol- Towing line of reasoning. Consider the recall of Ttem 1 from the end of the line. If the Tist was read at the rate of one item per second, then # items would have intervened, fnd 1 seconds would have elapsed between the tine the subject heard dhe item andthe time he attempted to recall it. (We count the second appearance of the probecdigit as fan intervening event) If the items were ead at the rate of four per second, on the ‘other hand, then only i/4, rather ‘than Seconds would have elapsed between the 0c. Scorence of Item fand the subjects attemptto recall it. A. total of {other items would, ‘of course, still have intervened between these fo events. Therefore, if the probability of fecalling Tem i from the end Of a slow Est were identical with the probability of recal- Sng Item 4 feom a fast Hist, we coald con clude that recent memory traces decay in time, independently of one another. Con ‘versely, if the probability of recalling Fem {vere invariant with rate of presentation, we ‘ould conclude that rapid forgeting is caused Primarily by retroactive interference The results of the experiment are shown in Figure 1. ‘The scores for the individual subjects are presented in Figures 1A and 1B. The pooled data, corrected for guessing, are shown in Figure 1C.1 Each point in Figures 1A and 1B is based on $0 observations; each point in Figure 1C, on 200. It is evident that there are consistent dif ferences among subjects, but little in- teraction between subjects and serial positions, Furthermore, although there appears to be a slight interaction be- tween relative frequency of recall, oF R(), and rate of presentation, it is clear that the effect of rate is relatively small compared to the effect of serial position. The main source of for- getting in our experiment was inter ference, ‘The differences between the two sets cof points shown in Figure 1C are not statistically reliable, according to an analysis of variance performed on the number of items recalled by each sub- ject at each value of # under the two rates of presentation (F <1 for the mean square between rates. tested against the interaction between sub- jects and rates). This conclusion is, The response set—the 10. digit—vwas kepown to the subjects and they knew that the probe would not be the same at he test Ait “Thus the probability of correctly guess. ing the answer, 9, was 1/9." A'standaed nor Iatzing technique was sed to eliminate the fects of guessing from the dala, namely, (recall) =p (coreect) = g]/(1 9) Primary memory 11 75 he Ta Nowak oF INTERFERING EMS (i) Fic. 1,_ Results of the probe-isit experi rents (Figures LA and” 1B represent te tention ‘functions for individual sec tunder two rates of presentation; in TC these data have teen" pooed,) borne out by the results of mogorov-Smiirnoy. two-sample test fone for exch value of i, performe: fon the distributions of number of items recalled per subject per session under the two rates of presentation. We have therefore fitted the points shown in Figure 1C with a function that represents the probability of recalling Kol-12 Two-store models of memory Ttem i from the end of a series, esti mated. across rates of presentation. ‘This function decreases monotonically with i, attaining a value of about 07 ati TL, Monet, vox Pancary Mestony When we compared the foregoing results with the typical outcome of the first trial in a standard lstlearning experiment, we found ourselves facing two dilemmas. Tn the first place, it often happens that an item ia a long list is recalled after 10 or 20, or even more, items have followed it. But in our experiment, probability of recall was effectively zero for the eleventh item in fom the end of alist. In the second place, various investigators have shown ‘that’ probability of recall. in- creases with! presentation time (see Posner, 1963), yet in our experiment this probability, for all practial par poses, was independent of the rate at Which the digits were read. Tn seeking for way to account for these diserepancies, it occurred to us that one difference between our ex periment and previous ones in this area Is that we instructed our subjects not to think about any item in a list once the next fad een presented. This instruction to avoid rehearsal i, 19 be sire, rather wnorthodox, although not completely without precedent (Under- ‘wood & Keppel, 1962). In order to tninimize rehearsal, many experiment. crs try to keep the subject so busy that hhe does not have time to rehearse; but wwe think i highly fikely that a vell- ‘motivated suhject who is eying to learn 4 list will rehearse unless, specifically enjoined from doing so. The typical Subjeet's account of how he learns a ist (Bugelski, 1962; Clark, Lansford, & Dallenbach, 1960) bears us out om this point. In’ fact, it is probably very ifienlt not to rehearse: material that one is trying to memorize ‘We shall assume here that rehearsal simply denotes the recall of a verbal jten—either inmuediate or delayed, si- Tent or overt, deliberate or involuntary. The initial pereeption of a stimulus probably must also qualify as a re- hearsal. Obviously a very conspica- fous item or one that relates easily to what we have already Iearned can be retained with @ minimum of conscious effort. We assume that relatively homogeneous or unfamiliar material ‘must, on the other hand, be deliberately rehearsed if it is to be retained. Ac tually, we shall not be concerned here with the exact role of rehearsal in the memorization process. We are simply noting that, in the usual verbal-earn- ing experiment, the likelihood that an item in a homogeneous list will be re- called tends to increase with the amount of time available for its rehearsal. The probe-digit experiment has shown, con- versely, that material which is not re- hearsed is rapidly lost, regardless of the rate at which itis presented. Tt is as though rehearsal transferred a re- cently perceived verbal item from one memory store of very limited capacity to another more commodious store from which it can be retrieved at a much later time, We shall follow James (1890) in using the terms primary and secondary ‘memory (PM and SM) to denote the two stores. James defined these terms introspectively: an event in PM Ins never left consciousness and is part of the psychological present, while an ‘event recalled from SM has been ab- sent from consciousness and belongs to the psychological past, PM is a faith- ful record of events just perceived ; SM is full of gaps and distortions. James helieved that PM extends over a fixed period of time. We propose instead that it encompasses a certain numberof events regardless of the time they take to occur. Our goal is to distine guish operationally between PM and SM on the hasis of the model that we shall now deseribe Consider the general scheme illus trated in Figure 2. Every verbal item that is attended to enters PM. As we hhave seen, the capacity of this system is sharply limited, New items. dis place old ones; displaced items are permanently lost. When an item is rehearsed, however, it remains in PM, and it may enter into SM. We should like to assume, for the sake of sim- plicity, that the probability of its en- tering SM is independent of its posi tion in a series and of the time at which it is rehearsed. Thus, it would not matter whether the item was rehearsed immediately on entering PM or sev- eral seconds Inter: as long as it was in PM, it would make the transition into SM with fixed probability. (Our PM is similar to Broadbent's, 1958, P system. One difference between our two systems is that ours relates re- hhearsal to longer term storage, whereas his does not.) Finally, we shall assume that re- sponse-produced interference has the same effect on an item in PM as does stimulus-produced interference. That the probability that an item in PM will be recalled depends upon (a) hhow many new items have been per- ceived plus (5) how many old ones hhave heen recalled between its presen- tation and attempted recall. Thus, if an. item appears. in Position m from the end of a list and the subject at- tempts to recall it after recalling m other items, it is as if the item had appeared in position i= n ++ m in the list, and recall was attempted at the end of the list, This assumption is rather strong. ut recent, studies by Murdock (1963) and by Tulving and Primary memory 13, cory system, “(All vertal Heme enter PAE, where they are either eeheased of forgotten [Reearsed items may enter SM.) Arbuckle (1963) have, in fact, failed to reveal any consistent differences be- toveen stimulus- and response-induced interference in the retention of paired associates, It may not be unreasonable to suppose, therefore, that the two sources of interference exert equivalent effects on free and serial recall. According to our hypothesis, then, the probability of recalling an_ item which has been followed by # subse- quent items is given by the probability that itis in PM, in SM, or in both, Assuming that these probabilities eom- hine independently, RG) =P) +S) — POSH 1M where 2) is the probability that Ttem i will be recalled, P(i) is the probabil- ity that it is in PM, and S(j) the wy that it SM. The ty that this item is in PM is then given hy PO = [RO -S@OVU-S@O1. (21 We assume that P(i) is a monotonic decreasing fanetion of and that lim P(i) = 0. We should like specifically to test the hypothesis that PC) is independent of the value of (i) and, in fact, varies with in the manner of the probe-digit data. (This hypothesis is stated more14 Two-store models of memory formally in the Appendix.) In order to do so, we need data on verbal re- tention that meet the following re- quirements. 1, They should come from an ex- perimental situation where at least some of the items are retrieved from PM. 2. The subject should have been al- owed to rehearse, so that S(i)> 0. 3. The value of (i) should prefer- ably be constant and independent of & 4. The experimental lists should be Tong enough to let us estimate S(i) for i> 12. '5. We should know the location of a given item in the stinwalus list (mn) and in the recall list (m), so as to be able to estimate the total number of inter- fering items (i= + m) ‘The free-recall experiment is well suited to our purposes. Subjects can (and usually do) recall the last few items in a list right away, and the middle portion of the serial position curve (after the first three and before the last seven items) is effectively fat, thereby providing a convenient esti- mate of S(i) (Deese & Kaufman, 1957; Murdock, 1962; Waugh, 1962). Testing our hypothesis against data collected in a free-recall experiment therefore invelves the following steps: 1, First, we estimate S(#) from the average proportion of items recalled from the middle of a Tong list, 2. We then estimate P(@) for each of the last seven items in the Hist by Equation 2. 3. We plot this estimate against nF m=i and compare the resulting function with that shown in Figure 1. Fortunately, we did not have to per- form a free-recall experiment especially for this purpose: several such studies have ‘been carried out and reported in sufficient detail to enable us to test four hypothesis against their results We have chosen to analyze four seta of data collected by three different in- vestigators: Deese and Kaufman (1957), Murdock (1962), and two as yet unpublished experiments conducted by Waugh. The two principal vari- ables that affect S(i) in free recall appear to be length of list (the amount ‘of material that is to be retained) and presentation time (the amount of time available for the rehearsal of a given item). Manipulating. these variables results in orderly changes in the value of S(3), so that our estimates range from .08 to AS across the four experi- ments, 1. Tn Deese and Kaufman's study, the subjects listened to lists of 32 une related English words read at a rate ‘of one per second, and hegan recalling them immediately. after the last had been spoken, Deese and Kaufman have presented a serial position curve hased on these data and have also e- ported the relation between an item's serial position in recall and its posi- tion in the original Hist. We can thereby estimate i for each item in their lists, letting an item’s average position in recall he our estimator of the amount of response interference (n)2 We estimated 54) by the pro- portion of items recalled after the first three and before the last seven serial positions in the original list. (This Tee nt really correct to use the average ofthe seral positions in recall as an estimate ff mt: the total effect of responce inte ference shold depend on the variance ofthis distribution ag well ay on ita mean or me dian. "Tete the only alternative open to ws, however, since our correction for asymptote rt be applied to the average proportion ff items retained, estimated across serial postion ia recall Sn estimating S(2), we imwored the re- call of the Brt ice lems on @Tist becaseesame general procedure will be fol- Towed in our subsequent analyses.) ‘The last seven points of Deese and Kaufman's serial position curve, taken from their Figure 1 and corrected for asymptote according to Equation 2, are plotted as a function of i in Figure 3. The dashed lines in Figure 3 rep- resent the 99% confidence limits for the probe-digit function: standard error for each point was estimated across stihjects ane experimental ses- sions, ‘The uncorrected data are shown in Table 1 2. Waugh's experiments. were con cemed with determining the number of items freely recalled from long lists 1s a function of presentation time, In her first experiment, 24, 30, 40, 60, or 120 different monosyllabic English words were read to the subjects at a rate of one per second. The propor= tion of items recalled varied inversely with fist length, so that for each length of list there is" different serial posi- tion function, The asymptotes of these funetions range from approxi- mately .08 to 20. Median serial posi- tion in recall (me + 1) was ealewlated for each of the Tast six items in a list they invariably show a primacy effect, per- haps Tesult of selective attention and TABL Prorortiow or Frets FRE [OF STRIAL POSITION AND. ° mS 97 oss 88 ms 0 St sr ‘ot wos Ss ae “0 me ‘92 nt 38 an 9 Coa Mi 6), Clear Primary memory 15 ic, 3, Freerecall data from Deese and Kavlman (1987), corrected for asymptote and response interference Figure 4 shows 5(i) as a function of i for each of these items, ‘The wneor- rected data appear in Table 2 Tn Waugh's second experiment, the subjects listened to 30 different words presented at a rate of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6 seconds per word, In ‘each case the presentations were either massed—that is, each word was read one, two, oF three times in a row, at a rate of one word per second or of one word every towo seconds—or they were distributed —each word was read once at one, two, three, four, or six different places in ata rate of one word per second. ‘The results of this experiment indicate that whether the repetitions are massed 1 Recattro as a Fusenow ‘Torat Toe rr 96 st 36 of 9 30 6 1516 Two-store models of memory Bre, 4, Froe-ecall data from Waugh corrected for asymptote and response inter- ference for distributed is of no importance; the probability that a word will be re- called is determined simply by the total number of seconds for which it is presented, Since this probability in- creases as a negatively accelerated fune- tion of presentation time, the asymp- totie values of the serial position fametion obtained in this experiment ranged from approximately 14. (for 30 words each read once) to 45 (for 30 words each read six times). Aver ‘age serial position in recall was again calculated for each of the last six items TABLE 2 Paoroxvion of Tiss FReELy RECALLED As A Foxcrion of Stacie IstesrrKexct fan NUMER OF TEMS Pee TSF 931.00 939s S92 Ss (37 2S le 208 in a list. ‘The retention functions for assed and distrilnted repetitions, cor= rected for asymptote and response in- terference, are shown in Figures 5 and 6, respectively, along with the PM function obtained in our probe-digit ex- periment. ‘The uncorrected data are shown in Table 2. 3, In Murdock’s experiment, the subjects listened to lists of 20, 30, or 40 words read at a rate of 1 word per second and to lists of 10, 15, and 20 words read at a rate of 1 word every 2 seconds, Murdock found, as Inns Waugh (1963), that the probabil ity of recalling a word that has heen Fig, . Free-recall data from Waugh cor- rectel for asymptote and respoase interfer Goce (In5 stb presentations per word). listened to for 2 seconds is almost exactly twice the probability of re calling a word that has heen listened to for 1 second, Murdock’s data can therefore be grouped into three pairs of serial position curves: 10 words read ata rate of 1 every 2 seconds versus 20 words read at 4 rate of I per sec- fond; 15 words read at a rate of 1 every 2 seconds versus 30 read at a rate of 1 per second; and 20 words read at a rate of 1 every 2 seconds versus 40 read at a rate of 1 per second. Witheach pair, there are two asymptotes, ‘ane of which is approximately twice the value of the other. ‘We have corrected Murdock’s curves for asymptote—that is, for SG) —and since he did not calculate serial posi- tion in recall for his words, we have plotted these corrected values of P(i) Against the average values of # eal- crated hy Waugh for words recalled under similar eonditions in the experi- ment just described (see Figures 5 and 6).* Murdock’s uncorreeted data are shown in Table 1 eis clear that an appreciable num her of the points displayed in Figures 3 through 7 fall outside the confidence limits we have set for the probe-digit function, In general, the discrepancies between theoretical and observed values of P(#) appear to be unsystematic. They may have resulted from either fof two possible sources which would not he reflected in the variance of the probe-digit function, In the first place, we assume that 5(3) is constant for all i, While (i) ‘does not in faet seem to vary system= tically with # in the middle of a list, individual words do differ greatly in their susceptibility of storage in sec- ‘ondary memory: the serial position function for free recall is haphazardly Jagged rather than perfectly flat. Thus, even one anomalously easy word in Location 1», for instance, can greatly inflate our estimate of R(m) and hence P(), The probe-digit data would presumably not be subject to this kind of variability. A second source of errors may lie in our estimation of i, or mx. We have used average position in recall— call it m+ 1—as our estimate of m “The agymptotes for Murdoch's curves were obtaited by complementing his tabu lated values for © (shown in his Table 2) Primary memory 17 Pio, 6 Free-recll data from Waugh corrected for asymptote and responce ieee ference (216 massed presentations "per word). 41, Even a small error in this est mate can lead to 2 sizable discrepancy between a theoretical and an observed value of P(i), especially around the steep early portion of the function Errors of this sort would be reflected in Figures 4-7, where i and P(i) are derived from either partially or com- pletely independent sets of data (in Figures 4-6 and Figure 7, respec- tively). Furthermore, we shosld in any case expect some’ discrepancy on purely mathematical grounds between (3), where (3) is the mean of a point igen Fic, 7. Freecall data from Murdock (1961), corrected for asymptote and response Interference18 Twosstore models of memory distribution, as in the probe-digit ex- periment, and P(-+n), where m can assume any of a mumber of values, in the free-recall data we have alyzed, Unfortunately, we ate wn able to specify the magnitude of this expected diserepaney. In view, therefore, of the likelihood of the errors we have just described, we believe that the fit between the probe-digit function and the free-reeall, data is fairly good and is, in fact, prohably too elose to attribute to chance. Actually, in one respect it is surprising that the probe-digit_ func- tion should describe the free-recall data as well as it does. The probe-digit ‘experiment tested the retention of digit pairs, whereas the free-recall ex- periments tested the retention of ine dividual items. How are we justified in equating the two? One possibility is to assume that in the probe-digit experiment the subjects perceived and stored the digits as a series of over- lapping pairs, rather than as. single digits. In this case, the measure of interference would he given hy the number of digit-pairs that follow any given pair, which is, of course, equal 0 the number of single digits that follow it. Inthe free-recill experiment, on the other hand, the subjects may have per ceived the words ns independent nits, and the effective interference would then consist of single words, as we have jn fact een assuming. The problem then, can be restated as follows: why do pairs of digits and single words fexert equal amounts of retroactive in terference on like items in primary memory? There is litle in the exist- ing literature that sheds much Tight on this point Paired Associates Our model should, of course, he able 10 describe ordered as well as free re- call. We face serious problems, how- ever, in attempting to apply it to serial learning: if a lit is long enough to furnish a stable estimate of S(#). the probability that a given item will be in PM at the time of testing is negli- gible, since serial items are’ easton arily tested in the order in which the were presented, We must therefore turn to paired associates. In a recent study, Tulving and Arbuckle (1963) systematically varied the positions of the items on the recall list, and we have therefore applied our hypothesis to their data in the manner described above. Tulving and Arbuckle presented number-word pairs to their subjects and then tested for the recall of exch word by presenting only the number with which it bad been paired, They were interested in measuring probabil- ity of recall after one trial asa function of an item’s serial position in hoth the original list and the test list, We have estimated (7) hy averaging the reea probabilities for i> 13, excludi Items 1 and 2, The value of their serial position curve is fortunately con- stant in this region, as it was for free recall. Note that in this task, each pair presented after a given number and before the eve for its recall actually consists of fo interfering items: a word plus a number, We have counted all items occurring hetween the test item and its recall—including the test pumber—as interfering items. We have analyzed the proportion of items presented in Positions 1 through 6 from the end of the stimulus list and tested in Positions 1 through 6 of the response list. These proportions are shown in Tulving and) Arhuckle's Tables 2 and 43 we have pooled those that correspond to a given value of i Thus i, or mt (where m= j and Af), oranges frum 11 11‘These data are presented in Figure 8, along with our own estimate of PC?) ‘Again, considering the variability of (4) that is not taken into account by four model, the fit between data and theory appears to be reasonably good. we helieve we ean say iy between our probe- it function and the various other, initially disparate, serial position curves shown in Figures 3-8 is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a primary memory store that is independent of any longer term store. The capacity fof the primary store appears tobe nvariant under a wide variety of ex- perimental conditions which do, how- fever, affect the properties of the longer term store Single-Ltem Retention Much of the experimental work on memory in the past 5 years has fo ceased on measuring the retention of a single verbal item—or of a brief Hist fof items—over short intervals. A. widely used procedure which was in- troduced by Peterson and Peterson (1959) is to expose an item (for example, a meaningless three-letter se- quence) to a subject; have him per- form some task that presumably. mo- nopolizes his attention (such as count ing backwards by three's) for a specified number of seconds; and, finally, at the end of this interval, have hhim attempt to recall the eritial item, ‘The universal finding has been that retention decreases monotonically with the length of the retention interval. Tt hhas_ generally been assumed that the subject does not rehearse during the retention interval, that a number spoken by him does not interfere with a trigram previously spoken by the ex- perimenter, and that therefore the ob- served decline over time in the reten- tion of such an item reflets the pure Primary memory 19 decay of its memory trace, This gen- eral conclusion is clearly inconsistent ‘with our results, since we have found that the length of the retention interval as such—within the Bmits owe tested, naturally—is. of relatively fittle in portance in determining retention toss. Tn seeking for a way to account for this discrepancy, it occurred to us to question the assumption that, in an experiment of the sort described above, the mumbers spoken by the subject dur= ing the retention interval do not inter~ fere with the memory trace of the item he is supposed to retain, Some ex- perimenters have, after all, reported that dissimilar items seem 10 interfere with one another just as much as do similar ones in the immediate recall of very short lists (Brown, 1958; Pills- bury & Sylvester, 1940). "What would happen, therefore, if we were to define a three-digit number uttered by a subject in the course of a simple arithmetic eal- cilation—counting backwards—as one ‘unit of mnemonic interference? Could ‘our model then describe the forgetting ff single items over brief intervals? We have attempted to fit the data of two experimenters, Loess (in press) and Murdock (1961), by converting Fic. 8, Paired-asscite data from Tul ving ‘and Arbuckle (1963) corrected. for Asyimptote and response interference20 Tworstore models of memory sonant wigrams recalled after various rete ion intervals; ‘Murdock’ data represent the average propertion of trigrams and sword triads retained after given interval.) the retention interval into a corre- sponding number of interfering items. ‘Murdock’s subjects were trained to count at a steady rate of one number per second, so the number of inter- fering items in his experiment is equal to the retention interval in seconds Loess? subjects counted at a rate of fone number every 1.5 seconds; we have therefore multiplied the length of his retention intervals by 3 in order to ob- tain the equivalent number of inter- ferivg items. We estimate S(i) in Doth cases by the relative frequency of recall at i= 185 The two sets of data, corrected for asymptote, are shown ‘in Figure 9, along with the probe-digit function, ‘The correspondence between them is reasonably close. It is possible, of course, that this agreement between theory and fact is simply a matter of Tuck, depending, as it does, on the We have also tied to analyze the results of Peterson and’ Peterson (1959) bt with fut success. Part ofthe dificalty may result from the fact that their subjects may not Ingve adhered strietly 10.4. prescibed. rate of counting during the retention interval (L Peterson, personal commeniation, 1968) arbitrary assumption that a three-digi rmumber generated by the subject him self is paychologically equivalent to a fone-digit number presented by the ex perimenter during the retention inter- val (as in the prohe-digit study) Obviously we cannot draw any firm conclusions about the effect of inter- ference on the retention of single items until this assumption is justified em- ally. We can only point out that the results of Murdock and Loess do not necessarily contradict our model Discussiox ‘We should at this point like to con- sider the general question of whether all verbal information is stored in the same system or whether, as we have as- sumed here, there are two independent mnemonic processes that contribute to retention even over very short inter- vals, The proponents of a unitary the- ory of memory, eloquently led by ‘Melton (1963), have argued that re- call after a few seconds is affected in very similar ways by the variables that govern recall aver much longer in= tervals; and that therefore the distine= tion between short-term memory mechanism, on the one hand, and a longer term mechanism, on the other, is purely arbitrary. ‘The following facts have been cited in support of this argu- ment: 1, Short-term retention improves, just as does Tong-term retention, when the material to be recalled is repeated hefore a test of retention, or when itis repeated between successive tests (Hebb, 1961; Hellyer, 1962). 2. Retention after a brief delay is subject to proactive interference, as is retention after a long delay (Keppel & Underwood, 1962; Loess, in press) Why, asks the anitary theorist, should wwe distinguish between shore andJong-term retention if we cannot find any quantitativeand experimentally ma- nipalatable differences hetween them? This question might well be disturbing if one took the position that the two processes have sharply defined non- ‘overlapping temporal boundaries such that items recalled within some critical interval after their initial occurrence rust have heen retrieved from one sys- fem, whereas items recalled beyond this interval must have heen retrieved from another. (Stich a view would im ply, interestingly enough, that an iter wold have to remain in a short-term storage for some specified number of seconds efore passing into longer term storage, if it did so at al.) But what if we do not require that the two systems be mutually exclusive? ‘Then the probability that an item will the recalled will depend on both the probability that it is stil in PM and the probability that it has entered into SSM jn the interval between its presen- tation and the start of the interfering sequence (or even during this sequence, if the subject is able to rehearse). All those variables that determine S(i) for 1 given item—suich as its position in a closely spaced series of tests, or the Primary memory 21 umber of times it has heen repeated —will then determine the observed proportion recalled after a brief inter- val, We believe we have shown, how ever, that P(#) depends only on f and remains invariant with changes. in SG); and we submit that most of the published data on short-term retention actually reflect the properties of hotl memory systems. We would like to make one final point: the existence of some rather compelling introspective evidence in favor of two distinet mnemonic. sys- tems, PM, as we have defined it here, is hes illustrated by a person's ability to recall verbatim the most recent few words in_a sentence that he is hearing for speaking, even when he is barely paying attention to what is being said, for to what he is saying. Given that the flow of speech is intelligible, failures in the immediate recall of words we have just heard—errors of either on sion, transposition, or substitu are probably so rare as to be abnort Indeed, we believe that it would be im- possible to understand or to generate a grammatical utterance if we Incked this rather remarkable mnemonic ca~ pacity. In order to recall a sentence verbatim at a later time, however, we TABLE & Pronourios of Frras Fxerty Rrcatte as a FeNerioN or °F Lo 1 ke 2 te tse 8 3 hts 6 Se Mo o'r sR % 36 8 su 26 8 97 99 1001.00 "9 S96 87 BL st as 6s es 65 st ss sss aot as a meas 8 as hs "Ean row epee Oe yma van of RD.22 Two-store models of memory usually have to rohearse it while itis still available in PM ‘The same effect holds for mesning- less arrangements of verbal items, Ii wwe present a subject with random string of words, letters, oF digits, an ask hi to reproduce them ia any oer hie chooses, he ean maximize the nm hier he recalls hy “anloading” the fst few items immediately, Most sub jects in fre-recll experiments report that these very fate items tend 10 he lost if they are not recalled immediately whereas items that came earlier in the Tist can he retrieved at leisure, if they can be recalled tall. In the colorfal terminology of one such subject (Waugh, 1961), the most recent items fn a verbal series reside temporarily in a kind of “echo box,” from which they ean be effortlessly parroted back. Wien an experienced subject is trying to memorize alist of serial items, more= over, he “fils up” successive echo boxes as the list is read to him and attempts to rehearse the contents of ach. He will invariably lose some items if rehearsal is delayed too long or if he attempts to Toad his echo box with more items than it ean hold. We think it very likely that the PM fane- tion describes the (variable) capacity of this mechanism, We would remin you in this connection that, within Very broad limits, the rate at which Someone is speaking does not affect ‘your ability t0 follow his words—jast fas differences in the rate at which reaningless lists of digits are presented do not exert any profound effect on the PM fonction Coxervsions We have tried to demonstrate the ex- istence of a short-term or PM system that is independent of any Jonger teem for accondary store by showing thnt one function relating probability of recall to number of intervening items can de- scribe 2 number of seemingly disparate sets of experimental results, In doing s0, we have deliberately avoided dis ceussing a number of problems raised in our analyses. Foremost in our list of problems is the definition of an item, Certainly the idea of a discrete verbal unit is crucial to our theory. The in- terference effect that we have studied seems to be invariant over a broad class of units and combinations of tunits—single digits, nonsense trigrams, and meaningful words. How long a string of such primitive wnits can we combine and still have one item? Is an item determined by our grammatical habits? Ts it determined by the dura- tion of the verbal stimulus? Is it de- termined by both? We do not know. ‘We have also avoided discussing the possible rules whereby items now in PM are displaced hy later items, Are items lost independently of one another, for do they hang and fall together? It may perhaps prove difficult to answer this question experimentally, but it should not be impossible. Finally, at what stage in the proc- cessing. of incoming information does four PM reside? Is it in the peripheral sensory mechanism? Probably not ‘The work of Sperling (1960) indi- cates that “sensory memory”—to use Peterson's (1963) phrase—decays within a matter of milliseconds, whereas we have dealt in our analysis with retention intervals on the order ‘of seconds, Does storage in PM pre- cede the attachment of meaning to dis crete verbal stimuli? Must a verbal stimulus he transformed into an audi- tory image in order to be stored in PM, even if it was presented visually? We refer the render to a recent paper by Sperling (1963) for some thoughts fn the latter question,Primary memory 23, APPENDIX, A formal discussion of the interaction between PM and SM can be provided by a. simple three-state Markov process. ‘The assumptions of the model are: 1. There are three states of memory: S, P, and the null state, G 2 ‘The probability’ of recalling an item from either State Sor State P is unity items cannot be recalled from the sll State, but they may be guessed with Probability g. 3, Items can only pass into State S when they are rehearsed and, for the ex- periments discussed in this paper, we ase Sime tat tems are reliearsed nly when they are presented, The probability that an item is stored in S, given that it was Successfully rchearsed, is “4 Items in P are nterfored with by later presentation of different items: the probability that an item returns to the hull state on the presentation of the ath Interfering item i 8, ‘The following equivalents hold between the terms defined for the Markov model land the terms defined in the body of the paper: 1, PAS) is equivalent to $(i). 2 PL(P) is equivalent to PC) — si) 3. 8; is equivalent to 1 — PC). Now, define the random variable = with Value 1 if the test item is presented, and with Value 0 if some other (inter: fering) item is presented. (We ean also let x be a probabiity-namely, the prod- ability that the test item is. presented. ‘The formal statement of the model does not change with this redefinition.) ‘The transition probabilities for any ssiven stimulus item (che test item) are Epeciied by the matrix s P G spt o 0 Phar (1-x)(1-8)+4(1-a) (1—a)% Glar (i-a)r =r Unfortunately, i is difeut to work with transition matrices of this form (ith time-varying parameters). One soproxi- tration would be to tt & = 8, independent off, This approximation yields an ex- omental decay function of the form Pcpy= (=a) aye. This is clearly not correct for the results of ox experiment (Figure 1) but, for” some purposes it may not be a bad approxima tion, A’ model very simular mathenatc cally to that produced by this simple ap- proximation for & has been studied hy ‘Atkinson and. Crothers (1961), who found iw be quite gond for cera sypes of paired-asiociates experiments, Their Inodel, however, is derived. from quite Aitferent considerations For any experintents with contelled rebearsley the. probability that an item reaches. State (or SM) is completely Independent of the properties ofthe short- term sate (P or PM). "Ths is true bee tate, as far as State is concerned, the general transition matrix con be reduced By combining States P and G to form the “amped” State P The new mate is sop 1} ae Tis ia single oneement Martow inne Fu wens though the lute drip of the yer ate tag pecs rte a dnrgdon of ie {Seti watt ty ony fog tern conf one an etre Sane manor. REFERENCES Arnixsox, RC, & Caormas, EJ. A. comparison of "paieed-astociate earning ‘models having different sequsiion and retention axioms. Journal of Mathemat= fal Peycholony, 1964, 1, 285-315, Bsosqeexs, DE Perception and covsmani= “ation. New York: Pergamon Press, 1958, aows, J. 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"Huma Factors, 1968, 19-36, Tunease, E, & Aunvekts, T, Y. Sources of jntratral interference in immediate e- fall of paired associates. Journal of Ver- bal Learning and Verbal Behovior, 1963, 1, 21-334 Uxoenwoon, B. J, & Kerest, G. An eval tation of two problems of method in the Study of retention, American Journal of Peychology, 1962, 78, 1-17 Weaver, N.C. Free’ versus serial recall, ‘ournal oj Experimental Psychology, 961, 12, 196-50. Waves, N.C. The effect of intralist pe tition ‘on free recall, Journal of Verbel Learning ond Verbol Behavior, 1962, 1, 95-99 Wavon, N.C. Immediate memory as a fonction of repetition. Journel of Verbal Leorning ond’ Verbai Behavior, 1963, 2, uar-ti2eREADING 2 R.C. Atkinson and R.M. Shiffrin Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes Reprinted from K.W. Spence and J.T. Spence (eds.) (1968) The Psychology of Learning and Motivation. New York: Academic Press, 2:92-122; 191-5 L. Structural Features of the Memory System ‘This section of the paper will describe the permanent, structural features of the memory system. The basic structural division is into the three components diagrammed in Fig. 1: the sensory register, the short- term store, and the long-term store, ‘When a stimulus is presented there is an immediate registration of ‘that stimulus within the appropriate sensory dimensions. ‘The form of, this registration is fairly well understood in the ease of the visual system (Sperling, 1960); in fact, the particular features of visual registration (including a several hundred millisecond decay of an initially ac« visual image) allow us positively to identify this system as a component of memory. It is obvious that incoming information sense modalities also receives an initial registration, but it is not clear whether these other registrations have an appreciable decay period or any other features which would enable us to refer to them as components of memory. ‘The second basic component of our system is the short-term store, ‘This store may be regarded as the subject's “working memory.” Informa- tion entering the short-term store is assumed to decay and disappear ‘completely, but the time required for the information to be lost is considerably longer than for the sensory register. The character of the information in the short-term store does not depend necessarily upon the form of the sensory input. For example, a word presented visually may be encoded from the visual sensory register into an auditory short-term store, Since the auditory short-term gystem will play a major role in subsequent discussions, we shall use the abbreviation a-v-l to stand for auditory-verbal-linguistie store. The triple term is used because, as we shall see, itis not easy to separate these three functions26 —Two-store models of memory ‘The exact rate of decay of information in the short-term store is difficult to estimate because it is greatly influenced by subject-controlled processes, In the a-v-l mode, for example, the anbject: ean invoke rehearsal mechanisms that maintain the information in SPS and thereby complicate the problem of measuring the structural characteristies of the decay process. However, the available evidence suggests that information represented in the a-v-l mode decays and is lost within a period of about 15-30 seconds. Storage of information in other modalities is less well understood and, for reasons to be discussed later, it is diffioult to assign values to their decay rates, = F TONG=TERM STORE Fig. 1. Strueture of the momory system. ‘The last major component of our system is the long-term store. This store differs from the preceding ones in that information stored here does not decay and become lost in the same manner, All information eventa- ally is completely lost from the sensory register and the short-term store, whereas information in the long-term store is relatively permanent (although it may be modified or rendered temporarily irretrievable asHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes 27 the result of other incoming information). Most experiments in the literature dealing with long-term store have been concerned with storage in the a-v-1 mode, but it is clear that there is long-term memory in each of the other sensory modalities, as demonstrated by an ability to recog- nize stimuli presented to these senses. There may even be information in the long-term store whieh is not classifiable into any of the sensory modalities, the prime example being temporal memory ‘The flow of information among the three systems is to a large degree under the control of the subject. Note that by information flow and ‘transfer between stores we refer to the same process: the copying of selected information from one store into the next. This copying takes place without the transferred information being removed from its original store, The information remains in the store from which it is, transferred and decays according to the decay characteristics of that store. In considering information flow in the system, we start with its initial input into thesensory register. The next step isa subject-controlled. sean of the information in the register; as a result of this sean and an associated search of long-term storo, selected information is introduced into short-term store, We assume that transfor to the long-term store takes place throughout the period that information resides in the short- term store, although the amount and form of the transferred information is markedly influenced by control processes. The possibility that there may be direct transfer to the long-term store from the sensory register is represented by the dashed line in Fig. 1; we do not know whether such transfer occurs. Finally, there is transfer from the long-term store to the short-term store, mostly under the control of the subject; such transfer ‘occurs, for example, in problem solving, hypothesis testing, and “think- ing” in general. ‘This brief encapsulation of the system raises more questions than it answers. Not yet mentioned are such features as the eause of the decay in each memory store and the form of the transfer functions between the stores. In an attempt to specify these aspects of the system, we now turn, toa more detailed outline, including a review of somo relevant literature, A. Sexsory Recisren, ‘The prime example of a sensory register is the short-term visual image investigated by Sperling (1960, 1963), Averbach and Coriell (1961), Estes and Taylor (1964, 1966), and others. As reported by Sperling (1967), if an array of letters is presented tachistoscopically and the subject is instructed to write out as many lettersas possible, usually about six letters are reported. Further, a 30-second delay between presentation and report does not cause a decrement in performance. This fact (plus the facts that confusions tend to be based on auditory rather than visual similarities, and that subjects report rehearsing and subvocalizing28 Two-store models of memory ‘the letters) indicates that the process being examined is in the a-v-l short-term store; i., subjects scan the visual image and transfer a number of letters to the a-v-I short-term store for rehearsal and output, In order to study the registered visual image ittelf, partial-report procedures (Averhach & Coriell, 1961; Averbach & Sperling, 1961; Sperling, 1960, 1963) and forced-choice detection procedures (Estes, 1903; Estes & Taylor, 1964, 1960; Estes & Wessel, 1966) have heen employed. The partial-report method typically involves presenting a display (asually a 8 x 4 matrix ofletters and numbers) tachistoseopically for a very brief period. After the presentation the subject is given a sigual that tells him which row to report. IF the signal is given almost immediately aftr stimulus offset, the requested information is reported swith good precision, otherwise considerable loss oceurs. Thus we infer that « highly accurate visual image lasts for a short period of time and then decays. It has also been established that succeeding visual stirmula- tion can modify or possibly even erase prior stimulation. By using a number of different methods, the decay period of the image has been estimated to take several hundred milliseconds, or a little more, depend- ing on experimental conditions; thats, information eannot be recovered from this store after a period of soveral hundred milliseconds. Using the detection method, in which the subject must report which of two critical letters was presented in a display, Estes and Taylor (1964, 1966) and Bstes and Wessel (1966) have examined some models for the scanning process. Although no completely satisfactory models have yet, Ubcen proposed, it scoms reasonably certain that the letters are seanited serially (which letters are scanned seems to be a momentary decision of tie subject), and a figure of about 10 msec to sean one letter seems sencrally satisfactory. "Thus it appears fairly well established that a visual stimulus leaves a more or less photographic trace which decays during a period of several hundred milliseconds and is subject to masking and replacement: by succeeding stimulation, Not known at present is the form of the dessy, that is, whether letters in a display decay together or indi pprobabilistically or temporally, all-or- none, or continuously. The reader ay ask whether these results are specific to extremely brief visual presentations; although presentations of long duration complicate analysis (because of eye movements and physical soanning of the there is no reason to believe that the basic fact of a highly veridical image quickly decaying after stimulus offset does not hold also for longer visual presentations. It is interesting that the stimulation seems to be transferred from the visual image to the a-v-l short-term store, rather than to a visual short-term store. The fact that written report was requested may provide the explanation, or it may be that, the visual short-term store lacks rehearsal eapacityHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes 29 There is not much one oan say about registers in sensory modalities other than the visual. A fair amount of work has been carried out on the auditory system without isolating a registration mechanism com- parable to the visual one. On the other hand, the widely differing strue- tures of the different sensory systems makes it questionable whether we should expect similar systems for registration. Before leaving the sensory register, it is worth adding a few comments ‘about the transfer to higher order systems. In the case of the transfer {from the visual image to the a-v-I short-term store, it seems likely that a selective scan is made at the discretion of the subject.* As each element in the register is scanned, a matching program of some sort is carried out against information in long-term store and the verbal “name” of the element is recovered from long-term memory and fed into the short-term store. Other information might also be recovered in the long-term search; for example, if the scanned clement was a pineapple, the word, its associates, the taste, smell, and feel of a pineapple might all be recovered and transferred to various short-term stores. This eommunica- tion between the sensory register and long-term store does not, however, permit us to infer that information is transferred directly to long-term store from the register. Another interesting theoretical question is whether the search into long-term store is necessary to transfer informa- tion from the sensory register to the short-term store within « mod: We see no a priori theoretical reason to exclude nonmediated transfer. (For example, why should a sean or match be necessary to transfer a spoken word to the a-v-l short-term store?) For lack of evidenee, we eave those matters unspecified. B, Snonr-Trna Store ‘The first point to be examined in this section is the validity of the division of memory into short- and long-term stores. Workers of a traditional bent have argued against dichotomizing memory (e.g.. Melton, 1963; Postman, 1964), However, we feel there is much evidence indicating the parsimony and usefulness of such a division, The argument is often given that one memory is somehow “simpler” than two; but quite the opposite is usually the ease. A good example may be found in a ‘comparison of the model for free recall presented in this paper and the model proposed by Postman and Phillips (1065). Any single-process system making a fair attempt to explain the mass of data currently available must, of necessity, be suiiciently complex that the term single process becomes a misnomer. We do not wish, however, to engage in the ‘controversy here. We ask the reader to aecept our model provisionally until its power to deal with data becomes clear, Still, some justification "Sporting (1960) hae presented evidence relating tho type of sean used to the subject's performance level,30 Two-store models of memory of our decision would seem indicated at this point. For this reason, we ‘tum to what is perhaps the single most convineing demonstration of a dichotomy in the memory system: the effects of hippocampal lesions reported by Milner (1959, 1966, 1968). In her words “Bilateral surgical lxions in the hippocampal region, om tho mesial aspoct of tho temporal lobes, produce a reinatkably scvero and persistent memory disorder in human pationte, the pattem of breakdown providing valuable eles ta the ccoobral organization of memory. Patints with these lesion show 1 loss of pe ‘operatively acutired skills, anal intelligenon ax meamered by forznal teats is “unimpaired, but, with tho possible exception of acquiring motor sil, they sce Tangely incapable of adding new information to the long-term store. This true \whethor acquisition is measured by fres reeall, recognition, or learning. with, ‘savings. Novortholnss, the immediate nogietration of nev input (ax maser, for ‘oxamplo, by digit span and dichote listening toes) appears tale place normally find material sehich ears be encompass by verbal rebarsal is held for many minutes without further low that that entailed” in tho initial vorbalization, Interruption of stearsal, eogardoes of the nature ofthe distencting teak, prodiers Immediate forgetting of what wont before, and some quite simple material which fantot he entegorized in verbal termi deenys in 30 secondo 30, even withowt fan intorpolnted distraction, Material already in loug-torin store is unalfecto by the lesion, except for a cotain amwunt of retrograde smn for preoperative events” (Stuer, 1966) Apparently, a short-term store remains to the patients, but the Tesions have produced a breakdown cither in the ability to store new information in long-term store or to retrieve new information from it. These patients appear to be incapable of retaining new material on a long-term basis.* ‘As with most clinieal research, however, there are several problems that should be considered. First, the patients were in a general sense abnormal to begin with; second, onee the memory defect had been discovered, the opesations were discontinued, leaving only a fow subjects. for observation; third, the results of the lesions seem to be somewhat variable, depending for one thing upon the size of the lesion, the larger lesions giving rise to the full syndrome. Thus there are only a few patients who exhibit the deficit described above in full detail. As startling ‘as these patients are, there might be a temptation to discount them as ‘anomalies but for the following additional findings. Patients who had known damage to the hippocampal area in one hemisphere were tested * A rolatecl defect enlled Roreakoff'ssynudrom, has hoon known for many yours, Patients euffering ror this abriormal eouition re unable to elain new event or longer than a fow seeonts or minutes (og, they eannot veal the meal thoy have jt eaten of recogni the foe of tho doctor who treated them n fow mines ‘eatin, bat nory for events nat peopl prior to their illic remains largely unimpaired. and they can perform adequately on toate of immediate emery span. Recent evidenes suggests that Korsakolls syndrome is elated to damage of Hain tine, frequently ax the result of chronic aleaholisn, im the Iippocampal rio asl the marsmilary body (Barbinct, 1089).Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes 31 for memory deficit after an intracarotid injection of sodium amytal temporurily inactivated the other hemisphere. Controls were patients without known damage, and patients who received injections inactiva- ting their damaged side. A number of memory tests were used as a criterion for memory defieit; the easiest consisted of presenting four pictures, distracting the patient, and then presenting nine pictures ing the original four. If the patient eannot identify the eritieal ce of memory’ deficit is assumed, The results showed that in almost all eases memory deficit occurs only after bilateral damage; if side A is damaged and side B inactivated, memory deficit appeants, but ifthe inactivated side is the damaged side, no deficit aceurs, ‘These results suggest that the patients deseribed above by Milner were not anomalons eases and their memory deficits therefore give strong support to the hypothesis of distinct short- and long-term memory stores four p then evider 1, Mechaniems Involved in Short-Term Store We now turn to a discussion of some of the mechanisms involved in the short-term store. The purpose of this section is not to review the extensive literature on short-term memory, but rather to deseribo a few experiments which have been important in providing, a basis for our model, The first study’ in this eatogory is that of Peterson ane Peterson (1958). In their experiment subjects attempted to recal a single trigram of three consonants after intervals of 8,6, 1), 12, 15, and 1S seconds, The ‘rigram, presented auditorily, was followed immediately by a number, and the subject was instructed to count backward by three's from that number until he received a cue to recall the trigram. ‘The probability of f correct answer was nearly perfect at 3 seconds, then dropped off rapidly and seemed to reach an asymptote of about .08 at 15-18 seconds, Under the assumption that the arithmetic task played the role of preventing rehearsal and had no direct interfering effect, it may be concluded that a consonant trigram decays from short-term store within, 1 period of about 15 seconds, In terms of the model, the following events re assumed to occur in this situation: the consonant trigram enters the visual register and is at once transferred to the a-v-l short-term store where an attempt is made to code or otherwise “memorize” the item. Such attempts terminate when attention is given to the task of counting Dackward, In this initial period a trace of some sort is built up in long- term store and it is this long-term trace which accounts for the 0S probability correct at long intervals. Although diseussion of the long- term system will come later, one point should be noted in this context; namely, that the long-term trace should he more powerful the more repetitions of the trigram before arithmetic, or the longer the time before arithmetic. ‘These effects were found by Hellyer (1962); that is, the32 Tworstore models of memory model predicts the probability correct curve will reach an asymptote ‘that reflects long-term strength, and in the aforementioned experiment, ‘the more repetitions before arithmetic, the higher the asymptote. Itshould be noted that these findings tie in nicely with the results from fa similar experiment that Milner (11968) carried out on her patients. muli that could not be easily coded verbally were used ; for example, clicks, light flashes, and nonsense figures. Five values were assigned to ‘each stimulus; a test consisted of presenting a particular value of one stimulus, followed by a distracting task, followed by another value of the stimulus, The subject was required to state whether the two stimuli wore the same or different. The patient with the most complete memory doficit was performing at a chance level after 60 seconds, whether or not fa distracting task was given. In terms of the model, the reduction to chance level is due to the Inck of a long-term store. That the reduction, ovcurred even without a distracting task indicates that the patient could not readily verbalize the stimuli, and that rehearsal in modes ‘other than the verbal one was either not possible or of no value, From this view, the better asymptotie performance demonstrated by normal subjects on the same tasks (with or without distraction) would be attributed to a long-term trace. At the moment, however, the conclusion ‘that rehearsal is lacking in nonverbal modes ean only be considered a highly tentative hypothesis ‘We next ask whether or not there are short-term stores other than in the a-v-l mode, and if s0, whether they have a comparable structure, A natural approach to this problem would use stimuli in different sense ‘modalities and compare the decay eurves found with or without a dis- tracting task. If there was reason to believe that the subjects were not, verbally encoding the stimuli, and if a relatively fast decay eurve was found, then there would be evidence for a short-term memory in that modality. Furthermore, any difference between the control group and. the group with a distracting task should indicate the existence of & rehearsal mechanism, Posner (1966) has undertaken several experi- ‘ments of this sort. In one experiment the subject saw the position of @ circle on a 180-nm line and later had t6 reproduce it; in another the subject moved a lever in @ covered box a certain distance with only kinesthetic feedback and later tried to reproduee it. In both eases, testing was performed at 0, 5, 10, and 20 seconds; the interval was filled with either rest, or one of three intervening tasks of varying difficulty. ‘These tasks, in order of increasing difficulty, consisted of reading numbers, adding numbers, and classifying numbers into eategories. For the kinesthetie task there was a decline in performance aver 30 seconds, but with no obvious differences among the different intervening condi tions. This could be taken as evidence for a short-term kinesthetic memory without a rehearsal capability. For the visual task, on the otherHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes 33 hand, there was a decline in performance over the 30 seconds only for the two most dificult intervening tasks; performance was essentially constant over time for the other conditions. One possibility, dificult to rule out, is that the subjects’ performance was based on a verbal encoding of the visual stimulus. Posner tends to doubt this possibility for reasons ‘that include the accuracy of the performance. Another possibility is that there is a short-term visual memory with a rehearsal component; this hypothesis seems somewhat at variance with the results from Milner’s ppationt who performed at chance level in the experiment cited above, Tnasmuch as the data reported by Posner (1966) seem to be rather ‘variable, it would probably be best to hold off a decision on the question of rehearsal capability until further evidence isin, 2. Characteristics ofthe a Short-Derm Store ‘We restrict ourselves in the remainder of this section to a discussion of the characteristies of the a-v-1 short-term store. Work by Conrad (1964) is particularly interesting in this regard. He showed that con: fusions among visually presented letters in a short-term memory task are correlated with the confusions that subjects make when the same letters are read aloud in a noise background; that is, the letters most confused are those sounding alike. ‘This might suggest an auditory short-term store, ossentially the auditory portion of what has been called to this point an’a-v-l store, In fact, it is very difficult to separate the verbal and linguistic aspects from the auditory ones. Hintzman (1965, 1967) has argued that the confusions are based upon similar kinesthetic feedback patterns during subvocal rehearsal, When subjects were given ‘white noise on certain trials, several could be heard rehearsing the items aloud, suggesting subvocal rehearsal as the usual process. In addition, Hintzman found that confusions were based upon both the voicing qualities of the letters and tho place of articulation. The place-of- articulation errors indicate confusion in kinesthetic feedback, rather than in hearing. Nevertheless, the errors found cannot be definitely assigned to a verbal rather than an auditory exuse until the range of auditory confusions is examined more thoroughly. ‘This discussion should make it clear that itis difficult to distinguish between the verbal, auditory, and linguistic aspects of short-term memory ; for the purposes of this paper, then, we group the three together into one short-term ‘memory, which we have called the a-v-1 short-term store, This store will henceforth be labeled STS. (Restricting the term STS to the a-v-1 mode does not imply that there are not other short-term memories with similar properties.) ‘The notation system should be made clear at this point. As just noted, STS refers to the auditory-verbal-linguistic short-term store, LTS will34 —Two-store models of memory refer to the comparable memory in long-term store, Tt is important not to confuse our theoretical constructs STS and LTS (or the more general terms short-term store and long-term store) with the terms short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) used in much of the psychological literature, ‘These latter terms have come to take on an operational definition in the literature; STM refers to the memory examined in experiments with short durations or single trials, and LTM to the momory examined in long-duration experiments, typically list earning, or multiple-list learning experiments, According to our general theory, both STS and LTS are active in both STM and LTM experiments, It is important to keep these terms clear lest confusion results. For exemple, the Keppel and Underwood (1962) finding that performance in the Petorson situation is better on the first trials of a session has been, appropriately interpreted as evidence for proactive interference in short-term memory (STM). The model we propose, however, attributes the effect to changes in the long-term store over the session, hence placing the cause in LTS and not STS. ‘At this point a finished model would set forth the structural charac Unfortunately, despite a large and growing body of experiments concerned with short-term memory, our knowledge about its structure is very limited. Control processes and structural features are so complexly interrelated that it is dificult to isolate those aspects of the data that are due solely to the structure of the memory system, Consequently, this paper presumes only a minimal structure for STS; ‘we assume a trace in STS with auditory or verbal components wl decays fairly rapidly in the absenco of rehearsal, perhaps within 30 seconds. A few of the more promising possibilities concerning the precise nature of the trace will he considered next. Because most workers in this ‘area make no particular distinetion between traces in the two systems, the comments to follow are relevant to the memory trace in the long: term as well as the short-term store. ‘Bower (167a) has made a significant exploration of the nature of the trace. In his paper, he has demonstrated the usefulness of models based ‘on the assumption that the memory trace consists of a number of pieces of information (possibly redundant, correlated, or in error, as the case may be), and that the information ensemble may be construed as a ‘multicomponent. vector. While Bower makes a strong ease for sueh a viewpoint, the dotails are too lengthy to review here. A somewhat different approach has heen proposed by Wickelgren and Norman (11968) who view the trace as a unidimensional strength measure varying over time. They demonstrate that such a model fits the results of certain types of recognition-memory experiments if the appropriate decay and retrieval assumptions are made, A third approach is based upon a phenomenon reported by Murdock (1966), which has been given aHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes 35, theoretical analysis by Bernbach (1967). Using methods derived from the theory of signal detectability, Bernbach found that there was an all-or-none aspect to the confidence ratings that subjects gave regarding the eorreetness of their response. The confidence ratings indicated that an answer was either “correct” or “in error" as far as the subject could tell; if intermediate trace strengths existed, the subject was not able to distinguish between them. The locus of this all-or-none feature, however, ‘may lie in the retrieval process rather than in the trace; that is, even if trace strengths vary, the result of a retrieval attempt might always be cone of two distinet outcomes: a success or a failure. ‘Thus, one cannot rule ont models that assume varying trace strengths. Our preference is to consider the trace as a multicomponent array of information (which we shall often represent in experimental models by a unidimensional strength measure), and reserve judgment on the locus of the all-or-none aspect revealed by an analysis of confidence ratings. There are two experimental procedures which might be expected to shed some light on the decay characteristics of STS and both depend upon controlling rehearsal; one is similar to the Peterson paradigm in by an intervening activity and the other involves a very rapid presentation of items followed by an immediate test. An example of the former procedure is Posner's (1966) experiment in which the difficulty of the intervening activity was varied. He found that as the difficulty of an intervening task increased, acouraey of recall decreased. Although this result might be regarded as evidence that deeay from STS is affected by the kind of intervening activity, an alternative hypothesis would aseribe the result to a reduetion in rehearsal with more difficult intervening tasks. It would be desirable to measure STS deeay when rehearsal is completely eliminated, but it has proved difficult to festablish how much rehearsal takes place during various intervening tasks, Similar problems arise when attempts are made to control rehearsal by increasing presentation rates. Even at the fastest conceivable presentation rates subjects can rehearse during presentation if the attend to only a portion of the incoming items. In general, experiments ‘manipulating presontation rate have not proved of value in determining decay characteristies for STS, primarily because of the control processes tho subject brings into play. ‘Thus Waugh and Norman (1965) found no difference between I-second and 4-second rates in their probe digit experiment; Conrad and Hille (1958) found improvement with faster rates: and Buschke and Lim (1967) found inereases in the amount of primacy in their missing-span serial position curves asinputrateinereased which rehearsal is controll from one itom per second to four items per second, Complex results of this sort make it difficult to determine the structural decay character:36 Tworstore models of memory istics of STS. Eventually, models that include the control processes involved in these situations should help clarify the STS structure. 3. Transfer from STS to LTS ‘The amount and form of information transferred from STS to LTS is primarily a function of control processes. We will assume, however, that transfor itself is an unvarying feature of the system; throughout the period that information resides in the short-term store, transfer takes place to long-term store, Support for such an assumption is given by studies on incidental learning, which indicate that learning takes place ‘even when the subject is not trying to store material in the long-term store. Better examples may be the experiments roported by Hebb (1961) ‘and Melton (193) In theso experiments subjects had to repeat sequences, of digits. If particular sequence was presented every several trials it was gradually learned. It may be assumed that subjects in this situation attempt to perform solely by rehearsal of the sequence within STS; nevertheless, transfer to LITS clearly takes place, This Hebb-Melton procedure is currently being used to explore transfer characteristics in some detail. R, L. Cohen and Johansson (1967), for example, have found that an overt response to the repeated sequence was necessary for ceur in this situation ; thus information 1 to he quite weak. improvement in performance to: transfer is accentuated by overt responses and app if no response is demanded "The form of the STS-LTS transfer may be probabilistic, continuous, ‘or some combination; neither the literature nor our own data provide firm basis for making decision, Often the form of the information to bo remembered and the type of test used may dictate a particular transfer process, as for example in Bower's (19661) research on an all-or-none painvd-assoriate learning model, but the issue is nevertheless far from settled, In fact, the ehanges in the transfer process induced by the subject effectively alter the transfer function form experiment to experiment, making a search for a universal, unchanging process unproductive, ©, Loxo-Terw Store Because it is easiest to test for recall in the a-v-1 mode, this part of long-term store has been the most extensively studied, It is clear, how- x, that long-term memory exists in each of the sensory modalities; this is shown by subjects’ recognition capability for smells, taste, and so fon, Other long-term information may be stored which is not necessarily related to any’ of the sensory modalities, Yntema and Trask (1963), for example, have proposed that temporal memory is stored in the form of “time-tags.” Once again, however, lnck of data forces us to restrict our attention primarily to tho a-v-l mode, which we have designated LTS.Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes 37, First a number of possible formulations of the LYS trace will be con sidered. The simplest hypothesis is to assume that the trace is all-or- none; ifa trace is placed in memory, then a correct retrieval and response will occur, Second-guessing experiments provide evidence concerning an hypothesis of this sort, Binford and Gettys (1965) presented the subject with a number of alternatives, one of which was the correct answer. If his first response is ineorreet, he picks again from the remaining alternatives, The results indicate that second guesses are correct well above the chance level to be expected if the subject were guessing randomly from the remaining alternatives. This result rules out the simple trace model described above because an all-or-none trace would predict second guesses to he at the chance level. Actually, the above model was a model of both the form of the trace and the type of retrieval. We ean expand the retrieval pothesis and still leave open the possibility of an all-or-none trace. For example, in searching for a correct all-or-none trace in LTS, the subject might find a similar but different trace and mistakenly terminate the search and generate an answer; upon being told that the answer is wrong the subject renews the search and may find the correct trace the next time. Given this hypothesis, it would bo instructive to know whether the results differ if the subject must rank the response alterna~ tives without being given feedback after each choice. In this ease all the alternatives would be ranked on the basis of the same search of LTS; if the response ranked second wasstill above chanee, then it would become difficult to defend an all-or-none trace, A second source of information about the nature of the trace comes from the tip-of:the-tongue phenomenon examined by Hart (1965), R. Brown and McNeill (11966), and Freedman and Landauer (1966). This phenomenon refers to a person's ability to predict accurately that he will be able to recognize a correct: answer even though he cannot recall itat the moment. He feels asf the correct answer were on the “tip of the tongue.” Experiments have shown that if subjects who cannot recall an answer are asked to estimate whether they will be able to choose the correct answer from a set of alternatives, they often show good secur in predicting their success in recognition, One explanation might be that the subject recalls some information, but not enough to generate an answer and feels that this partial information is likely to be sufficient to choose among a set of alternatives. Indeed, Brown and MeNeill found that the initial sound of the word to be retrieved was often correctly recalled in cases where a correct identification was later made. On the other hand, the subject often is absolutely certain upon seeing the correct response that it is indeed correct, This might indicate that some , relevant information has become available after recognition, In any ease, « simple trace model can probably not handle these results. A.38 Two-store models of memory class of models for the trace which can explain the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon are the multiple-copy models suggested by Atkinson and Shitfrin (1965). In these schemes there are many traces or copies of snformation laid in long-term store, each of which may be either partial cr complete. In a particular search of LTS perhaps only a small number or just one of these copies is retrieved, none complete enough to generate the correct answer; upon recognition, however, acces is gained to the other copies, presumably through some associative process. Some of these other copies contain enough information to make the subject certain of his choice. These multiple-copy memory models are described amore fully in Atkinson and Shiffrin (1965). ‘The decay andjor interference characteristios of LTS have been studied more intensively over the past 50 years than any other aspect of memory. Partly for this reason a. considerable body of theory: has been advanced known as interference theory.* We tend to regard this theory as descriptive rather than explanatory; this statement is not meant to detract from the value ofthe theory as a whole, but to indieate that a search for mechanisms at a deeper level might prove to be of value. Thus, for example, ifthe list upon recall of a second list increases overtime until the second lst is retested, it is not enough to accept “proactive interference increasing over time” as an explanation of the effect; rather one should look for the underlying search, storage, and retrieval mechanisms responsible. We are going to use a very restricted definition of interference in the rest of this paper; interference will be considered a structural feature of memory not under the control ofthe subjéet. It will refer to such posi Vilites as disruption and loss of information. On the other hand, there are search mechanisms which generate effects like those of stewetural interference, but which are control processes. Interference theory, of course, includes both types of possibilities, but we prefer to break down interference effects into those which are structurally based, and those ibjoct. Therefore the term interference is used henceforth to designate a structural feature of the long-term system. eis important to realize that often itis possible to explain a given phenomenon with either interference or search notions. Although both factors will usually be present, the experimental situation sometimes indicates which is more important. For example, as we shall see in Seotion V,"the decrease in the percentage of words recalled in w free verbal-reall experiment with increases in list length could be due either to interference hetween items or to a search of decreasing effectiveness as the number of items increase. The typieal free recall situation, how ever, forces the subject to engage in a search of memory at test and indientes to us that the search process is the major factor. Finally, note Foran overviw of interference se Psa (1961) Noein ee (BL)Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes 39 that the interference effect itself may take many forms and arise in a number of ways, Information within a trace may be destroyed, replaced, ‘or lessened in value by subsequent information, Alternatively, informa~ tion may never be destroyed but may become irretrievable, temporarily or permanently In this section an attempt has been made to establish a reasonable basis for at least threo systems—the sensory register, the short-term. store, and the long-term store; to indicate the transfer characteristies Detwoon the various stores; and to consider possible decay and inter- ference functions within cach store. TL, Control Processes in Memory ‘The term control process refers to those processes that are not p manent features of memory, butare instead transient phenomena under ‘the control of the subject; their appearance depends on such factors as instructional set, the experimental task, and the past history of the subject. A simple examplo of a control process ean be demonstrated in a ppaired-associato learning task involving a list of stimuli each paired with either an A or B response (Bower, 1961). The subject may try to lear ceach stinulus-response pair as a separate, integral unit or he may adopt the more efficient strategy of answering B to any item not remembered and attempting to remember only the stimuli paired with the A response ‘This latter scheme will yield a radically different pattern of performance than the former; it exemplifies one rather limited control process. The various rehearsal strategies, on the other hand, are examples of control processes with almost universal applicability nee subject-controlled memory processes include any schemes, coding techniques, or mnemonies used by the subject in his effort to romember, their variety is virtually unlimited and classification becomes difficult, Such classification as is possible arises because these processes, while under the voluntary control of the subject, are nevertheless dependent upon the permanent memory structures described in the previous section. This section therefore will follow the format of Section, I, organizing the control processes into those primarily associated with the sensory register, STS, and LTS. Apart from this, the presentation will be somewhat fragmentary, drawing upon examples from many disparate experiments in an attempt to emphasize the variety, pervasive- ness, and importance of the subject-controlled processes, ‘A. CoxnoL PROCESSES IN THE SENSORY RecisrEn ‘Beenuse a large amount of information enters the sensory register and then decays very quickly, the primary function of control processes at this level is the selectidn of particular portions of this information for transfer to the short-term store. The first decision the subject must make40 Two-store models of memory concerns which sensory register to attend to, Thus, in experiments with simultaneous inputs from several sensory channels, the subject can readily report information from a given sense modality if so instructed in advance, but his accuracy is greatly reduced if instructions are delayed until after presentation, A related attention process is the transfer to STS ofa selected portion ofa large information display within ‘sensory modality. An example to keep in mind here is the seanning process in the visual registration aystem. Letters ina tachistosoopieally prevented display may be seanned at arate of about 10 mseea letter, the form of the sean being under the control ofthe subject. Sperling (1960) found the following result. When the signal identifying whieh row to report from a matrix of letters was delayed for an interval of time following stimulus ofst, the subjects developed two observing strate gies. One strategy consisted of obeying the experimenters instructions to pay equal attention to all rows; this strategy resulted in evenly distributed errors and quite poor performance at long delays. The other strategy consisted of anticipating which row would be tested and attending to only that row; in this case the error variance is increased but performance is better at longer delay intervals than for the other strategy. The subjects were aware of and reported using those strategie. For example, one experienced subject reported switching from the frst, to the second strategy in an effort to maximize performance when the delay between presentation and report rose above «15 seconds. ‘The graph of his probability of a correct response plotted against delay interval, while generally decreasing with delay, showed a dip at about 15 seconds, indicating that he did not switch strategies soon enough for ‘optimal performance "The decisions as to which sensory register to attend to, and where and what to sean within the system, are not the only choices that must be mado at this level. ‘There are a number of strategies available to the subject for matching information in the register against the long-term store and thereby identifying the input. In an experiment by Estes and ‘Taylor (1008) for example, the subject had to decide whether an F or B was embedded in a matrix display of letters, One strategy would have the subject sean the letters in order, generating the “ame” of each letter and checking to see whether it isn B or an F. Ifthe sean ends ‘before al letters are processed, and no B or Fhas been found, the subject would presumably guess according to some bias. Another strategy might have the subject doa features match on each letter against B ad then F, moving on as soon as a difference is found; in this strategy it would not be necessery to scan all features ofeach letter (:e, it would hot be necessary to generate the name ofeach letter. A third strategy right have the subject compare with only one of the crucial letters, guessing the otherifa match isnot found by the time thesean terminatesHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes. 41 B, Contnot Procussss 1x Suonr-Tnua Store 1. Storage, Search, and Retrieval Strategies Seareh processes in STS, while not as elaborate as those in LTS because of the smaller amount of information in STS through which the search ‘must take place, are nevertheless important. Sinee information in STS in excess of the rehearsal capability is decaying at a rapid rate, a search for a particular datum must be performed quickly and efficiently, One indirect method of examining the search prooess consists of comparing tho results of recognition and recall experiments in which STS plays the ‘major role. Presumably there isa search component in the reeall situation that is absent in the recognition situation. It i dificult to come to strong conclusions on this basis, but recognition studies such as Wickelgren and Norman (1966) have usually given tise to less complicated models than comparable recall experiments, indicating that the search component in STS might be playing a large role. One result indicating that the STS search occurs along ordered dimensions is based upon binaural stimulus presentation (Broadbent, 1954, 1956, 1958). A pair of items is presented, one to each ear simul- taneously. ‘Three such pairs are given, one every half second. Subjects perform best if asked to report the items first from one ear and then the other, rather than, say, in pairs, While Broadbent interprets. these results in torms of a postulated time needed to switch attention from ‘one ear to the other (a control process in itself), other interpretations are possible, In particular, part of the information stored with each item ‘ight include which ear was used for input. This information might then provide a simple dimension along which to search STS and report during recall. Another related possibility would have the subject group the sms along this dimension during presentation, In any ease we would ‘expect similar results if another dimension other than “sides” (which car) were provided. Yntema and Trask (1963) used three word-number pairs presented sequentially, one every half second; one member of a pair was presented to one ear and the other member to the other ear. ‘There were three conditions: the first in which three words were pre- sented consecutively on one side (and therefore the three numbers on the other), thesecond in which two words.and one number were presented ‘consecutively on one side, the third in which a number separated the two words on one side. Three test conditions were used: the subject. was asked to report words, the numbers (types) ; or to report one ear followed by the other (sides); or the simultaneous pairs in order (pairs), ‘The results are easy to deseribe. In terms of probability correct, presentation condition one was best, condition two next, and condition three worst. For the test conditions, “types” yielded the highest. probability of correct response, followed by “sides” and then “pairs.” “Sides” being42 Twosstore models of memory better than “pairs” was one of the results found by Broadbent, but “types” being even better than “sides” suggests that the organization ‘slong available dimensions, with the concomitant inerease of efficiency in the search process, is the dominant factor in the situation. One difficulty in studying the search process in STS is the fact that the subject will perform perfectly if the number of items presented is, within his rehearsal span. Sternberg (1966) has overcome this difficulty by examining the latency of responses within the rehearsal span. His typical experiment consists of presenting from one to six digits to the subject at the rate of 1.2 seconds each. Following a 2-second delay, a single digit is presented and the subjects must respond “yes” or “no” depending on whether or not the test digit was a member of the set just presented, Following this response the subject is required to recall the ‘complete set in order. Since the subjects were 98.7% correct on the recognition test and 98.6%, correct on the recall test, it may be assumed ‘that the task was within their rehearsal span. Interesting results were found in the latencies of the recognition responses: there was a linear inerease in lateney as the set size increased from one to six digits. The fact that there was no difference in latencies for “yes” versus “no” responses indicates that the search process in this situation is exhaustive and does not terminate the moment a mateh is found. Sternberg con: cludes that the subject engages in an exhaustive serial comparison process which evaluates elements at the rate of 25 to 30 per second. The high processing rate makes it seem likely that the rehearsal the subjects report is not an integral part of the scanning process, but instead main- tains the image in STS so that it may be seanned at the time of the test. ‘This conclusion depends upon accepting as a reasonable rehoarsal rate for digits tho values reported by Landauer (1962) which were never higher than six per second. ‘Buschke's (1963) missing-span method provides additional insight into fal processes in STS. The missing-span procedure ‘consists of presenting in a random order all but one of a previously specified set of digits; the subject is then asked to report the missing digit. This technique climinates the output interference associated with the usual digit-span studies in which the entire presented set must: be reported. Busehke found that subjects had superior performance on a ‘issing-span task as compared with an identical digit-span task in which all of the presented items were to be reported in any order. A natural hypothesis would explain the difference in performance as being eaused by output interference; that is, the multiple recalls in the digit-span procedure produce interference not seen in the single test procedure of the missing span. An alternative explanation would hold that different storage and search strategies were being employed in the two situations, Madsen and Dicker (1988) examined this question by camparing testHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes 43, instructions given just prior to or immediately following each presenta- tion sequence; the instructions specify whether the subject is to report the set of presented digits or simply to report the missing digit. Output interference would imply that the difference between missing-span and digit-span would hold up in both cases. The results showed that the missing-span procedure with prior instructions was superior to both missing-span and digit-span with instructions following presentation; the latter two conditions produced equal results and were superior to digit- span with prior instructions. It seems clear, then, that two storage and search strategies are being used: a missing-span type, and a digit-span type. Prior instructions (specifying the form of the subject's report) lead the subject to use one or the other of these strategies, but instructions following presentation are associated with a mixture ofthe two strategies. It appeared in this case that the strategies differed in terms of the type of storage during presentation ; the digit-span group with prior instruc- tions tended to report their digits in their presentation order, while the digit-span group with instructions after presentation more often reported the digits in their numerieal order. This indicates that the missing-span strategy involved checking off the numbers as they were presented against a fixed, numerically ordered list, while the digit-span. strategy involved rehearsing the items in their presented order. It is, interesting to note that if the subjects had been aware of the superiority of the missing-span strategy, they could have used it in the digit-span ‘task also, since the two types of tests called for the same information. Tt should be noted that retrieval from STS depends upon a number of factors, some under the control of the subject and some depending upon the decay characteristics of STS. If the decay is partial in some sense, so that the trace contains only part of the information necessary for direct ‘output, then the problem arises of how the partial information should ‘be used to generate response. In this ease, it would be expected that the subject would then engage in a search of LTS in an effort to match or recognize the partial information. On the other hand, even though traces may decay in a partial manner, the rehearsal capability ean hold. select set of tems in a state of immediate recall availability and thereby impart to these items what is essentially an all-or-none status. Itis to this, rehearsal process that we now turn. 2. Rehearsal Processes Rehoarsal is one of the most important factors in experiments on human memory. This is particularly true in the laboratory because the concentrated, often meaningless, memory tasks used increase the relative efficacy of rehearsal as compared with the longer term coding and associative processes. Rehearsal may be less pervasive in everyda ‘memory, but nevertheless has many uses, as Broadbent (1958) and44 Two-store models of memory others have pointed out. Such examples as remembering a telephone number or table-tennis seore serve to illustrate the primary purpose of rehearsal, the lengthening of the time period information stays in the short-term store. .\ second purpose of rehearsal is ilustrated hy the fact that even if one wishes to remember a telephone number permanently, one will often rehearse the number several times, This rehearsal serves the purpose of increasing the strength built up in a long-term store, both, by inereasing the length of stay in STS (during which time a trace is Duilt up in LYS) and by giving coding and other storage processes time to operate. Indeed, almost any kind of operation on an array of informa- tion (such as coding) can be viewed as a form of rehearsal, but this paper reserves the term only for the duration-lengthening repetition process, In terms of STS structure, we can imagine that each rehearsal regener- tates the STS trace and thereby prolongs the decay. This does not imply that the entire information ensemble available in STS immediately after presentation is regenerated and maintained at each rehearsal. Oniy that information selected by the subject, often a small proportion of the tial ensemble, is maintained. If the word “cow” is presented, for example, the sound of the word cow will enter STS; in addition, asso- cintes of cow, like milk, may be retrieved from LTS and also entered in STS; furthermore, an image of a cow may be entered into a short-term visual store, In succeeding rehearsals, however, the subject may rehearse only the word “cow” and the initial associates will decay and he lost. ‘The process may be similar to the loss of mesningfulness that occurs when ‘8 word is repeated over and over (Lambert & Jakobovitz, 1960). ‘An interesting question concerns the maximum number of items that can be maintained via rehearsal, This number will depend upon the rate of STS decay and the form of the trace regenerated in STS by rehearsal, With almost any reasonable assumptions about either of these processes, however, an ordered rehearsal will allow the greatest number of items to be maintained. To givo a simple example, suppose that individual items take 1.1 seconds to decay and may be restarted if rehearsal begins before decay is complete, Suppose further that each rehearsal takes .25 seconds. Tris then clear that five items may be maintained indefinitely if they are rehearsed in a fixed order over and over. On the other hand, a rehearsal scheme in which items are chosen for rehearsal on « random basis will quickly result in one or more items decaying and becoming lost. It would be expected, therefore, that in situations where subjects are relying primarily upon their rehearsal capability’ in STS, rehearsal will take ‘place in an ordered fashion. One such situation, from which we can derive ‘an estimate of rehearsal capability, is the digit-span task. A series of numbers is read to the subject whois then required to recall them, usually in the forward or backward order. Because the subject has a long-term store which sometimes can be used to supplement the short-termHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes 45 rehearsal memory, the length of a series which can be correctly recalled ‘may exceed the rehearsal capacity. A lower limit on this expacity can be found by identifying the series length at which a subject never errs; this series length is usually in the range of five to eight numbers. ‘The above estimates of rehearsal capability are obtained in a diserete- trial situation where the requirement is to remember every item of a ‘small input. A very similar rehearsal strategy can be employed, however, in situations such as free recall where a much greater number of items is, input than rehearsal can possibly encompass. One strategy in this ease would be to repiace one of the items currently being rehearsed by each new item input, In this ease every item would receive at least some rehearsal. Because of input and reorganization factors, which un- doubtedly consume some time, the rehearsal capacity would probably be reduced. It should be clear that under this scheme a constant number of items will be undergoing rehearsal at any one moment. As an analogy, fone might think of a bin always containing exactly n items; each new item enters the bin and knocks out an item already there. This process hhas been called in earlier reports a “rehearsal buffer,” or simply a “buffer,” and we will use this terminology here (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1965). In our view, the maintenance and use of the buffer isa process entirely under the control of the subject. Presumably a buffer is set up and used in an attempt to maximize performance in certain situations. In setting up a maximal-sized buffer, however, the subject is devoting all his effort to rehearsal and not engaging in other processes such as coding and hypothesis testing. In situations, therefore, where coding, long-term search, hypothesis tosting, and other mechanisms appreciably improve performance, it is likely that a trade-off will occur in which the buffer size will be reduced and rehearsal may even become somewhat random while coding and other strategies increase, At this point we want to discuss various buffer operations in greater dotail. Figure 2 illustrates a fixed-size buffer and its relation to the rest of the memory system. The content of the buffer is constructed from items that have entered STS, items which have been input from the sensory register or from LTS. The arrow going toward LTS indicates that some long-term trace is being built up during an item's stay in the buffer. The other arrow from the buffer indicates that the input of a new item into the buffer causes an item currently in the buffer to be bumped out; this item then decays from STS and is lost (except for any trace which has accumulated in LITS during its stay). An item dropped from * Wickegron (1965) has examined rehearsal in the digitspan task in groator otal and foun that rehearsal eapneity isa function of the groupings enigged in by the aubjeet; in partiular, rehearsal in distinct group of thive was superior to rehearsal in fours and fve's,46 Two-store models of memory External_Input fo SEWGORY REDSTER ‘sHonT-TeRM ‘STORE TEREARSAL BUFFER LONG-TERM STORE F1o. 2, ‘Tho rohoarsal buffor and its relation to the memory system. the buffer is likely to decay more quickly in STS than a newly presented item which has just entered STS, There are several reasons for this. For ‘one thing, the item is probably already in some state of partial decay when dropped; in addition, the information making up an item in the buffer is likely to be only a partial copy of the ensemble present immedi- ately following stimulus input. ‘There are two additional processes not shown in Fig. 2 that the subject, can use on appropriate occasions. First, the subject may decide not to center every item into the buffer; the reasons are manifold. For example, the items may he presented at a very fast rate so that input and re zation time encroach too far upon rehearsal time. Another ia that some combinations of items are particularly easy to rehearse, making the subject losth ta break up the combination. In fact,Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes 47 the work involved in introducing « new item into the buffer and deleting aan old one may alone give the subject incentive to keep the buffer ‘unchanged. Judging from these remarks, the choice of which items to enter into the buifer is based on momentary characteristics ofthe current string of input items and may appear at times to be essentially random. ‘The second process not diagrammed in Fig. 2 is the choice of which item to eliminate from the buffer when a new item is entered. There are several possibilities. The choice could be random ; it could be based upon, the state of decay of the current items; it could depend upon the ease of rehearsing the various items; most important, it could be based upon the length of time the various items have resided in the buifer. It is not unreasonable that the subject knows which items he has been rehearsing. the longest, as he might if rehearsal takes place in a fixed order. It is for this reason that the slots or positions of the buffer have been numbered consecutively in Fig. 2; that is, to indicate that the subject might have some notion of the relative recency of the various items in the buffer. ‘The experimental justification for these various buffer mechanisms will be presented in Section IV.*It should be einphasized that the subject will use a fixed-size buffer of the sort deseribed here only in select situa- tions, primarily those in which he feels that trading off rehearsal time for coding and other longer term control processes would not be fruitful ‘To the extent that long-term storage operations prove to be successful ‘as compared with rehearsal, the structure of the rehearsal mechanism ‘will tend to become impoverished. One other point concerning the buffer should be noted. While this paper consistently considers a fixed-size short-term buffer as a rehearsal strategy of the subject, it is possible to apply a fixed-size model of a similar kind to the structure of the short- term system as a whole, that is, to consider a short-term buffer as a permanent feature of memory. Waugh and Norman (1965), for example, have done this in their paper on primary memory. The data on the structure of STS is currently so nebulous that such an hypothesis can be neither firmly supported nor rejected. 8. Coding Processes and Transfer between Short- and Long-Term Store It should be evident that there is a close relationship between the short- and long-term store. In general, information entering STS comes, directly fom LTS and only indirectly from the sensory register. For example, a visually presented word cannot be entered into STS as an auditory-verbal unit until a long-term search and match has identified the verbal representation of the visual image. For words, letters, and highly familar stimuli, this long-term search and match process may be ‘executed very quickly, but one can imagine unfamiliar stimuli, such as, say, a nonsense scribble, where considerable search might be necessary Nos repitd bere (Ed)48 Two-store models of memory before a suitable verbal representation is found to enter into STS. In such eases, the subject might enter the visual image direetly into his short-term visual memory and not attempt a verbal coding operation, ‘Transfer from STS to LTS may be considered a permanent feature of memory; any information in STS is transferred to LITS to some degree ‘throughout its stay in the short-term store. The important aspect of this transfer, however, is the wide variance in the amount and form of the ‘transferred information that may be induced by control processes. When ‘the subject is concentrating upon rehearsal, the information transferred would be in a relatively weak state and easily subject to interference, (On the other hand, the subject may divert his effort from rehearsal to various coding operations which will increase the strength of the stored information. In answer to the question of what is a coding process, we can most generally state that a coding process is a select alteration and/or addition to the information in the short-term store as the result of a search of the long-term store. This change may take a number of forms, often using strong preexisting associations already in long-term store. A number of these coding possibilities will be considered later. Experiments may be roughly classified in terms of the control opera- tions the subject will be led to use. Concept formation problems or tasks ‘where there is a clear solution will lead the subject to strategy selection and hypothesis-testing procedures (Restle, 1964). Experiments which do not involve problem solving, where there are @ large number of easily coded items, and where there is a long period between presentation and test, will prompt the subject to expend his efforts on long-term coding operations. Finally, experiments in which memory is required, but long- term memory is not efficacious, will lead the subject to adopt rehearsal strategies that maintain the information the limited period needed for the task, Several examples of the latter experiment will be examined in this paper; they are characterized by the fact that the responses assigned to particular stimuli are continually changing, so that coding of a specific stimulus-response pair will prove harmful to succeeding pairs using the same stimulus, There are experiments, of course, for which it will not be possible to decide on a priori grounds which control processes are being used. In these cases the usual identification pro- cedures must be used, including model fits and careful questioning of the subjects, ‘Thore are other short-term processes that do not fit easily into the above classification. They include grouping, organizing, and chunking strategies. One form that organizing may take is the selection of a subset Of presented itoms for special attention, coding andjor rehearsal. This selection procoss is clearly illustrated in a series of studios on magnitude of reward by Harley (1965a, 1965b), Items in a paired-associate list were given two monetary inoentives, one high and one low. In one experimentHuman memory: a proposed system and its control processes 49 the subjects learned two paired-associate lists, one consisting ofall high incentive items, the other consisting ofall low incentive items; there ‘were no differencesin the learning rates for these lists. Inasecond experi- rent, subjects learned alist which included both high and low incentive items; inthis case earning was faster forthe high than the low incentive items, However, the overall rate of learning for the mixed list was about tho same as for the two previous lists. It seems clear that when the high and low incentive items are mixed, the subject selectively attends to, codes, and rehearses those items with the higher payoffs. A second kind of organizing that occurs isthe grouping of items into small sets, often ‘with the object of memorizing the set asa whole, rather than as individual items. Typically in this ease the grouped items will have some common factor. A good example may be found in the series of studies by Battig (1966) and his colleagues. He found a tendeney to group items according to difficulty and according to degree of prior learning; this tendency was found even in paired-associate tasks where an extensive effort had been basis for such grouping. A third type of informa tion organization is found in the “chunking” process suggested by Miller (1956). In his view there is some optimal size that a setof inform tion should have in order to best facilitate remembering. The incoming information is therefore organized into chunks ofthe desired magnitude, ©, Cowmnor Processes IN Lovo-Trra Stone Control provesses to be considered in this section fall roughly into two categories: those concerned with transfer between short-term and long- ‘term store and those concerned with search for and retrieval of informa- tion from LTS. 1, Storage in Long-Term Store It was stated earlior that some information is transferred to LTS throughout an item’s stay in STS, but that its amount and form is determined by control processes. This proposition will now be examined in greator detail. First of al, it would be helpful to consider a few simple examples where long-term storage is differentially affected by the coding strategy adopted. One example is found in a study on mediators per- formed by Montague, Adams, and Kiess (1966). Pairs of nonsense syllables were presented to the subject who had to write down any natural language mediator (word, phrase, or sentence associated with a pair) which occurred to him. At test 24 hours later the subject attempted to give the response member of each pair and the natural language mediator (NLM) that had been used in acquisition. Proportion correct for items on which the NLM was retained was 70%, while the proportion correct was negligible for items where the NLM was forgotten or signif50 Two-store modus of memory cantly changed. Taken in conjunction with earlier studios showing that 1 group using NLMs was superior to a group learning by rote (Runquist & Farley, 1964), this result indicates a strong dependence of recall upon natural language mediators, A somewhat different encoding technique hhas been examined by Clark and Bower (personal communication). Subjects were required to learn several lists of paired-associate items, in which each item was a pair of familiar words. Two groups of subjects were given identical instructions, except for an extra section read to the experimental group explaining that the best method of learning the pairs was to form an elaborate visual image containing the objects designated by the two words. This experimental group was then given a few examples ofthe technique. There was.a marked difference in performance between the groups on both immediate and delayed tests, the experi- ‘mental group outperforming the control group by better than 40%, in terms of probability correet. In fact, postexperimental questioning of the subjects revealed that the oceasional high performers in the control group were often using the experimental technique even in the absence of instructions to do so. This technique of associating through the use Of visual images is a very old one: it has beon deseribed in considerable detail, for example, by Cicero in De Oratore when he discusses memory as one of the five parte of rhetoric, and is clearly very effective. We now consider the question of how these encoding. techniques improve performance. The answer depends to a degree upon the fine structure of long-term store, and therefore cannot be stated precisely. Nevertheless, a number of possibilities should be mentioned. First, the ‘encoding may make use of strong preexisting associations, eliminating ‘the necessity of making new ones. Thus in mediating a word pair in a paired-associate task, word A might elicit word A’ which in turn elicits the response. This merely moves the question back a level: how does the subject know whieh associates are the correct ones? It may be that the appropriate associations are identified hy temporal position ; that is, the subject may search through the associations looking for one whieh has ‘been elicited recently. Alternatively, information could be stored with the appropriate association identifying it as having been used in the current. paired-associates task. Second, the encoding might greatly decrease the effective area of memory which must be searched at the time of test. A response word not encoded must be in the set of all English words, or perhaps in the set of all words presented “recently,” while a code may allow a smaller search through the associates of one or two items, One could use further search-limiting techniques such as restrieting the mediator to the same first letter as the stimulus. A third possibility, related to the second, is that encoding might give some order ‘toan otherwise random search, Fourth, encoding might greatly increase ‘the amount of information stored, Finally, and perhaps most important,Human memory: proposed system and its control processes. 51 the encoding might protect a fledgling association from interference by succeeding items. Thus if one encodes particular pair through an image of, say, aspecific room in one’s home, itis unlikely that fature inputs will have any relation to that image; hence they will not interfere with it Tn most cases coding probably works well for all of the above reasons. "Thore is another possible set of effects of the coding process which should be mentioned here, As background, we need to consider the results of several reeent experiments which examine the effect of spacing, between study and test in paired-associate learning (Bjork, 19665 ‘Young, 1966). ‘The result of primary interest to us is the decrease in probability correct as the number of other paired-associute items presented between study and test inereases, This decrease seems to reach asymptote only after a fairly large number (o.£., 20) of intervening, items. There are several possible explanations for this “short-term” ‘effect. Although the effect probably occurs over too great an interval to ‘considerdirect decay from STSasanexplanation, any ofseveral rehearsal strategies could give rise to an appropriate-looking curve, Sinee a paired- associate task usually requires coding, a fixed-size rehearsal buffer may’ not be a reasonable hypothesis, unless the buffer size is fairly small; on the other hand, a variable rehearsal set with semirandomly spaced rehearsals may be both reasonable and accurate. If, on the other hand, ‘one decides that almost no continuing rehearsal occurs in this task, what other hypotheses are available? One could appeal to retroactive interference but this docs little more than name the phenomenon. Greeno (1967) has proposed a coding model which ean explain the effect. In his view, the subject may select one of several possible eodes at the time of study. In particular, he might select a “permanent” code, which ‘will not be disturbed by any other items or codes in the experiments if this occurs, the item is said to be learned. On the other hand, a “transi- tory” code might be selected, one which is disturbed or eliminated as suceceding items are presented, ‘This transitory code will last for a probabilistically determined number of trials before becoming useless or lost. The important point to note here is the fact that a decreasing “short-term” effect can occur as a result of solely long-term operations, In experiments emphasizing long-term coding, therefore, the decision concerning which deeay process, or combination of decay processes, is operative will not he a priori manner; rather the decision would have to be based upon such a posteriori grounds as good- ness-of fit results for a particular model and introspective reports from the subject. 2, Long-Term Search Processes ‘One of the most fascinating features of memory is the long-term search process, We have all, at one time or another, been asked for information52 Tworstore models of memory which we once knew, but whieh is momentarily unavailable, and we are aware of the ensuing period (often lasting for hours) during which memory was searched, oceasionally resulting in the correct answer. Nevertheless, there has heen a marked lack of experimental work dealing with this rather common phenomenon. For this reason, our discussion of search processes will be primarily theoretical, but the absence of a large experimental literature should not lead us to underestimate the importance of the search mechanism. ‘The primary component of the search process is locating the sought= for trace (or one of the traces) in long-term store. This process is seen in operation via several examples. The oecasionally very long latencies prior to a correct response for well-known information indicates a non- perfect search, A subject reporting that he will think “ofit the moment he thinks about something else” indieates « prior fixation on an unsue- cessful search procedure. Similarly, the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon mentioned earlier indicates a failure to find an otherwise very strong trace. We have also observed the following while quizzing a graduate student on the names of state capitals. The student gave up trying to remember the capital of the state of Washington after pondering for a long time. Later this student quickly identified the capital of Oregon as Salem and then said at once that the capital of Washington was Olympia, When asked how he suddenly remembered, he replied that he had learned the two capitals together. Presumably this information would have been available during the first search if the student had known, where to look: namely in conjunction with the eapital of Oregon. Such, descriptive examples are numerous and serve to indicate that a search ean sometimes fail to uncover a very strong trace. One of the decisions the subject mast make is wher sessful search, An important determiner of the length of search is the amount of order imposed during the search; if one is asked to name all the states and does so strictly geographically, one is likely to do better than someone who spews out names in a haphazard fashion. The person naming states in a haphazard fashion wil presently encounter in his search for new names those which ho has already given; if this occurs repeatedly, the search will he terminated as being unfruitfal. The problem of terminating the search is expecially acute in the case of recalling a set of items without a good natural ordering. Such a ease is found in free-verbal-reeall experi- ‘ments in which list of words is presented to the subject who must then recall as many as possible. The subject presumably searches along some sort of temporal dimension, a dimension which lets the subject know when he finds a word whether or not it was on the list presented most recently. The temporal ordering is by no means perfect, however, and the search must therefore be carried out with a dogroe of randomness, nd to missing an item which has a fairly strong to termi "This pracedune may/ a proposed system and its control processes 63 found in froe-verhal-reeall experiments, for example, ‘that repeated recall tests on a given list sometimes result in the inclusion ‘on the second test of items loft out on the first test. In our own experi- ments we have even observed intrusions from an earlier list that had not Jeon recalled daring the test of that list It would be illustrative at this point to consider an experiment arried out by Norma Graham at Stanford University, Subjects were asked to name the eapitals of the states. Ifa correct answer was not given within, 5 seconds following presentation of the state name, the subjects were then given a hint and allowed 30 seconds more to search their memory. The hint consisted of either 1, 2, 4, 12, or 24 consecutive letters of the alphabet, ono of which was the first letter in the name of the state capital, ‘The probability correct dropped steadily as the hint size inereased from 1 to 24 letters. The average response latencies for correct: answers, however, showed a different effect; the L-letter hint was associated with the fastest response time, the 2-letter hint was slower, the 4-letter hint was slower yet, but the 12- and 24-letter hints were faster than the 4-letter hint, One simple hypothesis that ean explain why latencies were slower after the 4-letter hint than after the 12- and 24letter hints depends upon differing search processes, Suppose the subject in the absence of a hint engages in “normal” search, or N search. When given the first letter, however, we will assume the subject switches to a first letter search, or L search, consisting of a deeper exploration of memory hhased upon the first letter. This L search might consist of forming possible sounds beginning with the appropriate letter, and matching them against possible city names, When the size of the hint increases, the subject must apply the L search to each of the letiers in turn, obviously a time-consuming procedure. In fact, for 12- or 24-letter hints the probability is high that the subject. would use up the entire 80-second search period without carrying out an L search on the correct first letter. Clearly a stage is reached, in terms of hint size, where the subject will switeh from an L search to N search in order to maximize performance, In the present experiment it seems elear that the switeh in strate ‘occurred betwee In the above experiment there were two search-stopping events, one subject-controlled and the other determined by the 30-second time limit. It is instructive to consider some of the possible subject-controlled stopping rules. One possibility is simply an internal time limit, beyond which the subject decides further search is useless. Related to this would be an event-counter stopping rule that would halt the subject when a fixed number of prespecified events had éecurred. The events could be total number of distinet “searches,” total number of ineorreet traces found, andso on. A third possibility is dependent on a conseeutive-evente counter, For example, search could be stopped whenever x consecutive54 Two-store models of memory searches recovered traces that had been found in previous searches. Tt was noted earlier that searches may vary in their apparent order! ness. Since long-term memory is extremely large, any truly random search would invariably be doomed to failure, ‘The search must alway de made along some dimension, or on the basis of some available cues. Nevertheless, searches do vary in their degree of order; a letter-by-letter search is highly structured, whereas a free associative search that ‘proceeds from point to point in a scomingly arbitrary manner will be ‘considerably less restrained, even to the point where the same ground may be covered many times, One other possible feature of the search process is not as desirable as the ones previously mentioned. The search itself might prove destructive to the sought-after trace, That is, just as new information transferred to the long-term store might interfere with previous material stored there, the generation of traces during the search ‘might prove to have a similar interfering effect. A somewhat different perspective on search procedures is obtained by ‘considering the types of experimental tests that typically are used Sometimes the very nature of the task presumes a specific search pro- cedure. An example is found in the free-verbal-recall task in which the subject must identify a subset of a larger well-earned group of words ‘A search of smaller scope is made in a paired-associate task; when the ‘set of possible responses is largo, the seareh for the answer is similar to that made in free recall, with a search component and a recognition ‘comonent to identify the recovered trace as the appropriate one. When the set of responses in a paired-associate task is quite small, the task ‘becomes one of recognition alone: the subject can generate each possible response in order and perform a recognition test on each. The recognition test presumably probes the trace for information identifying it as being from the correct list and being associated with the correct stimulus. Tt was stid that the primary component of the search process loeating the desired memory trace in I'S. The secondary component is the recovery of the trace once found. It has been more or less assumed for simplicity in the above discussions that the trace is all-or-none. This ‘may not be the ease, and the result of a search might be the recovery of ‘@ partial trace, Retrieval would then depend either upon correctly guessing the missing information or performing a further search to match the partial trace with known responses. It is possible, therefore, to divide the recovery processes into a search component and retrieval ‘component, both of which must he successfully concluded in order to ‘output the correct response. The two components undoubtedly are correlated in the sense that stronger, more complete traces will both he casier to find and easier to retrieve, having been found. One final problem of some importance should be mentioned at this time. The effects of trace interference may be quite dificult to separateHuman memory: a proposed system and control processes 55 from those of search failure. Trace interference here refers either to loss of information in the trace due to succeeding inputs or to confusions ‘caused by competition among multiple traces at the moment of test. Search failure refers to an inability to find the trace atall. Thus a decrease in the probability of a correct response as the number of items inter- vening between study and test increases could be due to trace inter- ference generated by those items. It could also be due to an increased likelihood of failing to find the trace because of the increasing number of items that have to be searched in memory. One way these processes ‘might be separated experimentally would be in a comparison of recogni- tion and recall measures, assuming that a failure to find the trace is less likely in the case of recognition than in the case of recall. At the present, research along these lines has not given us a definitive answer to this question. Rurenesees Atkinson, R.C., 4 Shiffrin, R, M. 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Le Effects of intervals betwoon reinforocunts and oat tals in poo ‘usotiate” hearing. Techies! Report No, 101, Institute for Mathematical Stuaies in the Social Sciences, Stanford University, 1966,READING 3 M. Glanzer and A.R. Cunitz Two storage mechanisms in free recall Reprinted from the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Sehavior (1966) 5:351-60 wo exerts wee cated out 1 test th Rypothes tht the mods pos vin curve in fe real ls ede by output fom two sarge mechanisms sorter ind Tonge Exprinemtalopeatione mere apie that were preted to hae t lasne ect om each af thee mectanoms and the change in the sal pton curve Sere aburved. Inthe iat experimen, presentation rate abd repttion of idvidal Sos were vail fm order to afc longterm storage ad there act the being “retions of the stat poston curve Presetaon rate Dar the predicted elect of “renay tating the bsining ston of the tra poston carve. 1k oes not ‘tc the eed ton Repetiin, however ld nt Have any eect tht could nt te Silat to premtatin te, Ic tuld not erefore, be wed Lo demonstateIndeen Sy he prt dierent eect. Tm the seed experiment, dey eben ea fst and toll vas trod In order to abet short-term strae and, thereby the ed tion of the sl poston carve. The predicted fleet was charlydemstated. The ‘eels ake Ie pete syste tum af ings Inthe eratare In a fre-recall task, § is presented with a series of words, which be then tries to recall He is permitted to recall the words in any order that he wishes. The data obtained from this task eharacterstcally show a pronounced serial postion effect, ‘The plot of the prob bility’ of recall as a function of the position ‘of the word in presentation is Ushaped, with the beginning peak usually lower than the end peak. The hypothesis proposed bere is that the U-shaped serial postion curve consists of two curves, ich curve representing output from a separate storage mechanism. One is & long-term storage mechanism, the other is a shortterm sorage mechani, Tt follows from the assumption of a long-term and short-term storage mechanism that the ma terial recalled from the beginning of the Tist should be primarily output fom long term storage, that from the and af the list primarily output fom shortterm storage From the initial decline in Ue serial position curve and the preceding statement, it may be further asserted. that the capacity of long-term storage is limited, The more items that are already’ in, the ess Tikely that there will be place for a new item, By definition, the short-term storage mechanism is Timited not with respect to capacity. ut with re- spect to the amount of time it can hold an ‘The proposal then ie to view the usual serial postion curve as a composite of two futpat curves—one, declining. from begin ning to end of Hist, repeesents ontpat from Tong-term storage, ‘The other, rising from Lhetinning to end of list, represents output from short-term storage, The amount of ‘overlap between the two curves ina given set of data cannot be specified at_ present. Tt i in part, the aim of this study to‘Two storage mechanisms in free recall develop information on this point, "The distinction between long-term and shortterm: storage has een developed in the work of Hebb (1949) and Broadbent (1958). Experimental work von shortterm storage has been carried out by a number fof investigators, starting ftom the work of Broadbent (1958), Beown (1958), Conrad (1957), and Peterson and Peterson (1959) Tis work, including a study using a two-fac- tor approach (Waugh, 1960) that bas points ‘of similarity ith the one used here, has been concerned almost. wholly with fixed-order recall Surveys of the developments in the fren and the theoretical questions involved may be found in recent papers by: Melton (1968) and Postman (1968) In order to support the view proposed above, the attempt will be made here to separate the two hypothesied curves. This will be done by means of experimental ope ations which have a ferential effect on the beginning and end sections of the serial positon curve. As will be pointed out sub- sequently, some of these «iferentia elects Ihave already been demonstrated in the Tier ‘There are well-established procedures that are used to produce long-term storage, These ace rotelearning. procedures, The variables that allect the eficieney of rote learning— presentation rate, number of presentations, rmeaningfulness, ete—sugsest the operations ‘that should have their effect om the beginning section of the serial positon curve. Short-term storage should, by definition, be affected primarily by the amount of tine which has lapsed since presentation, This variable, amount of time elapsed, should therefore have its eflect on the end section of the serial position curve, ‘The aim of this study is, then, to test the Dnypothesis that there are two dltinetstoraxe mechanisms that produce the serial position ‘The task ued by Peterson and Peterson (1989) te sewed eve 4 tuorder al ashy snc ‘eae rut to real the hetero the tr in {he ender at they fad een ese 59 curve in free reall. The strategy is tv use variables which should! have one effect_on fone storage mechanism and a diferent effect (Gither no effect or an opposed elect) on the other storage mechanism. These variables shoudl give predictable changes in the shape of the serial postion curve Bxrrauanesr 1 ‘The purpose of this experiment was to change the shape of the beinning of the serial postion curve by affecting. primarily, the efciency of long-term storage. The ‘wo ‘main variables used were interval between successive items, o presentation rate, and repetition of items in the Tit, Since an ine crease in the interval between items usually facitates rote learning. an inerease should raise the beginning but not the end section fof the serial postion curve. By the same reasoning, repeated presentation of an item should have the same fet Method There were five main esperimentalsestments fr the interval between successive uns (8), and unter‘ pretatins of rach, won the Tat (sine spacing and qesentain VIS PY each Word presented once at 4 ee rites double spc ‘ale; tile soe (8) each word posal ooce ta tee mie There was further subvon of the 28 and 38 testes ted ino art the 3S and &S tame, were the 2P in siceauon, al at a tose ate; SPoeach word prosnted the Ue i saceion all at 4 bce Fatt (Ane word, bowen, appeared on very Sar 9 we) Shee the number iiferet onde fn each Bot wat abunys the sie, the tl tne laden to proeot 2 2P and hat isthe sine Sill, the tla ine taken to preheat Aitons. It the 18/P conditon® Is taken and an iC was alowed by Bell saline The sar of the Teal period, 3 ac after te lst word, Tee Joe tele were lene a iced nthe SA and60 Twostore models of memory sional. {ee ital itd after each wud S'SA" Caer) comin oained, the 3 Tonal Sn ftir red etre each wed, nd SSH comiton. The elect of thee paces trata deen oxy at the esining and the te In 2SA ao SA an adn inte Sal ected Utucen the st word of the Hit ed ‘he nal fortran 2SB ane SSH the atonal ‘he fin wor. 2$\and 1 como was to terine the soe fand 3S versus AP conditions. 1{ only one form of {eS conitons ad teen use erencrs betwren {he S and corepooding P conditions might be Ietween the Ses prsesation of 8 repeated word {ent proentaion of 3 repeated word ands eal, {Uf tbe 28 codon is viewed dental ‘sith the 2° codon exept forthe eliination ef slimination of the second member of cach pait fest member of eact pair sive the 281 condition cof cach repeated word jn the 3D condition gives ‘he SSA ‘onion, whi cliinaion of the Est SSH fomttion) A scondary reson for GRE the {oe form ofthe 8 eondion was to obtain further Informa the ft dels without 30 ferplated tk on al Procedure Al Se weeprosened with two Sword pent ‘common obe-sylable nouns, drawn from the Thorn are (194) AN Tate The Tay ered ‘Sine eer Thea forthe rouge only the Prosenttin ‘at numberof reptilons ol” te vidal mors or eston of the Inia Itere vale hring the course © singe selon After each Tse the $s bad Bie during which they wrote the Preceded by vey anal, and olowed bell {hat sealed the eno the st and tae of the ‘TW contioes Te tee P condos the acral Subjects ‘The $6 were HO Army enlisted sen. Thee wete 4015s in cach of the following conions 18 P, Results In scoring the lists, a word was considered correct if it was (a) the same as alist word, (b) a homonym, or (e) a recognizable mis spelling of ether. Thus, if the word “night” vas given, “knight” or “nite would both be scored correct. Repetitions of a word were rot counted, The mean number correct for the eight lists at each serial pos computed for each S, These te for each S form the basic data used in the analyses discused below. ‘The serial postion curves for the alteate forms of the space Tiss (25A and 298: 35A and §SB) were examined 10 determine whether the placing of the interval at the fend of the Hist had any effect. No marked for systematic differences were ayparent i the curves. Analysis of vaslance a! the data for the four groupe found no significant effect fof he placement of the interval (F< 1) and ‘ho signiieant interaction of this variable with the serial position effet, # (19.2204) 19, p> 10, The interpretation of these Findings wil be discussed subsequertly. Since, however, the variable of interval placement ‘hud neither an overall effect nor ax effect on the shape of the serial position carve. the subsequent analyses of the data combine sroups 2SA and 2SB into one soup, and sroups SSA and 38B into anotier eeoup. ‘The experimental conditions are therefore reduced to five: 18/P, 25, 38, 2F, and SP. ‘Examination of the’ serial postion curves for these conditions (Fig. 1) shows a clear and systematic effeet of spacing aud a simi- Jar but less clear effect of repetition, The curve for the 18/P condition appears in both the tap and bottom half of the fizure, As spacing increases, the probability of reall is raised in all but the Tas few positions of the curve, The end prak remnins unafected. As repetition increases, there i similar elect,‘Two storage mechanisms in free recall a Seal poston carves for sna OS'P), doube (oP), and leple GP) proenation above! for snle (5/0), double (25), nd ike (58) ageing, Plow Hach point represents the mean for ihe 4B in going from the 18/1 condition to the 2P condition, but no further systematic change Jn going from 20 w SP. Comparison of the curves in the top half of Fig, I with those of the bottom half indicates that repetition has lle or no effect beyond that of the spacins between new words ‘The data were analyzed by analysis of variance withthe five main treatments (18/2 28, 20, 38, 3D) as a Detween-subjects varie able and serial postion as a within-subjects variable. The four degeees of Freedom asso- ciated with treatments were then broken down into three components: (a) The gen- eral effect of spacing the interval between rhew words, whether or not repetition c=62 Two-store models of memory ccurced between the new words, This was evaluated by comparing 18/2, 28 4-2P, and SS 3P (af = 2): (b) The elect of repe- Uiions of the words in addition to the effect fof spacing. per se This was evaluated by comparing 25+} 38 and 2P 4 3P (dj = 1) (©) The interaction of spacing and repet tion (af = 1) ‘The overall effect of treatments is signifi cant, F(4,239) = 2.69, 9 <.05. The effect of spacing. is significant, F(2235) = 4.1, 2 -<.025, but neither the additional efect of repetition 1F < 1) nor the interaction of spacing with repetition, F(1,235) = 134, p > 10, is significant. The within-subjects ‘effet of seria. position is highly significant, F (194465) = 236.66, p-<.001. Reduction fof the degrees of freedom to 1 and 235, siv- ing a lower-bound, conservative test for a repeated measurements design (Greenhouse and Geissr, 1959), leaves. this effect sig- nificant atthe .001 level. The interaction of spacing with serial positon is sigaiicant at the 005 leva, F(38,4465) = 1.79, but is no longer significant under the conservative test, with degrees of freedom reduced to 2 and 235, The remaining. interactions are negligible "The conservative test of the interaction between spacing and serial postion is ac- tually doubly conservative, since it does not focus on the specific differences expecte! under the hypothesis of two storage mecha nisms. To foaus on the predicted eflects, a Separate test vas made of the effect of the three spacing conditions (1S/P versus 25 4 2P versus 38-4 SP) on the sum of correct responses for successive groups of five serial positions, The degrees af freedom for each Df thece tests are 2285, For the dirt five 340, P< O01: for the see- 16.21, p< ODL: for the thied five F= 2200, p <.001, For the last five Positions, however, the effect of spacing is not sigaifieant—F = 1.71, p >10, Te might be argued that absence of signifi cant differences in the last section of the Guves iy due lo 1 ceiling effect swe Ue probability of recall of the last word is ap= proximately 85, The probabilities of recall for words 18 theaugh 19. however ran lower than the probabilities for postions 1 rough 5, which do show siunificant differences. Com: paring the sums for postions 18 throwsh 19 gives an F= 1380, p> 10. The ceiling ef- fect cannat, therefore, account for the ab- sence of differences at the end of the curve Discusion ‘The results indicate Usat spacing, i. the rate at which new words are presented, affects the shape of the serial position curve. These results agree with findings of an experiment bby Murdock (1962), in which 20-word Tists were given at presentation rates of wore every 1 sec and a word every 2 sec. The carves obtained for the to conditions are very similar to those on the bottom of Fig 1, with the spacing affecting all of the post: tions except the last few, The presence of regular ordering of the spacing conditions vp to and including the 15th position sug ests that the items are still beng recruited for long-term storage well towards the end ofthe lis. Tthad been expected that adding repetition fof the words in the intervals between new swords would increase the diferences between the serial position curves. This. was clearly not 80, The repetition, indeed, seems to counteract the spacing eect. ‘The absence ofa repetition effect i supts fing for two reasons. First, a_ preliminary check of the accuracy with which $s cote hhear the words in the repeated and core sponding spaced lists indicate, as might be fespected, that the $s heard the words ia the Fepeated ists with slightly more accuracy ‘The check was caried out by presenting the lists to four groups of Ss drawn from the ‘same population as the experimental geoups. Four groups, consisting of 14 to 15 $5 each, listened to the 25, 2P, 38, and 3P lists and recorded each new ord as they heard it "The interval between the successive words ave the Ss aple Une to send eau newword. Comparison of the total number co ‘Two storage mechanisms in free recall 63. literature on fixed-order recall (Brown, 1958), rectly recorded in each group indicated a fendeney for more words to be recorded. ac- ccurately by the groups that heard the Hists swith repeated words. The tendeney, ow fever. did not attain statistical significance, FUSS) = 380, 08 < p<, The absence of a repetition effect is also surprising because in the repeated conditions the Shad 2 or 5 presentations to Tetra each word. Viewing the successive repetitions as Jearning tials leads to the expectation that the probability of reall of a particular word bye higher in the repetition condition than Jn the corresponding spacing. condition. Tt 4 clear both from the statistical analysis and the curves in Fig. 1 that nothing Uke this occurred. The curve for the 31 condi- tion actully’ les slightly lower than the curve for the 38 condition, ‘There are several possible reasons for the absence of this effect. One is that simple repetition without active participation by the S may not be effective for Tearing the swords in these Tists, Another possible reason Jy that the particular form of repetition used ‘here—immediately successive repetition— enerates effects that counter the effets of Tearning ‘There are two aspects of the data that ve information on the eects of delay when fo iterpolated task is imposed, One is the absence of any effect of spacing on the end peak of the serial postion curve. 11 simple mount of time. between presentation and recall were effective, then it would be ex- pected that all points in the end peak would bbe lowered as spacing increased from 18/P to 28A to 3SA. There was no evidence for such an fect. Similarly, it would be ex- pected that all points in the end peak, except the last one, would be lowered) as spacing increased from 18/P 0 2SB to SSB. Again, there was no evidence for such an effec. ‘This is interpreted here as indicating that passage of time without an interpolated task has no effect on short-term storage, The find- Jing is in line with other findings in the ‘Another aspect of the data that indicates that pure passage of time does not cause loss In short-term storage isthe absence of eiffr- foes between the 2SA and 2SB conditions and also between the SSA and 3SB condi- tions. In the 2SAand SSA conditions, there were additonal delay periods between end fo list and recall, As was noted enti, these additional delays had no effect. The relevance of these findings to the develop- iment of an efective delay procedure will be discussed further in Exp. TL Tn summary, the results with the variable ‘that was effective inthe experiment—spacing for presentation rate—-support the hypothesis ‘There is an effect on the beginning but not fon the end section ofthe serial postion, The results with a second variable, repetition, did rot have any overall eect beyond that of spacing and therefore did not furnish any further information forthe evaluation of the Dypothess, Exeemneene TE ‘The purpose of the second experiment was to study the separate output of the hypoth- sized short-term storage mechanism. The Strategy agtin was to introduce a variable that would have a different effect on long- term and short-term storage and thus have a different effect on the beginning and end peak of the serial position curve. The vati- able selected was delay between the end of the list and start of recall elore determining the form in which this day would be imposed, the efocs of pure dey, Ley “ity without an iterplated tak, were invest fated furhe, The welsht of eidnce fom the rocorde reall experiments iaates tht pure diay"bas no efecto shorter storage, The Subatiany evidence in Exp. on the effets of pare ‘day ab indicted thats hana ct. The ete ‘of pure delay were, however, examined farther be- fet of dey woul be simple if no ierpolated tase wete usd, ‘There was Teton to believe tht the fee wcll task ailred.suticenty fom the64 Two-store models of memory Sacre reall take that ad been ed 10 make Which pare dl rest n'a op i tla amount Fealled (Ander, 1960). "A plot study was htefoe, cared out in which two groups of Ss were each piven four sOword Hin, one group with no day foe real the ‘other eoup with Ose ay. Tere ato inter ‘day, FUL2S3)— 57, p00. There was marked elect ol delay ta the bedoning bak, Fass) =267, p>10. The ete on the eed Drak was, howe, small im magnitude, with the Sera postion eve showing acest end pe aier sce doy, was there deed to teuice the St ey the baht of end peak would secrese but the Deanne peak would remain unalte Method Subjects, The Se were 46 Army este, Materials and Equipment. The wots wore sown Foom the Thorwike Lore lat bit. Each word wes pine in Hick on Bat blue backerout Procedure aod thee Bee Isvvord ste Each word at eed Aer th Int word i cick Bt he 35 for 8 tm to 9 wn shown the cro ‘Started couneg outloud from that nuer ht mesure wither 10" or 30 sce with 2 atop watch Urtore tig hin to wit. Hach of the aay con ions was sed with ach of the theee practice tite and ith foe of the eal. st The Se ere Individually tested, For each 5 the words were as Slee at random tothe Hts and order of the dy onions witht the three praleIsts and within the Estee main ets was asignd at radon. This foeant that each recived a erent set of te Ad diferct oqo of lay condition, Fecal of each fst Aller the completion of exch 2. Son E went over the booklet mith the 5 10 make Bee tata the wordt were pe Results ‘The results are summarized in Fig. 2. Each curve represents § lists recalled by the 46 Ss, The 10sec delay was sufcient to remove most of the end peak. With a 30sec delay there is no tage at all ofthe end peak ® “Analysis of variance was eatied with posi- tions, and delay interval as_ within-subjects variables, Both variables and their inerac- tion are signieant at the OO level. or better—postion F(14,650) = 2487, delay terval. F(2,90) = 19.78, and their interac tion, (28.1260) = 2.29.’ Evaluation of the Fs with reduced degrees of freedom, here 1 and $5, leaves the effect of position and delay interval both sinifcant at the 001 level. The interaction, however, i= not sig- nificant, under this conservative test. Since, however. the effect was specifically predicted for the end peak, a separate analysis was made of the effect of the delay condition on the sum of correct responses for successive sets of five positions in the curves. The de- grees of freelom for these tests are 1,48, For the first five positions, F= 3.60, p> 105; for the second five positions # = 1.48 PAO. The effect of delay is. significant ‘nly “In the last five. positions—F = 22.42, p< 001 ‘There is one characteristic of the no-delay curve that makes it differ fom the usual serial position curve—the end peak is lower than the beginning. pesk. This may be due to the special chiractersties of this exper rent, in which § was exposed to delay condi- tions that lowered the elicieney of recall of items from the end of the list. This could Ihave Jed to a strategy for handling the Tits that emphasized the beginning items of the ist, (Qua J. exp, Pacha 65, 1,‘Two storage mechanisms in free recall 65 Discusion ‘The results of Exp. IT give further sup- port to the hypothesis of two distinct strane mechanisms. Again, it was demonstrated that ‘an experimental operation had a. predicted, difeental effect on the peaks of the serial position curve. The hypothesis furnishes a simple explana tion for the serial position curve in tree recall. Tt also furnishes a basis for further ascertions about foe recall which are sup- ported by findings in the literature, Or, 0 Say the same thing another way, the hypoth- sis makes it possible to systematize « num ber of findings in the literature: (1) Word frequency, a variable that has an effect on rote learning, and, therefore, presumably on long-term storage, should have an effect on the beginning peak of the serial position curve. This assertion is sup ported by recent findings by Sumby (1963) (2) Linguistic constraints inthe words ‘of the list, a varitble that has an effect on Serial peton curses for 0% 105 and bse dla. Each point repre rote leatning, and therefore, presumably, on long-term storaye should have an effect on the beginning peak of the curve, This asser- tion is supported by findings by. Deese and Kaufman (1987). (3) Requiting the Sto recall the items Jn forward order should depress the end pea ‘of the serial position curve, By requiring Sequential reall, impases a delay with an imerpolated task—recall of the atl list items. This permits the Toss of items from shortterm storage. This assertion is sup- ported. by findings by Deese (1987) and Ratfel (1936), ‘The approach used here is not presented asa complete theory for free recall A com plete theory would permit derivation of the exact form of each of the hypothesized com: ponent curves. Once sich a derivation is available then it would be possible to move away from the gross distinction between short-term and long-term storage. In a com- plete theory, the deivation of the output66 —Two-store models of memory curve for long-term storage would, moreover, be based on specific assumptions about the processing involved in long-term storage. This Would make it possible to move away from the simple ientication of long-term storage variables with those alfeting rote learning ‘The assumptions should also permit deriva tion ofthe characteristics of reall under more complex. conditions thin those considered hete—for example, repeated presentations of the same word Tis ‘The attempt to build a complete theory could, of course, be based on a variety of fother constructs. For example, an approach could be developed by using inhibition or interference constructs—mvore specially the constructs of proactive and retroactive inhibition. Using these constructs to build towards a complete theory leads to some complexities which will be brielly pointed out here, "The application of these constrvets to account for the asymmetrical. bimodal shape ff the usual serial position curve would require the specification of 90 fonctions ‘one relating amounts of PL to each postion jn thelist, the ober relating amounts of RI to each positon in the Hist. IT RI is consid- fered simply a8 & function uf the number of items following a given postion, and PL simply as a fonction of the number of items preceding a given postion, then the to functions might reasonably be expected to be monotonic. Two monotonic functions of this type and a simple rule for summing the Inhibitory effects will not produce the stan dard type of U-shaped curve such as those in Fig. 1. By using values from Fig. 1. the dificuty ‘may be summarized as. follows ‘The probubility of recall of the frst lst word {s approximately 60. The probability of re- call ofthe las ist word is approximately 8 Tt may be assumed that there has been & reduction of 4D at the fest position due to RI and a reduetion of 15 atthe last position dye to PL. The probability of recall at the idle postion i approximately 25. Within as a teduetion of 75 at those postions. The middle postions would be expected, if the RI and PI position functions are monotone aad if theit elect is combined by adlition to have much higher probabilities of recall than those actully obtained. ‘There are wo ways of coping with this problem, One way Js to move away from a simple additive sys tem® allowing, for example, for interaction efiets, The other way is to move away from Simple functions, For example, PL for a posi tion maybe considered to be a function of both the number of items” preceding the Prsition. and the number of items followin the position (Lime elapsing before recall. ‘Other complesties develop im applying in hibitory constructs to account for the sss tematic effects found in the esperiments re ported above. It is possible to use the TI construct 19 explain the effect of delay in Esp. 11 by assuming that PI is a function fof both number of preceding items and the time that elses during the delay interval The statement of the relations involved might 20 as follows: Earlier items which have been estingnished recover during the delay: interval and then ‘interfere with the recall of items from the end of the list. This statement implies, however, thatthe eflect of elay should merely alter the proportion of casly and late items recalled, For every Inte item that is proactively blocked there shove the an early item in its stead AL the vers Teast i could be expected that there shoul be some increas inthe probability of reall of the early items. There is no evidence at all fof such an increase, The only change that ‘occurs is that the number of items from the fend of the lst decreases. Again, additions ot alterations can be made t handle the ob- ‘ined results. Again, however, the theoretical strueture grows rather complex‘Two storage mechanisms in free recall Reresnnces ‘Avomios, N.S. Postimulsculng ie inmediate tiemery. J. tsp Pischol, 1960, 68, 16-20, Brassoerr, D.'E. Perception ud rommascon ‘Brown, J. Sime tests of the dey theory of Se neat memory. Quart J exp. Psvhol, 1958, Naar, 193% AD, 0-82 Drast, J. Seva orenztion in the real of ax onneced iene, Pichal.Repy 1957, 8, 37-382 Duss, Jano Rawraen, R.A. Srl 86 Cmastioene, S, Was Gets On thas fo tei, 96, #502, 1. O. The orgunkation of bebesir. New "York Wie, 1948, ina 67 Mero, A. W. Imleations of short-term memary for neal theory af ory. 90, Learn DMosiork, BB) Je. The srl poston eet of Tree roca J, exp. Psyche, 96, 6, 85-88, Persson, L- R, ssn Pemanow, Me J. Short tery ‘etenion of fndvual veka ea 7. es? Pose, 1259, 68 1-08 Posten, Usher memory and incidental Iersog Te A, W. Melon (EA), Category of suman learning. New York: Academe. Prs, Wot Fp. 15-201 Rares, Two determinants of the elt of pric tatey. Amer J. Pychay 136, 48, 6257 Sentry, WH Word frequen abd tr pstlon ‘icc J. verb Lean, terb. Beh 1963, 1, ‘Tuononee, By 80 Loot, 1. Phe teacher's word ‘ook of 4000 words, New York Buren of Pubiiations, Teaches Calle, Calis, Us “mer J. Pech, 1960, 1, 68-78,READING 4 F.1LM. Craik The fate of primary memory items in free recall Reprinted from the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior (1970) 9:143-8 “The question wher ts retrieved rom primary memory (PM areas wel registered Jn memory av tes eve fom secondary memory (SM) Was examined ina feel Stuy was found ha words sn terminal serial positions were reeves mete {ec ut et well na socond eal seo. The conclusion was dan that PM ere Js welliared than SM tens, and the inpications for modes ef memory were exami Subsdia ncing were hat auditory presentation was super to sual preston abd Seiten eal espero spoken reallin PM, Also wordererived init When a subject (5) is presented witha list of unrelated words For free recall, he usually retrieves the last few words in the lst right vay and then augments ths terminal cluster ‘with the recall of words from the beginning and middle of the list. The better recall of terminal items (the recency effect) can be handled by one-process models of memory (Melton, 1963) by postulating that an item's strength or aecessbiiy is very high immed ately after presentation but falls of rapidly as further items are presented. In the last few years, however, several theorists have advo- fated tworprocess- models of memory to describe the results of ree-eeall studies. For ‘example, Waugh and Norman (1965) proposed that the last few words sre retrieved from primary memory (PM) whereas earlier words are retrieved from secondary memory (SM) ‘with greater dificult. While generally acept- ing the PM/SM_ distinction, two-process theorists have themselves split into two camps: those postulating two stores (Atkinson & Shilhi, 968; Glancer & Cunitz, 1966) wnt ‘those who argue for one memory store but two retrieval processes (Tulving, 1968) ‘The one-process model and the (wo-sore ‘model make different predictions regarding the registration in permanent memory of items presented inthe middle and at theend of lis lis known that recall of a word in fre-recall learning facilitates its recall om subsequent trials (Lachman & Laughery, 1968; Tulving, 1967). Thus, since terminal items are recalled best in immediate free recall, they: should receive most facilitation asa group and also be best recalled on a subsequent trial—this is presumably the prediction that one-process ‘models must make, On the other hand, the two-store model described by Atkinson and Shifrin (1968) predicts that terminal items should be recalled least well on @ subsequent ‘rial. This follows from the notion that the shoriterm store contains a rehearsal buffer Which ean hold 4-5 words. Once the buffer is full, further incoming items will knock out words already present—usualy on the p ciple of “frst In, fst out” Words in theThe fate of primary memory items in free recall ‘middle ofthe lst wll thus remain inthe buffer until approximately four further words have been presented, but wordsat the end ofthe list will remain inthe buffer fora shorter time on average since they are retrieved soon after presentation. The model further postulates that the strength of registration in LTM de- pends on the length of an item's stay in the buffer so it follows tht the last wor ins, although better recalled than earlier words in immediaterecall,should havethe east strength in permanent memory ‘The preceding argument reduces to the question of whether PM items ate as well Tearned as SM items. Bjork (1968) explored this problem ina frec-rcal learning study and found better learning of words retrieved from the middle of the list than words retrieved from terminal positions. Inthe present expet- ‘ment, were given ten liss for immediate freerecalland were subsequently asked to recall as many words as they could from all ists. The serial positon curve ofthis “final reall session was then examined to. determine Whether items originally in the teeminal posi tions were recalled better or worse than items from the middle of the lists. H may be pointed fout that this technique difers from that employed by Glanzer and Cunitz (1966). In their study, irrelevant material was inter polated between list presentation and free re call while the present experiment deals with ‘words which have already been recalled once, Other variables of interest were the modes of input and response. Previous researchers hhave used either auditory or visual input and either spoken or written responses with the ‘implicit assumption that provided the words were correctly perceived, such variations should make lite difference. Recent studies, however, have called this assumption into ‘question. Murdock and Walker (1969) have shown that auditory presentation is superior to Visual presentation in singleril free recall ‘and that this superiority is confined tothe last few input positions. With regard to response mode, studies by Murray (1965) and Craik (1969) have showna superiority of written over 69 spoken response in free recall. It was therefore decided 0 conduct the present experiment under the four combinations of auditory or visual presentation with spoken of written re- call to establish either thatthe Findings were general over input and response modes oF imteracted with these modes. More generally, further normative data would also be obtained fon the effects of manipulating input and response moles in free recall Merion “The words usin he exerinent were dan fam a poole 0 common iwo-ylbienours, Foreach these 60 words were fandom sorte int forty IS wordlist, Thus each Sree unig st of sts ‘The Sas gen 1D asin each of foursome each sesion unde fret input response combination {sutory or visual presentation: spoken or wien re Inmet following pouniation wa sien | min Forfre recall. For vial presentation he words were shown iaamemorydrumand forsdry presentation the words were vead by F in tine to 8 metonone. Responses nee ier writen on separate shes for ‘ach it or mere spoken into «dito for ser Trameripton, Afterall othe fen In, Sse gen 10st. Theinsuctios were aa for res eal "Twenty student Sere indy neta of fourassons. Thesosions were at asda apa aid {he order in which S rcved the four inpteponse ‘sombinatons was countertalancs! seen the rou. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Immediate recall scores were broken down into PM and SM components using a method described by Tulving and Colotla (1970) based fon Waugh and Norman (1965). A response is regarded as a PM item if no more than a critical number of other items (iter Further stimulus items or responses) intervened. be- ‘ween the item’ presentation and its recall; it is regarded as an SM item if more than the critical number of stimulus items or recalled responses occurred in the item's intratralre- tentioninterval-This methodhastheadvantage that each word can be identified as having been retrieved from PM or SM. In the present study, the critical numberof intervening items was taken as si, since that number yielded an70 Tworstore models of memory = a4 > Sas Fr. Sra poton curves for diferent input and response mos overall estimate of PM capacity (3.3 words) which was very close to the estimate (3:4 words) calelated by the “guessing crtection’ technique used by Waugh and Norman (1965). Input and Response Modes Figure I shows the serial position curves for ‘auditory and visual presentation (combined ver response mode) and for spoken and written responses (combined over inpt mode). ‘The differences are slight but consistent with previous research findings: auditory presenta- tion superior over the last ew input psitions and spoken recall is poorer over these posi- tions, An analysis of variance onthe PM scores yielded a signifieant effect of input mode, FUL, 19)=693, p08, and of response mode Fl, 19) 9184, p01, but no signifi cant interaction. Thus, although PM dif ferences were slight, they were statistically reliable. A similar analysis on SM scores Yielded no significant effets. seems likely that the effet of input moda Tty was small sine the presentation rate was relatively slow. Murdock and Walker (1969) ‘resented words atthe rates of 2 per see and {per secand found the superiority of auditory presentation to be greater atthe faster rate Presumably input modality would have little ‘no effect at presentation speeds slower than. fone word per 2sec. The superiority of auditory presentation inthe recency positions has been variously attributed to a larger prelinguistic store for auditorily presented material (Mur- ‘dock & Walker, 1969) orto the output from a postlinguistic store augmented by retrieval of terial from prelinguistic stores (Craik, 1969). The latter point of view depends on the argument that after 2-3 sec there still usable information in the auditory relingistc store ‘but none in the corresponding visual store. Sees] ‘SERIAL POSTION Fr. 2 Serial postion cures for inmeiate and final oil,The fate of primary memory items in free recall “The possible reasons forthe superiority of written over spoken recall are even more speculative. Perhaps speaking the fist few responses interferes with information remain- ing in PM. Another possibilty is that if Sis ‘writing his responses, it is easier For him tore hearse the lat few items in the lst which are thus better recalled, Inmediore and Final Reeall Since the input and response manipulations had litle effect om recall, scores from the dif ferent conditions were pooled to examine the serial position curves for immediate and final ‘ecal. Figure 2 shows that immediate recall yielded the classical eral position eurve witha primacy effect for the fist two items, @ Nat ‘middle portion, and a recency effect extending ‘over the last six or seven items. Final recall responses included some words which had not been given in immediate recall, but because of their rarity (less than 2% of the words pre sented) and since they were distributed overall, serial postions, they were excluded from the Calculation of the inal recall serial position curve shown in Figure 2. Thus the final recall, feurve is composed entirely of words which were also recalled in immediate recall, The serial position curve in final recall consist of @ primacy effect, a flat middle portion, and 2 slight but consistent negative recency effect. The reliability ofthis latter effect was assessed ‘by considering the scores on the last seven serial positions since PM items typically aise from these postions (Waugh & Norman, 1965). An analysis of variance on the scores yielded a significant difference between serial Positions, F(6, 114) = 7.44, p= 001, and a ‘rend analysis of variance was also significant, Fl, 138) = 1882, p=.001 TH thus appears that the last Few words pre= sented in alist are recalled best in immediate free recall but show the least probability of recall ona subsequent trial. Tis conclusion is Supported by a conditional probability analy- sis. The probability of a word eccursing in final recall given that it was also retrieved in immediate recall was p -.37. This value was n substantially larger than the probability of final recall given that the word was not retrieved in immediate recall (p ~ 08), and this advantage to. words which had already ‘been recalled was shown by all 20 8. For ‘words which were recalled in both immestate And final tests the probability of final recall given immediate reall from PM was p —.16 while the probability of final recall given im- mediate recall from SM was p—.Sl. The advantage to words recalled initially from SM was shown by all 20 Ss. Thus the retrieval ofa word in the cond recall session depends on Whether the word was retrieved in immediate recall, and, Further, whether it was retrieved initially from PM oF SM. From these results i is concluded that PM items are not as well registered as SM items jna permanent memory system. The “negative recency effet” inthe final recall serial position eure is consistent with the two-store notion that terminal items are held in short-term store very briefly and thus transferred to a longsterm store less effectively, Another pos- sibility, although a les attractive one to the present write, is that PM and SM items are equally well registered in permanent memory but that PM items are less accessible dv, pos sibly, tothe essefficient generation of semantic retrieval ues for terminal items. From the conditional probability analysis, it may be concluded either that words which are easy (0 retrieve once are easy to retrieve ‘again of thatthe first recall of « word has @ faciitatory effect on its later retrieval. I the second explanation is tru, it must be qualified bythe finding that recall rom PM has less of a facilitating effect than recall from SM. Ouiput Position in Immediate Recall AA final analysis was carried out on the relationship between output positon in im mediate recall and probability of retrieval in final reall. Words which are retrieved first in immediate reall are most likely 1o be PM items and so should be retrieved rather poorly in inal recall. As output proceeds, soa greater ‘proportion ofthe words will be retrieved from,72 Tworstore models of memory aeageaes PROPORTION CORRECT A FINAL RECALL a ier mie OUTPUT POSITION I MIMEDIATE RECALL i Probability of eal inal recall asa ution of eulputpsiton ie imetiat recl SM, until after the sisth oF seventh output postion, all words are defined as being from 'SM. On this argument it was expected thatthe probability of rtceval in final recall would first rise with output position and then atten out. However, Figure 3 shows that while there appears to be some tendency forthe curves to flatten out between output positions 7-10, they rise again and even reach p ~ L.00;n wo cases The input-response conditions are shown separately in Figure 3 to make the point that thiscontinued inerease isnot an artefact of one particular condition. As might be expected, very Few Ss recalled 3 many as 18 words in ‘mediate recall (the total numbers of words retrieved in output positions and 15 ‘were 68, 36, and 16, respectively) so the abso- Ite values ofthe lat few points are not to be taken (00 seriously. The continuing upward trend is shown inal four conditions, however, 40 it seems reasonable to conclude that for SSM items there is an additional factor leading to the more efficient retrieval in final recall of ‘words given late in output. This finding goes against the notion, men- tioned previously, that items which are easiest te retrieve in imma recall are also easiest to retrieve in inal recall. Presumably words in ‘output positions 10-1Sare retrieved with some lifeulty, yer they have the highest probability of retrieval in final recall. Two possible exp nations forthe finding may be suggested. One isthat the first reall oF a word acts asa second presentation and that the beneficial effeos of this repetition are greatest with long lags (Melton, 1967). Alternatively, the facilitative ‘effets of immediate recall may depend more fon the process of retrieval, with dificult initial Fetcieval somehow being more beneficial for Tate retrieval Conctusions ‘The results of the present experiment and their significance may be briefly summarized First, in atypical free-recal study, there were no large effects de to either input o response mode. Auditory presentation was supericr to visual presentation and written recall was superior to spoken recall; both ofthese small effects were limited to PM--neither input not response mode affected SM. It seems likely, however, that the differences would be greater at faster presentation rates. Second, although the last words i the pre sentation list were retrieved best in immediate free recall, they had the lowest probability of retrieval inthe final recall session. Since PM items were recalled best immediatly and since iis known that rca Facilitates retieval on a subsequent rial Lachman & Laughery, 1968:‘The fate of primary memory items in free recall ‘Tulving, 1967), it seems necessary for one- process modelsto predict that PM items should also be recalled bes in final recall. The finding ‘that terminal items are retrieved Teast well in final recall would thus seem to pose serious problem for onesprocess models. While the negative receney effet in final recall was specifically predicted from the two-store model (Atkinson & Shifrin, 1968), the result ‘does not constitute evidence against a theory Which postulates two retrieval processes (Tulving, 1968. Finally, it was found thatthe probability of retrieval in final recall was a monotonically increasing function of output positon in immediate recall. At least two phenomena appear to be involved in this effect: words given early in output are more likely to be PM items, but within the set of SM items there is still tendency for words recalled last 10 be Fetrieved best in final recall. Tis later effect may be due to dificult retrieval somehow being more facilitating or it may be a special case ofthe repetition effect noted by Melton (1967) 'A proposed este ands contol preset We Spence and fT. Spence is) Te Povcholny of erning and mova, Vl 2. Nes York: Academe Press 1968. Pp. 89-195 73 Bion, R. The shor term and longterm ees of sjchonomie Soce,St. Lous, 1968 ‘Cra, Fe M. Modality flee in sorter storage Vural of Verbal Learning and Verbal Bearer, 1969, 8, 688-6 CGuasren Me, & Contre, AR Two storage mecha ‘rin ce rec Jour of Verba Learning and Verbal Beato, 1960, 8, 381-30, Lacan Ry Laven KR rates ra tran {he ali fe eal ning? Journal of Exper= ‘mental Pschole 968,16, #00. Mectony A Implications shorter memory or {general theory of memory. Journal of Verbel Leaming and Verbal Bekarior 198, 21-21 ‘Science, 167, 18, 532 -Munoocr, 8, By Dey & WaLxsn, K, D. Modaiy "ects ince cal Journal of Verbal Leaning ond Verbal Bear, 1969, 8, 555-516 Mornay, D. J. Voealaionat-resetation and im- Imofiate eal with varying presentation rate (Quarry doural of Experinetl Psychology, 1965.17, 47-86 ‘Tuosne The effects of presentation and recall ‘of mater i fre tcl! leariag, Jew of Verbal Learning and Verbl Behrior, 1967. 6, ay “Tense, E Theoretical nse ine rcall. nT. ‘Daon and D.L- Horton (Eds), Vr Bekrior lanl general behavior thers. Englewood Cis, NL! Prentice Hall 948 Pp. 2-36 ‘Toavin, Ey & Cotorta, V. Free eal of ing Tn. Cogetie Psychol, 197, 1, 86-98 Waves, NC, & Noman, D. A. Binary memory. Poscholgal Review, WS, 72, 19-108,READING 5 W. Kintsch and H. Buschke Homophones and synonyms in short-term memory Reprinted from the Journal of Experimental Psychology (1869) 80(3):403-7 Difereniat eects acoustic and semantic simirty on primary and sc- dary memory af tows hy analy of short term relent fr reqaenes Ot To words ‘ontsing eitler homophone pits sysonym pal 8 i= ‘lated words, After presentation of each sequees ob of the words in the Sequence war given pre for 5 to seond withthe word that followed the peabe in the sient. Res of early word inthe ts wan teed Estimate the seo memory component of short-term etetin. See dary manory war srongly decency semantic amar Recall of ‘hermast reeet wars in the Kats peowsed& bas Tor emtinaion of pray rmenory. ‘Primary nemory was unafected ty seoartc similarity, Et we Aecreated sigicanty by acoustie similar One argument in favor of a. distinction between primaty and secondary memory has been that they difer in the way material is encoded. According to this view, primary ‘memory depends upon a purely aeoustic code, While sch factors as memingfainess, re dundaney, and acoustic similarity ate. im- portant for long-term tetention, Thus, Acoustic but not semantic factors should af fect primary memory. Previous attempts to test this hypothesis experimentally have yielded ambiguous results. Conrad, Free ‘man, and Hull (1968) studied the retention of sixletter sequences that varied both in statistical predictability and acoustical eon- fuasabilty. They und a large effect of con fusaility and a very stall elect of prediet- ability (one-ffteesth of the acoustic factor) addeley and Dsle (1965) and Baddeley (1966) ‘reported experiments exploring the ‘ffects of semantc similarity. upon short= term retention, In the fist study, no effect was observed; in the second, a sin effect of semantic similarity was found. “However, jn a short-term memory experiment by Dale and Gregory (1966), using a retractive in terference design, more intrisions were ob- served when the interpolated material and Tearning material were semantically similar, ‘These results may mean that semantic sinilarity does affect primary memory, but tora lesser degree than acoustic confusailty. (On: the other band, one could argue that performance in these experiments does nat Sepend upon primary memory alone, It is jointly determined hy both primary and sec- “indary memory. This possibility is clearly limped by such theories as that of Waugh and Norman (1965). Waugh and Norman fssumed that fotal recall can be regarded as the sum of two components, primary and secondary memory. Furthermore, they sug- gested a method in whieh the two compo: rents can be separated analytialy. This ‘method may be used to reformulate the prob= Jems discussed previously, so that the con- founding between primary and secondary memory, present in any set of retetion data, can be avoided. The hypothesis tebe tested here is that acoustic similarity affects theHomophones and synonyms in shortterm memory 75 primary component of retention, but seman- tic similarity does not. On the other band, the secondary component of retention is surely dependent upon semantic. factors, ‘while acoustic factors may of may not play a role. In both experiments reported here, the probe procedure of Waugh and Norman (965) was used. A Tist of 16 words was presented to S, and after a warning sigeal, 1 word of the ist was repeated. The S's task was to respond with that word in the Hist that immediately followed the probe, Tn Exp. I, the experimental lists were made from synonym pairs; in Exp. 1, Tists con- structed from Homophone pairs were used Exveanicent I Method Subjecte—The Se in this experiment were 30 soles irom the University of Calfrnis t Fiveside. ‘They were gal for thelr parcpation fn he experiment Lins-—Twerty Hits of 16 nested words were Gictovse (184) count fr seirandocn ay, Sch that the sums of the Thorndike Longe fre ‘quencies of the words in ach et fered by les thon LO." Twenty syrongn liste were constricted from 160 syzanpn pir cane fom a yen Aiionary. The sums of the Torrie Large fre ‘tenis of the words inthe synonym lists were ‘Gngaratie to hove of the snelatd liste Each ‘yen fst was made up of eight pais arranged Ttunim order withthe retion tat the moe Heys ota gr sever seceded each aber i he i "A probe ord was chosen for enc Uist 0 that, item Poston 3 Te 1s and TS were tested oor Ges each fer omelet od aly often for syoonye late Procedure Lists were taperecorded at a rate of 2 sex. per Word Belore the presetation of fach ist bell sald § tobe ser The S was Gerard fe bur tention on every word at [Evra presented and not to rehearsed words At the ead of a lists ball sounded again, (allowed by the prote word. The then atemgted to resbopd ‘i at ord ine Ht sat lowe he ie res as much Une ashe oid to feed Tero Sraralpeed price Its preceded the 40 expe. Sten sts Syoonye and airtel Hats were Beseted i random order, with 20 se. between Se serpent the start ofthe next Tat Thee Fic. 1 Probailty of rsall of synonyms and melted words ar faction of seria postin Recults The proportions of correct responses for cach position tested are shown in Fig. 1 ‘The data from Positions 3 and 7 have heen pooled to obtain a more stable estimate of the asymptote of the retention curve, (Over. all percentage correct was 15 at Postion 3 and 14 at Position 7.) Connecting lines have heen drawn on the assumption thatthe overall pattern of results would be similar to that of Wangh and Norman (1965). The total number of correct responses per S was significantly higher for snrelatl words than for synonyms, p'<.01,.(Signifiemece state- ments refer to the Wileoxon matched-pairs test unless otherwise roted,) Estimates of the secnary components of short-term retention for synonyms and for unrelated words are provided hy comparison of the total nszler of correct responses jn Serial Positions 3 and 7. As Fig. 1 shows, retention for unrelated words is almost twice that for synonyms, p <.01 “Although the total nombier of correct re- sponses in Serial Positions 11, 13, and 15 also is greater for unrelated words than for Synonyms, p <.08, this may be due to the tilference in secondary memory father than in primary memory since both eonteibute to performance in these positions. Watgh and Norman (1968) have sagested that the probability of retention of an item in Posi tion #, PCR), is POR) = PC) + P43) = PPR), (1) where P(py) is the probability that Item i