REPETITION AND ENCODING IN SHORT-TERM MEMORY

Conducted 3 experiments, with 192, 100, and 450 undergraduates, respectively, to determine whether improvement on a repeated item in a short-term memory (STM) task is due to differential encoding or incremental strengthening. The Peterson distractor technique was used. It was demonstrated that although a class of repetitions tended to exhibit the same proactive inhibition effects as a new class of material, it did not allow interference from nonrepeated items to dissipate. It is concluded that initial trace strength was equivalent on each trial of the STM task and that a repetition increased the strength of that item, placing it above the others at recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.