IMPROVED RECALL FOR DIGITS WITH DELAYED RECALL CUES

10 highly practiced undergraduates recalled 9-digit series under 5 conditions of presentation: a control condition and 4 conditions where the stimulus as presented included a redundant element at the end (i.e., a suffix). The delay between the last to-be-remembered element and the redundant suffix was .5, 2, 5, and 10 sec., respectively, in the 4 experimental conditions. Results showed that all conditions with the redundant suffix led to more errors than the control condition. However, only when the shortest suffix delay was used was there a selective impairment of performance in the last few serial positions. Findings were consistent with a set of hypotheses about storage in the auditory system and permitted estimation of the decay constant for each auditory storage from 1.5-2 sec. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.