Rehearsal and transfer to LTM

Rehearsal has been viewed as serving to maintain items in short-term memory (STM) and transfer information to long-term memory. This experiment contrasted that position with one that assigns rehearsal the single function of maintaining items in STM. Lists were first recalled either immediately after presentation, after a 15-sec silent delay (which allowed the greatest amount of rehearsal) or after 15 sec of rehearsal-preventing activity (filled delay). Initial recall of words from terminal serial positions was lowest in the filled delay condition. Results were opposite on a final free-recall test; filled delay produced highest recall of terminal items. Encoding and retrieval interpretations of the results were considered.