Access to elements of a memorized list

McGill UniversityThe & watched series of one, two, three, four, or six letters presented visually,one every 300 msec., and then decided if a probe letter, presented 600 msec,later, was or was not in the original list. Decision time increased with thenumber of letters in a series; the increase was more pronounced for YES thanfor NO decisions. Within the four- and six-letter sequences, there were pro-nounced primacy and recency effects. These results favor a theory that 5 hasdirect access to an internal representation of the probe letter and decidesYES or NO depending on its memory strength. They are inconsistent withtheories which hold that 5 scans through the series to discover whether theprobe is there.

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