Short-term storage and long-term storage in recall.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses short-term storage (STS) and long-term storage (LTS). In the case of free recall, a major reason for assuming the flow and the separate storage mechanisms lies in a very prominent and reliable characteristic of free recall, the serial position function. It is found that when the probability of recall of an item is plotted as a function of the position of the item in presentation, a bimodal curve is obtained. Subjects are most likely to recall the end items, next most likely the beginning items, and are least likely to recall the middle items of the list. It is found that as the beginning and end of the serial position curve respond differently to a range of experimental variables, the positions are considered to represent output from different storage mechanisms. A major part of the end peak is considered to consist of output from STS. The early sections of the curve are considered to consist solely of output from LTS. There are two main methods of separating the output from STS and LTS. The interaction method consists of imposing variables on the free-recall task and observing differential effects on the serial position curve.