The effect of a concurrent task on recall from primary memory

An experiment is described which shows that a nonverbal task performed concurrently with list presentation causes a decrement in primary-memory recall for visual lists but not for auditory lists. It is concluded that continued attention is necessary to maintain information in primary memory, that a preattentive echoic store can mediate terminal item recall for auditory lists, and that forgetting from primary memory is related to the difficulty of an additional task.

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