According to temporal distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors during list presentation are more distinct and thus should be recalled better. Contrary to that expectation of distinctiveness views, much recent evidence has shown that forward short-term serial recall is unaffected by temporal isolation. We…

This article presents four experiments that tested predictions of SOB (Serial Order in a Box), an interference-based theory of short-term memory. Central to SOB is the concept of novelty-sensitive encoding, which holds that items are encoded to the extent that they differ from already-encoded information. On the additional assumption that…

According to temporal distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors during list presentation are more distinct and thus should be recalled better. Event-based theories, by contrast, deny that time plays a role at encoding and predict no beneficial effect of temporal isolation, although they acknowledge that a…