Nonhuman animals, like humans, appear sensitive to the structure of the elements of sequences, perhaps even when the structure relates nonadjacent elements. In the present study, we examined the contribution of chunking, rule learning, and item memory when rats learned serial patterns composed of two interleaved subpatterns. In one group, the…

The present research examined self-reported rehearsal processes in naturalistic time-based prospective memory tasks (Study 1 and 2) and compared them with the processes in event-based tasks (Study 3). Participants had to remember to phone the experimenter either at a prearranged time (a time-based task) or after receiving a certain text message…

In three experiments using a single-trial, free-recall procedure, subjects were sometimes presented a forget cue during a list, meaning that they were not responsible for recalling any of the words which preceded it, only those which followed it. Since the primacy effect over the functional beginning of such lists was not diminished, the proactive…

Examines the familiar serial to derived paired-associates transfer task in the light of expectations about the amount of positive transfer it should produce. Suggests, contrary to long-standing assumptions, that this paradigm cannot be expected to yield more than relatively moderate degrees of transfer because the utilization of response-produced…

Several different issues in the temporal coding of words were subjected to experimental analysis. Two experiments evaluated three response measures (recency judgments, position judgments, lag judgments) used to index temporal coding. Lag judgments were found to be of little use; subjects could make valid position and recency judgments without…

Ratcliff's theory of memory retrieval which posits parallel processing and Sternberg's serial processing explanation of memory scanning are reviewed and contrasted. Discrepancy between the two theories may arise because they focus on different aspects of the data. If scanning without comparisons takes place, the two views may be reconciled.…

Kindergarten, second-grade, fifth-grade, and college subjects were tested in a serial-position recall task under each of four conditions: Visual stimuli/visual recall cue, visual stimuli/auditory recall cue, auditory stimuli/visual recall cue, auditory stimuli/auditory recall cue. Visual stimuli were pictures of common animals and objects;…