Six groups of Ss viewed briefly exposed arrays of letters, half designated high-valued and half low-valued. Immediately after each exposure Ss wrote down as many of the stimuli as they could remember. For three groups, the number of letters in each exposure was constant from trial to trial; for the remaining three groups, the number of letters in each exposure varied from trial to trial. This tested the hypothesis that load variability innuences the development of an efficient response strategy which,in turn, affects the processing of information stored in short-term memory. The data supported this hypothesis. Performance was sup'erior under the constant load condition due to the ability of these Ss to correctly report both high-and low-valued letters. Poor performance was observed under the variable load condition because of a decrease in the number of low valued letters correctly reported.
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