Buildup of proactive inhibition (PI) in the Brown-Peterson paradigm is interpreted in terms of the cue-overload principle: The probability of recalling an item declines with the number of items subsumed by its functional retrieval cue. In contrast to a registration interpretation, the cue-overload view predicts that if the effects of initial recall and of differential recency are controlled, performance in a delayed test of all items from successive lists will be independent of their presentation order. This prediction is supported in Experiment 1. A long series of Brown-Peterson trials was presented, with the items in each block of three trials belonging to the same conceptual category and with initial recall tested only occasionally. The final recall of items from initially untested categories was independent of within-category list position. The cue-overload principle gains further support from Experiment 2 which, with a procedure similar to the first experiment, showed that level of final recall varied inversely with the number of lists in the category. The relation of the buildup of PI effect to other memory phenomena is discussed.

The ability to control encoding and retrievalprocessesstrategicallyis criticalfor the efficientuse of memory. We examined the ability of younger and older adults to selectively remember words on the basis of their arbitrary point values by using a technique developed by Watkins and Bloom (1999). In the first three experiments, younger subjects recalled more words than did older subjects, but an independent index of recall selectivity showed that older subjects were apparently more successful in selecting higher valued words. However, a fourth experiment showed that this superior selectivityon the part of older adults was attributable to their greaterproportional reliance on primary memory recall. Overall, the data suggest that although older adults recall fewer words than do younger adults, they exert as much control over some aspects of encoding.

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Documented here is a bias whereby items are more likely to be judged as having been presented beforehand if they are disguised in some way and so have to be discovered or "revealed." The bias was found for test words that were unfolded letter by letter (Experiments 1 and 3), presented with their letters either transposed (Experiments 2 and 3), or individually rotated (Experiments 4 and 5), or rotated as a whole (Experiment 5), and for test numbers that were presented in the form of roman numerals (Experiment 6) or equations (Experiment 7). The bias occurred both for items that were presented beforehand and for those that were not. No bias was found when words were judged, not for prior occurrence, but for typicality as category instances (Experiment 8), lexicality (Experiment 9), frequency of general usage (Experiment 10), or number of times encountered during the preceding week (Experiment 11).

The effects of word frequency on memory span were explored using the "up-and-down" method. Mean spans were greatest when the sequences were of all high-frequency words (5.82), and smallest when they were of all low-frequency words (4.24). For mixed-frequency sequences, mean spans were greater when the high-frequency words were presented before the low-frequency words (5.19) than when the low-frequency words came first (4.65). The findings are discussed in terms of the primary-secondary memory distinction worked out for single-trial free recall, and the logic of this distinction is used to argue against attributing span performance to a simple unitary process.The concept of memory span is as old as the experimental study of memory itself. Thus, in the very first such investigation, Ebbinghaus (l885/1964) found that he could almost always reproduce a series of up to seven items after just a single presentation, whereas for longer series correct reproduction usually required many presentations. Shortly after publication of Ebbinghaus' monograph, it was shown that the immediate memory span, or "span of prehension," was a valid measure of mental capacity (Galton, 1887; Jacobs, 1887), and it soon found its place in clinical diagnosis and intelligence testing.Despite its splendid history, the concept of memory span has been subjected to remarkably little critical analysis. Today we know hardly any more about memory span, about the extraordinary effect of increasing list length over a comparatively short range, than Ebbinghaus knew. This neglect is made the more striking by the intensive current interest in the immediate serial recall of supraspan lists. No doubt the primary reason for this discrepancy lies in the difference in the readiness with which span and supraspan recall submit to analysis. In particular, the items of supra span lists can be classified according to whether or not they are recalled, thereby allowing serial position functions to be drawn, analyzed, and given a theoretical interpretation. With span recall, on the other hand, we lack suitable techniques for revealing any influence of serial position. The purpose of this paper is to suggest one such technique, and to use it to test the hypothesis that span recall is the product of a simple unitary process.Before proceeding to the experiment, it is perhaps important to consider the relevance for span recall of the findings and theories of supraspan research. It might be held that whether list length is just short This research was supported by National RelleUch Council of Canada Grant A8632 to Endel Tulving. Requests for reprints may be sent to Michael J. Watkins at the Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. enough or just too long for perfect reproduction has little effect on the underlying mechanisms. We will argue that there are currently few if any good reasons for this view. A rather different view is that, unlike supraspan recall, the perfect reproduction of a list reflects a basic attribute of mental functio...

A new descriptive theory of memory traces is presented. The memory trace is (a) conceptualized as a collection of trace elements and (b) defined in terms of the relation between the conditions and the product of retrieval. The properties of a trace thus defined are quantitatively described by measuring the gross, common, and reduced valences of two (or more) retrieval cues. These valences are determined by successively probing the target event with each of the cues. The data yielded by the successive probes are then used to construct the matrix or structure of the trace by means of the reduction method. The logic of this method, and hence the general theory, is applicable to a large variety of to-be-remembered material. A demonstration experiment showed that the structure of the traces of to-be-remembered word-events is sensitive to the conditions of initial encoding, and that forgetting of these events, under conditions of output interference, consists in a distinctive change in the pattern of trace elements. Some potential criticisms of the theory are considered.

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In a recognition memory test for ajust-studied word list, subjects responded positively or negatively to each test word in the presence of another subject, with the two taking turns to call out their responses. Responses given second tended to conform to those given first. This was so for responses to both targets and lures and following both positive and negative first responses, although the effect was sharply reduced for targets given a negative first response. The same pattern of results was obtained in a second experiment, in which an incognito confederate replaced one of the subjects and so brought one set of responses under full experimenter control. These experiments illustrate a powerful effect of social pressure on recognition responses.