A model for short-term memory is described and evaluated. A variety of experimental data are shown to be consistent with the following statements, (a) Unrehearsed verbal stimuli tend to be quickly forgotten because they are interfered with by later items in a series and not because their traces decay in time, (b) Rehearsal may transfer an item from a very limited primary memory store to a larger and more stable secondary store, (c) A recently perceived item may be retained in both stores at the same time. The properties of these 2 independent memory systems can be separated by experimental and analytical methods.

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Older people seem to have difficulty learning new materials, perhaps because it takes them longer to retrieve relevant encoding information from memory. To assess the effects of age on speed of retrieval, 60 healthy males from 25 to 74 were shown pictures of common objects they were to name aloud as quickly as possible. The older subjects took longer to name the pictured objects. This difference was minimized with practice or when the name was cued, but did not interact with word frequency. The pattern of results for healthy older subjects was not similar to that found by Wingfield for brain-damaged subjects.

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