This study investigated interrespon.se times in single-trial free recall. Each of 72'5s was given 20 test lists with 20-word lists presented (visually) at either 60 or 120 words per min. Spoken recall was tape-recorded for off-line analysis. It was found that rate of recall was inversely related to the number of words actually recalled and that interrepsonse times were inversely related to the number of words yet to recall. There was some evidence to suggest that the interresponse time distributions were exponential. It was suggested that these data could be consonant with a random-sampling model for singletrial free recall.

Reaction time in Sternberg's memory retrieval task with both short and long lists is a bilinear function of list length, changing slope at the limits of memory span. Separate long-term and short-term retrieval processes are implied. An alternative one-process model expressed by a logarithmic function is also considered.

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Burrows and Okada (1975) found that reaction time in an item recognition task was a monotonic but non-linear function of memory set size when set size varied from two to 20. A bilinear function with a steep slope for short lists and a shallow slope for long lists provided a good description of the data. Two experiments were conducted to determine whether the difference in slope between long and short lists arises from the extra attention devoted to, or rehearsal of, items within the span of immediate memory. Rehearsal of a prememorized list was discouraged by including a counting backwards task (Experiment I) or by presenting a second list of items that required processing (Experiment 11). In neither experiment did the subsidiary task reduce the slope difference. It would appear that the slope difference is not a result of rehearsal of subspan lists.