Distinctiveness revisited: Unpredictable temporal isolation does not benefit short-term serial recall of heard or seen events

Abstract

The notion of a link between time and memory is intuitively appealing and forms the core assumption of temporal distinctiveness models. Distinctiveness models predict that items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors at presentation should be recalled better than items that are temporally crowded. By contrast, event-based theories consider time to be incidental to the processes that govern memory, and such theories would not imply a temporal isolation advantage unless participants engaged in a consolidation process (e.g., rehearsal or selective encoding) that exploited the temporal structure of the list. In this report, we examine two studies that assessed the effect of temporal distinctiveness on memory, using auditory (Experiment 1) and auditory and visual (Experiment 2) presentation with unpredictably varying interitem intervals. The results show that with unpredictable intervals temporal isolation does not benefit memory, regardless of presentation modality.

Turning simple span into complex span: Time for decay or interference from distractors?

“…Taking efforts to suppress rehearsal a step further, Oberauer and Lewandowsky (2008) additionally asked people to perform a symbolic choice task together with AS in the experimentally varied delay periods; despite the addition of this second distractor task, no time-based forgetting was observed. Likewise, the absence of temporal isolation effects mentioned earlier (Lewandowsky et al, 2006; Nimmo & Lewandowsky, 2005, 2006) was observed while people engaged in AS during encoding, and the lack of an overall temporal separation effect reported by Oberauer and Lewandowsky (2008) also arose in the presence of AS. It follows that the pervasive absence of temporal effects in short-term serial recall can hardly reflect a coincidental equilibrium between the two opposing processes of decay and rehearsal.…”

“…Despite initial suggestions that temporal isolation has a beneficial effect on STM (e.g., Neath & Crowder, 1996), much recent evidence shows that serial retrieval from STM is largely immune to the effects of temporal separation (e.g., Lewandowsky, Brown, Wright, & Nimmo, 2006; Nimmo & Lewandowsky, 2005, 2006). It is now known that when list items are separated by unpredictably varying intervals, and when encoding strategies such as subjective grouping are adequately controlled, temporal isolation does not facilitate immediate serial recall.…”

Time-dependent forgetting in visual short-term memory

“…Rademaker et al (2018) have criticised blocked designs (e.g. where the ITI is consistent throughout a sequence of trials) as it introduces fatigue effects, but the use of fixed or variables ITIs also affects predictability (see Nimmo & Lewandowsky, 2006). That is, when ITI is fixed, participants can anticipate whether the next trial will begin rapidly or not, and potentially utilise different strategies as a result.…”

Benchmarks for models of short-term and working memory.

“…SR: Cowan and Morey (2007); Logie et al (1990); Sanders and Schroots (1969) CD: Cowan and Morey (2007); Delvenne and Bruyer (2004); Fougnie and Marois (2006); Fougnie and Marois (2009) SR: Smyth and Pendleton (1990) IRec: Depoorter and Vandierendonck (2009) RRec: Depoorter and Vandierendonck (2009) CS: Barrouillet et al (2004); Barrouillet et al (2007); Barrouillet et al (2011); Camos et al (2009); Hudjetz and Oberauer (2007); Liefooghe et al (2008) Brown, Morin, and Lewandowsky (2006) Running memory span: Geiger and Lewandowsky (2008) IRec: C. Morin et al (2010) ROO: Lewandowsky et al (2006) 9.1.2. No temporal isolation effects in forward serial recall and serial recognition (C) SR: Nimmo and Lewandowsky (2005); Nimmo and Lewandowsky (2006) SRec: Farrell and McLaughlin (2007) SR: Peteranderl and Oberauer (2017) SR: Parmentier, King, et al (2006) 9.1.3 Nontemporal isolation effects (B) SR: Smith & Stearns (1949) (anticipation method) IRec: von Restorff (1933)/ Hunt (1995) PR: Calkins (1894) FR: Bireta et al (2008); Welch and Burnett (1924) ROO: Lippman (1980); Lippman and Lippman (197...…”