The role of rehearsal in short-term memory

Craik, Fergus I. M.; Watkins, Michael J.

doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(73)80039-8

Cited by 525 publications

(297 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…If retrieval occurs from primary memory, there will probably be little advantage in the long term. Maintenance rehearsal is a form of repeated retrieval from short-term memory and provides little or no benefit to recall (e.g., Craik & Watkins, 1973). Of course, the optimum delay for a test to have a positive effect on long-term retention may depend on the task employed and other factors, as we elaborate in the General Discussion section.…”

Section: Prior Research On Expanding Retrievalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention.

Karpicke¹,

Roediger²

2007

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

269

299

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Expanding retrieval practice (T. K. Landauer & R. A. Bjork, 1978) is regarded as a superior technique for promoting long-term retention relative to equally spaced retrieval practice. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors found that expanding retrieval practice of vocabulary word pairs produced short-term benefits 10 min after learning, conceptually replicating Landauer and Bjork's results. However, equally spaced retrieval produced superior retention 2 days later. This pattern occurred both with and without feedback after test trials. In Experiment 3, the 1st test occurred immediately or after a brief delay, and repeated tests were expanding or equally spaced. Delaying the first test improved long-term retention, regardless of how the repeated tests were spaced. The important factor for promoting long-term retention is delaying initial retrieval to make it more difficult, as is done in equally spaced retrieval but not in expanding retrieval. Expanding the interval between repeated tests had little effect on long-term retention in 3 experiments.

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Section: Prior Research On Expanding Retrievalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention.

Karpicke¹,

Roediger²

2007

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

269

299

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“…As indicated earlier, the original levels of processing account suggested that maintenance rehearsal produces no lasting effect whatsoever (e.g., Craik & Lockhart, 1972;Craik & Watkins, 1973;Rundus, 1977), and a later modification suggested that it strengthens the phonemic components of the memory trace without creating the associative pathways that might facilitate delayed recall (e.g., Glenberg & Adams, 1978). Baddeley (1990) recently proposed a similar account, according to which maintenance rehearsal serves to "prime" existing representations without creating associations between previously unrelated items or between an item and its experimental context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Conditions and consequences of maintenance rehearsal.

Wixted¹

1991

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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The present experiments investigated the idea that the anticipated delay to initial recall governs whether a subject will rely on elaborative or maintenance rehearsal. In agreement with earlier research, the results suggested that maintenance rehearsal is used only when words can be rehearsed up to the moment of recall. A novel finding concerned the accessibility of the items processed in that way. When subjects were explicitly asked to recall those items first in final free recall, they were as likely to be recalled as items that had been processed elaboratively. This finding suggests that even rote rehearsal creates an accessible memory trace, albeit one that is most efficiently accessed by contextual rather than semantic cues.Following the introduction of the levels of processing framework, one prominent line of research investigated the effects of various orienting tasks on delayed memory performance (Craik & Lockhart, 1972;Craik & Tulving, 1975). The typical finding from this literature was that tasks involving semantic analysis lead to better recall of words than tasks involving structural or phonemic analyses (Lewandowsky & Hockley, 1987). A second line of research fostered by the levels of processing framework investigated the conditions under which subjects will naturally rely on different levels of processing when they are attempting to memorize a list of words. The central question addressed in this literature is whether subjects choose to devote semantic (or elaborative) rehearsal to some words and simple rote (or maintenance) rehearsal to others. Indeed, as described below, dynamic shifts in rehearsal strategy appear to be the norm. The experiments described herein were intended to further advance this line of inquiry, with particular emphasis on the conditions giving rise to and the enduring consequences of maintenance rehearsal.Most of the research on the issue of rehearsal strategy is consistent with the idea that subjects use some form of elaborative rehearsal unless it is clear that the items being rehearsed can be maintained indefinitely (i.e., up to the moment of recall). When that condition obtains, elaborative strategies are essentially superfluous and may be abandoned in favor of simple maintenance rehearsal (Gotz & Jacoby, 1974;Jacoby & Bartz, 1972;Meunier, Ritz, & Meunier, 1972;Roenker, 1974;Watkins & Watkins, 1974). In a standard list memory procedure, the initial items of a list cannot be rehearsed indefinitely because of the incoming stream of subsequent items. Thus, the initial items would seem to be the most likely candidates for elaborative rehearsal. The last few items of a list, on the other hand, can be rehearsed unencumbered until the recall period begins just a few moments later. As a result, these items would seem to be the most likely candidates for I would like to express thanks to Heidi Squire, Julie Baroway, Paul Havig, and Barbara Schneider for their assistance in data collection, and Robert Greene, Mark McDaniel, and Vito Modigliani for their thoughtful commentaries on ...

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“…We do not find this explanation satisfactory because of two findings. First, results have shown that the number of rehearsals does not necessarily predict long-term retention (Craik and Watkins, 1973;Glenberg, Smith & Green, 1972). Second, even when rehearsal is suppressed, a primacy effect remains, albeit smaller in size (Marshall & Werder, 1972;.…”

Section: Primacy Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency Effects on Memory: A Resource-Limited Theory

Popov¹,

Reder²

2018

Preprint

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We present a review of frequency effects in memory, accompanied by a theory of memory, according to which the storage of new information in long-term memory (LTM) depletes a limited pool of working memory (WM) resources as an inverse function of item strength. We support the theory by showing that items with stronger representations in LTM (e.g. high frequency items) are easier to store, bind to context, and bind to one another; that WM resources are involved in storage and retrieval from LTM; that WM capacity is greater for stronger, more familiar stimuli. We present a novel analysis of preceding item strength, in which we show from eight existing studies that memory for an item is higher if during study it was preceded by a stronger item (e.g. a high frequency word; HF). This effect is cumulative (the more prior items are HF, the better), continuous (memory proportional to word frequency of preceding item), interacts with current item strength (larger for weaker items) and interacts with lag (decreases as the lag between the current and prior study item increases). A computational model that implements the theory is presented, which accounts for these effects. We discuss related phenomena that the model/theory can explain.

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The role of rehearsal in short-term memory

Cited by 525 publications

References 17 publications

Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention.

Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention.

Conditions and consequences of maintenance rehearsal.

Frequency Effects on Memory: A Resource-Limited Theory

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