No temporal decay in verbal short-term memory

Many models of short-term memory (STM) ascribe an important role to temporal decay and forgetting because of the passage of time alone. We argue against decay as the primary form of forgetting from STM, and suggest that new experimental methodologies and recent models provide new perspectives on the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in cognitive sciences 2009-03, Vol.13 (3), p.120-126
Main Authors: Lewandowsky, Stephan, Oberauer, Klaus, Brown, Gordon D.A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Learning. Memory
Memory
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Mental Recall - physiology
Neurology
Phonetics
Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Time Factors
Vocabulary
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Summary:Many models of short-term memory (STM) ascribe an important role to temporal decay and forgetting because of the passage of time alone. We argue against decay as the primary form of forgetting from STM, and suggest that new experimental methodologies and recent models provide new perspectives on the old issue of the causes of forgetting. We show that several classic sources of evidence for time-based forgetting can be re-interpreted in terms of an interference-based view, and that new experiments provide compelling evidence against decay. We conclude that progress requires moving beyond demonstrations of qualitative effects and focusing instead on testing quantitative predictions of models.
ISSN:1364-6613
1879-307X
DOI:10.1016/j.tics.2008.12.003