Elsevier

Cognitive Psychology

Volume 36, Issue 2, July 1998, Pages 138-202
Cognitive Psychology

Regular Article
The Demonstration of Short-Term Consolidation,☆☆

https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1998.0684Get rights and content

Abstract

In a dual-task paradigm, a visual display (T1) containing characters (letters or symbols) was presented first, followed by an auditory signal (T2) at various stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). A speeded response to T2was required. When the information in T1had to be recalled later, response times to T2(RT2) were elevated at short SOAs and decreased as SOA was increased. The effects on RT2were larger when there were more items to be remembered. We interpreted the results as evidence that encoding information into short-term memory (STM) involves a distinct process, which we call short-term consolidation (STC). The results suggested that STC has limited capacity and that it requires central processing mechanisms. Additional evidence suggested that no memory for T1was formed in STM when STC was not engaged.

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    This work was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We thank Marg Ingleton for technical assistance.

    Address correspondence and reprint requests to Pierre Jolicœur, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1. Fax: 519-746-8631. E-mail:[email protected]. Web: http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/∼pjolicoe.

    ☆☆

    K. W. Spence

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