MEANINGFULNESS AND ABSTRACTNESS IN SHORT-TERM MEMORY

3 EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED USING UNDERGRADUATE PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS. RECALL FOR SETS OF WORDS WERE TESTED AFTER SHORT (3 OR 4 SEC.) OR LONG (18 OR 20 SEC.) RETENTION INTERVALS. THE NUMBER OF SETS PRIOR TO ANY RECALL PERIOD DEFINED THE AMOUNT OF PROACTIVE INTERFERENCE (PI). RESULTS INDICATE THAT ABSTRACTNESS (A) HAD A SIGNIFICANT EFFECT ON THE COURSE OF SHORT-TERM MEMORY (STM) WHEN VARIED INDEPENDENTLY OF MEANINGFULNESS (M) AND FREQUENCY. IN CONTRAST, M EFFECTS WERE SIGNIFICANT ONLY WHEN A WAS NOT CONTROLLED. THE DIFFERENCES IN STM FOR HIGH-M, LOW-A AND LOW-M, HIGH-A MATERIALS WERE NOT DEPENDENT UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PI. DECAY OF THE MEMORY TRACE AS WELL AS PI WERE CONSIDERED IN ATTEMPTING TO EXPLAIN THE OPERATIONS OF M AND A IN STM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1968 American Psychological Association.