RECOGNITION TIMES FOR ITEMS IN SHORT- AND LONG-TERM MEMORY

Reaction times were measured in a classification task which imposed a concurrent load on short- and long-term memory. Ss were required to identify the class membership ('positive' or 'negative') of two types of test stimuli. For long-term items, the class assignment remained constant throughout the course of the experiment; for short-term items, it was specified anew on each trial. The results offered no support for the view that S accomplishes the classification task by a search through a unitary short-term or active memory to which the contents of long-term memory have been transferred. To the contrary, they tended to favor the conjecture that the two sets of items (long- and short-term) are maintained in memory stores sufficiently distinct that one may be operated upon independently of the other. © 1969.