title: Evidence for decay in verbal short-term memory: a commentary on Berman, Jonides, and Lewis (2009).
abstract: M. G. Berman, J. Jonides, and R. L. Lewis (2009) adapted the recent-probes task to investigate the causes of forgetting in short-term memory. In 7 experiments, they studied the persistence of memory traces by assessing the level of proactive interference generated by previous-trial items over a range of intertrial intervals. None of the experiments found a reduction in proactive interference over time, which they interpreted as evidence against time-based decay. However, it is possible that decay actually occurred over a shorter time period than was tested in this study, wherein the shortest decay interval was 3,300 ms. By reducing the time scale, the 2 experiments reported in the current commentary revealed a sharp decrease in proactive interference over time, with this reduction reaching a plateau in less than 3 s. This pattern suggests that decay operates in the early stages, whereas subsequent forgetting is likely to be due to interference.
authors: University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain. gcampoy@um.es
authors: Guillermo
authors: G
authors: Campoy
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D014706:Verbal Learning