OBSERVATIONS Analysis of the List-Strength Effect

In several articles, Shiffrin et al. (e.g., Shiffrin, Ratcliff, & Clark, 1990) argued that their data on the list-strength effect (LSE), in conjunction with their data on the list-length effect (LLE), are counter to current global matching memory models (GMMs). This is only true if one assumes that the memory system is reinitialized after every list, which is an unrealistic default assumption present in many implementations of GMMs. By making the more reasonable assumption that memory is continuous, it is shown that TODAM (and probably other GMMs) does in fact predict the LSE and LLE data.