Esd - Tdr - 64 - 254 Short - Term Memory : Non - Equivalence of Query and Message Items

This study was designed to discover whether query and message items are equivalent in their effect on short-term memory in situations where a person is required to process a sequence of messages while concurrently processing queries about them. It was assumed that recall is consistently degraded as the number of items interpolated between a message and its subsequent query increases. It was hypothesized that this degradation is greater for those subsequences with interpolated queries than for those containing messages only. The results showed that interpolated queries do degrade recall significantly more than do messages. PUBLICATION REVIEW AND APPROVAL This Technical Documentary Report has been reviewed and is approved. DONALD W. CONNOLLY Chief, Display Division Decision Sciences Laboratory ROYMORGAN, Colonel, USAF Director Decision Sciences Laboratory