Task conditions and short-term memory search: two-phase model of STM search

• Authors: Jarosław Orzechowski , Edward Nęcka , Robert Balas
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Short-term memory (STM) search, as investigated within the Sternberg paradigm, is usually described as exhaustive rather than self-terminated, although the debate concerning these issues is still hot. We report three experiments employing a modified Sternberg paradigm and show that whether STM search is exhaustive or self-terminated depends on task conditions. Specifically, STM search self-terminates as soon as a positive match is found, whereas exhaustive search occurs when the STM content does not contain a searched item. Additionally, we show that task conditions influence whether familiarity- or recollection-based strategies dominate STM search performance. Namely, when speeding up the tempo of stimuli presentation increases the task demands, people use familiarity-based retrieval more often, which results in faster but less accurate recognition judgments. We conclude that STM search processes flexibly adapt to current task conditions and finally propose two-phase model of STM search.

Keywords

EN

short-term memory; STM retrieval; STM search; Sternberg paradigm; familiarity; recollection

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 12-20

Dates

published

2016-04-01

online

2016-05-14

Contributors

author

Jarosław Orzechowski

• Jagiellonian University, Poland

author

Edward Nęcka

• Jagiellonian University, Poland

author

Robert Balas

• Polish Academy of Sciences, Pola

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/ppb-2016-0002