Interference And Short Term Memory

11 Pages 2637 Words

Running Head: INTERFERENCE and SHORT-TERM MEMORY
The Effects of a Distracting Activity on Short-Term Memory

Abstract
The present study examined the effects of short-term memory forgetting under the delay of a distracting task. Eleven subjects were asked to remember three consonants while counting backwards by 3’s for varying amounts of time (3-, 9-, 18-sec). An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data and post hocs were done to measure the differences between the levels. The results showed that the retention of the consonants depended on the retention interval, with good performance over short intervals and poor performance after intervals that just 18-sec. in duration. The implications of these findings are discussed.
The Effects of a Distracting Activity on Short-Term Memory
We encounter a great deal of new information in our daily lives. The particular way in which we think about new information affect the ease with which we learn it and the likelihood we can remember it later on. Memory is said to be the primary aspect of cognitive processes. Generally cognitive psychologists divide memory into three stores: sensory store, short-term store, and long-term store. The sensory store is the component of memory that holds the information that has been received in its original unencoded form. Everything that the body is capable of seeing, hearing, or otherwise sensing is stored in the sensory memory. The sensory store has a large capacity but can only hold the information for a short period of time with visual information lasting less than a second, and auditory information lasting two to three seconds. Short-term memory, sometimes known as working memory is the component of memory where new information is held while it is mentally processed. S!
hort-term memory is also the component of memory where much of our thinking, or information processing occurs; it is a temporary holding bin for new infor...