Individual Differences in Short-Term Memory and Their Relationship to Item Identification

Abstract

The relationship between item identification and short-term memory (STM) was investigated. It was hypothesized that both identification and memory storage make demands upon the individual's total available processing space, and that as the information load increases, recall is more dependent upon efficient identification. In Experiment 1, item-identification speed for 24 stimuli was significantly correlated with short-term recall of each stimulus, r(22) = .57, p < .05. Individual differences in item identification were not significantly related to individual differences in STM in Experiment 1, and were significantly related for only one of three stimulus sets in Experiment 2. When a measure of identification efficiency, independent of overall speed of identification, was computed for the subjects in Experiment 1, identification and STM were significantly related, r(17) = .52, p < .05. It was concluded that item identification is an important source of variance in shortterm memory capacity, and that the larger remaining variance probably was due to individual differences in total processing space.