On Consolidation and the Potency of Delayed Stimulus Suffixes

Abstract

In a strictly serial recall task, increasing the temporal separation of a spoken memory list and a spoken distractor (stimulus suffix) is known to reduce the latter's potency as a source of interference. This phenomenon was studied further using suffix delays in the range 0.8–6.4 s and a transcription task to minimize rehearsal during the suffix delay. The results indicated that the probability of correct recall from the terminal serial position, of a sequence of eight digits, is a linearly increasing function of the logarithm of the suffix delay, over the range studied. The results are discussed in terms of their value as evidence for the existence of a consolidation process.