Short-Term Memory for Quantitative Information from Three Kinds of Visual Displays

Abstract

Abstract : A series of four experiments was conducted to investigate whether the nature of a visual display affects short-term memory for numeric information extracted from it. Three different kinds of displays were chosen for study: a digital counter, a moving scale and a moving pointer display. Experiment I examined reading performance using the moving scale and moving pointer displays. The results of this experiment, in which the moving scale yielded superior performance, provided baseline data with which to judge future performance and also enabled a judicious choice of exposure durations for the subsequent experiments. In Experiment II the Brown-Peterson paradigm with varied retention intervals was used to examine the short-term memory for quantitative information from the three kinds of displays. In general, the digital counter yielded the best recall performance, followed by the moving pointer and moving scale displays in that order. Experiments III and IV were between- and within-in subjects designs which tested this hypothesis using the Brown-Peterson paradigm with two different interpolated tasks, one of which interfered with the retention of verbal information and the other which interfered with the retention of both verbal and non-verbal information. The differences in error patterns obtained in Experiment II between the moving pointer and moving scale displays were again obtained when the interpolated activity was considered to be causing only verbal interference. However, this difference was abolished or considerably lessened when the interpolated activity was one that interfered with both verbal and non-verbal memory. (Author)