Abstract
A contiguity effect—the finding that stimuli that occur close together in time become associated to each other—is observed between words that are separated by several seconds. The traditional account of contiguity effects is that item representations become associated to each other while active in a short-term memory buffer—a limited-capacity store that can hold a small, integral number of items. Participants studied and free recalled 48 lists of words. At the end of the session, participants were given a surprise final free recall test on all of the items from all of the lists. In addition to a standard contiguity effect between items presented at nearby serial positions, we simultaneously observed a contiguity effect between items presented in different lists. This latter contiguity effect extended over several lists, or several hundred seconds, well beyond the range that can be attributed to a buffer holding a small, integral number of items.
Article PDF
References
Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 2, pp. 89–105). New York: Academic Press.
Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
Bjork, R. A., & Whitten, W. B. (1974). Recency-sensitive retrieval processes in long-term free recall. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 173–189.
Brown, G. D. A., Neath, I., & Chater, N. (2007). A temporal ratio model of memory. Psychological Review, 114, 539–576.
Craik, F. I. M. (1970). The fate of primary memory items in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 9, 658–664.
Davelaar, E. J., Goshen-Gottstein, Y., Ashkenazi, A., Haarmann, H. J., & Usher, M. (2005). The demise of short-term memory revisited: Empirical and computational investigations of recency effects. Psychological Review, 112, 3–42.
Drew, P. J., & Abbott, L. F. (2006). Extending the effects of spiketiming-dependent plasticity to behavioral timescales. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 8876–8881.
Friendly, M., Franklin, P. E., Hoffman, D., & Rubin, D. C. (1982). The Toronto Word Pool: Norms for imagery, concreteness, orthographic variables, and grammatical usage for 1,080 words. Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 14, 375–399.
Glenberg, A. M., Bradley, M. M., Stevenson, J. A., Kraus, T. A., Tkachuk, M. J., & Gretz, A. L. (1980). A two-process account of long-term serial position effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory, 6, 355–369.
Howard, M. W., Fotedar, M. S., Datey, A. V., & Hasselmo, M. E. (2005). The temporal context model in spatial navigation and relational learning: Toward a common explanation of medial temporal lobe function across domains. Psychological Review, 112, 75–116.
Howard, M. W., & Kahana, M. J. (1999). Contextual variability and serial position effects in free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 25, 923–941.
Howard, M. W., & Kahana, M. J. (2002). A distributed representation of temporal context. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 46, 269–299.
Howard, M. W., Venkatadass, V., Norman, K. A., & Kahana, M. J. (2007). Associative processes in immediate recency. Memory & Cognition, 35, 1700–1711.
Kahana, M. J. (1996). Associative retrieval processes in free recall. Memory & Cognition, 24, 103–109.
Kahana, M. J., Howard, M., & Polyn, S. (in press). Associative processes in episodic memory. In J. Byrne (Series Ed.) & H. L. Roediger III (Vol. Ed.), Learning and memory—A comprehensive reference. San Diego: Elsevier, Academic Press.
Kahana, M. J., Howard, M. W., Zaromb, F., & Wingfield, A. (2002). Age dissociates recency and lag-recency effects in free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 28, 530–540.
Miller, P., & Wang, X.-J. (2006). Power-law neuronal fluctuations in a recurrent network model of parametric working memory. Journal of Neurophysiology, 95, 1099–1114.
Murdock, B. B. (1962). The serial position effect of free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 482–488.
Neath, I., & Brown, G. D. A. (2006). SIMPLE: Further applications of a local distinctiveness model of memory. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 46, pp. 201–243). San Diego: Academic Press.
Raaijmakers, J. G. W. (1993). The story of the two-store model of memory: Past criticisms, current status, and future directions. In D. E. Meyer & S. Kornblum (Eds.), Attention and performance XIV (pp. 467–488). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Raaijmakers, J. G. W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1980). SAM: A theory of probabilistic search of associative memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 14, pp. 207–262). New York: Academic Press.
Sirotin, Y. B., Kimball, D. R., & Kahana, M. J. (2005). Going beyond a single list: Modeling the effects of prior experience on episodic free recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 787–805.
Zaromb, F. M., Howard, M. W., Dolan, E. D., Sirotin, Y. B., Tully, M., Wingfield, A., & Kahana, M. J. (2006). Temporal associations and prior-list intrusions in free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 32, 792–804.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This article was supported by Grants 1-R01 MH069938 to M.W.H. and 2-R01 MH55687 to Michael. J. Kahana, who provided valuable feedback throughout this project.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Howard, M.W., Youker, T.E. & Venkatadass, V.S. The persistence of memory: Contiguity effects across hundreds of seconds. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 58–63 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.1.58
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.1.58