Abstract: This chapter is organized into three main sections. The first focuses on current theoretical issues and controversies concerning short-term memory. Here, among other topics, I include an introduction to leading theoretical models of short-term memory and a discussion of the relationship between traditional measures of short-term memory and more complex measures of intellectual ability. Also, I outline a framework for viewing short-term memory entirely in mechanistic or structural terms (see Chapter 3 by Bjorklund for some analogous perspectives on organizational factors in memory). Although some of these topics have little to do with developmental issues per se, they are concerned with matters that I believe have important implications for the study of short-term memory development. The second main section focuses on possible sources of short-term memory development, while the third contains a summary, along with some concluding remarks.

Abstract: Three patients with Friedreich's ataxia and six controls matched by age and vocabulary and information scores on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised were administered a measure of short-term memory scanning. Patients with Friedreich's ataxia demonstrated a deficit in information processing speed in the relative absence of impairment in attention, memory, language, judgement, reasoning, and other cognitive functions. The short term memory scanning procedure may be useful in documenting cognitive slowing and in distinguishing this impairment from the motor abnormality often associated with a subcortical brain disorder.

Abstract: This study of Japanese second graders reveals that, like successful readers of the alphabet, good beginning readers of Japanese excel in memory for linguistic material. It documents significant associations between children's reading ability, memory for Hiragana, Kanji, and spoken nonsense words, but not between these measures and memory for photographs of faces. However, unlike good readers of the alphabet, good readers of Japanese may further excel in one form of nonlinguistic memory. Japanese children's reading ability and their memory for Kanji both associate with their memory for visual nonsense designs. The implication is that linguistic memory skills may contribute to successful acquisition of all orthographies, whereas the importance of nonlinguistic memory skills can vary.

Abstract: With regard to Parkinson's disease there are contradictory opinions concerning whether the severity of the disease, the patient's age, or the application of aids influence the patient's short term memory. In a 4 X 2 X 2 semifactorial design these conditions were tested on 24 healthy persons and 72 patients suffering from Parkinson's disease. The stimulus material consisted of 30 nouns belonging to 6 categories. The severity of the disease, the age of the patients, and the interaction between severity and assistance determined conditions of the patient's memory achievement.

Abstract: Individual differences in digit span, as in any memory span task, can be attributed to item-identification speed (naming time) and memory for order. The relationship between the two was examined in an experiment with 40 EMR and 40 nonretarded children. Order memory and digit span had significant correlations for both groups. Naming time was found to correlate with span only for EMR subjects; span was a linear function of the number of digits named in 2.89 seconds. For nonretarded subjects no relationship between the two was observed. The results for EMR subjects, although interpretable in terms of limited capacity in working memory, were discussed in the context of the substantial correlation between order memory and naming time.

Abstract: Measures of verbal and visuospatial memory span and long-term memory were obtained from 21 brain-impaired and 21 neurologically unimpaired Veterans Administration medical patients Significant deficits in both memory span and long-term memory were observed in the brain-impaired patients Contrary to predictions from the experimental literature, memory span tests that require more processing of item content and location were not superior in detecting the memory span deficits Discriminant function analyses revealed that measures of verbal and visuospatial long-term memory provided unique discrimination between the brain-impaired and unimpaired patients However, when memory span measures were analyzed alone, inclusion of more than one measure of memory span did not provide additional unique discrimination Implications for the clinical assessment of memory functioning are discussed

Abstract: Mentally retarded and nonretarded persons were compared in a Brown-Peterson short-term memory task for the retention of words and pictures over intervals up to 30 seconds. The retarded subjects forgot more rapidly over the initial 10 seconds. They also retained pictures better than they did words; the nonretarded subjects retained these stimuli equally well. The results were theoretically interpreted as reflecting a structural memory deficit in retarded individuals, who were viewed as having greater facility with an imaginal memory code than with a verbal code. Transforming information from one code to another may also have been more difficult for retarded persons.

Abstract: Twenty-four children with Attentional Deficit Disorder (ADD) were compared to a control group of 17 children with emotional problems. All the subjects were tested on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), along with an adaptation of the Coding subtest to measure short-term visual memory. The results showed superiority of the control group on the short-term visual memory task. The correlations of short-term visual memory with each of the subtests of the WISC-R were different for each group. For the emotional group short-term visual memory correlated significantly with the WISC-R verbal scores, while in the ADD group visual memory more often significantly correlated with performance subtests. In the discussion an attempt was made to explore the reasons for these differences and their implications for academic tasks.

Abstract: A modified proactive interference paradigm was developed to investigate encoding and memory processes in preschool-age children The buildup and release from proactive interference in preschool-age children parallels that of adults and of mentally retarded persons, indicating that very young children and older people may use many of the same encoding dimensions

Abstract: The possibility of reducing task interference in complex aviation environments by taking advantage of the verbal-spatial short term memory dichotomy is explored in a dual-task paradigm. Eighteen subjects performed verbal and spatial retention memory tasks concurrently with intervening verbal and spatial cognitive tasks. Both number and processing code of the intervening tasks were manipulated. Support was found for code-specific interference such that concurrently performed tasks of the same code disrupted performance more than concurrent tasks of different codes. In addition spatial memory was found to be more fragile than verbal memory. Implications of the findings to mental workload reduction include task scheduling, presentation format, and assignment.

Abstract: A total of 108 undergraduates were given a memory span task for figural items varying in one, two, or three dimensions. Memory span in item units significantly decreased, and memory span in bits of information significantly increased as functions of the increase in the number of variable dimensions and bits of information per item. Results are interpreted as additional evidence that the constant chunk hypothesis is wrong and as further extension of previous data on univariate and bivariate information storage.

Abstract: Memory impairment is frequently seen in a great number of psychiatric and neurologic conditions. Even normal individuals often complain of forgetfulness, which becomes more prominent with advancing age. Although it is generally accepted that the limbic system plays a major role in memory processes, it has been demonstrated that cortical structures are also important; thus cortical changes were observed during memorization in subjects in whom regional cerebral blood flow measurements were performed (Maximilian et al. 1978).

Abstract: Publisher Summary One of the most investigated aspects of learning in mentally retarded persons has been the question of how information is processed in short-term memory (STM), that aspect of memory in which information is stored for about 30 seconds. One experimental method that adequately examines the loss, the cues needed to access the information, and the structure of the organization in STM is the Brown-Peterson paradigm. The technique consists of presenting short lists of items (e.g., three words) for later recall, a distractor task between lists to prevent rehearsal of those items, and recall after each list. Over lists, or trials, the efficiency of the recall of each list diminishes, and this decrease in recall is referred to as a buildup of proactive inhibition (PI). In every study in which mentally retarded persons is tested using the Brown-Peterson paradigm, the buildup of PI did not vary as a function of the different types of classes of stimuli used. Seemingly, what is being encoded during PI buildup are item characteristics with little regard for the category or class the items belong to. The observation concludes that mentally retarded persons fail to use categorical information that is available to them; otherwise, the amount of recall would be greater for some categories than others because some categories are more available to the group than are others.

Abstract: Cortical electrical activity reflected by changes in N1 and CNV evoked potentials was compared to performance on a battery of neuropsychological measures of attention and short-term memory. Results supported the hypothesis that N1 reflects the accuracy of the short term memory image. Attentional processes indexed by CNV also appeared to be involved in establishing the memory trace. The two cortical generators appear to interact in some types of short-term memory tasks, but not in others.

Abstract: Memory and memory monitoring processes were compared by introducing an idea unit ranking task to prose text adapted to depth of processing and text organization variables. Depth of processing was operationalized through fluency, concreteness, and category-relatedness instructions. Text organization was manipulated through matched-to-task, scrambled, and narrative sentence orderings. Proportion recalled (memory) and proportion estimated recall (memory monitoring) for each idea unit level comprised the primary dependent measures. Depth of processing and idea unit level were successfully extended to prose memory and were reflected in memory monitoring. Narrative organizations produced greater recall than either the matched or scrambled organizations. Organization, however, was not a salient factor in memory monitoring. Recalling passages provided additional information which increased the accuracy of monitoring estimations. Memory monitoring (estimation) patterns in general echoed those of memory (recall).

Abstract: It has often been claimed that short-term memory search is not selective because it takes longer to categorize the test stimulus than to search throughout the whole memory set. Four experiments investigated whether evidence for selective search can be obtained when effectively no time is required to categorize the test stimulus. Even under this favorable condition, no evidence was found for selective search of only the relevant memory subset. Therefore, the time to categorize a test stimulus cannot be the only reason why short-term memory search is not selective.

Abstract: This study sought to investigate the influence of expressive task demand, as determined by amount of face-to face social interaction, level of subjects' expressive ability, sex of subject, and sex of experimenter on subjects' digit and visual-spatial short-term memory span performance. The amount of personal contact was manipulated by the automated versus person administrations of the memory measures. The automated administration was accomplished through the use of a microcomputer.

Abstract: Young and old adults studied several lists of words at each of three presentation durations (1.5, 3, and 6 s/word). Under standard, intentional learning instructions the magnitude of the age-related recall deficit increased with longer presentation durations. When a semantic orienting question was used to guide the encoding of the items on each list, however, an equivalent benefit of longer study times was observed for the two age groups. In delayed recognition testing, the age groups also showed equivalent benefits from longer study times. These results were interpreted within the context of a processing deficit framework of age differences in memory, in which age differences are due to differences in the spontaneous use of organizational strategies. The results are not well described by a cognitive slowing account of age differences in memory.