The Effects of Postresponse Stimulus Duration upon the Short-Term Retention of Verbal Discrimination Pairs

• Published in: The Journal of general psychology Vol. 91; no. 1; pp. 87 - 92
• Main Authors: Ward, L. Charles, Bennett, Jean H., Bradford, C. Bruce
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Provincetown, Mass., etc Taylor & Francis Group 01.07.1974; Journal Press, etc
• ISSN: 0022-1309; 1940-0888
• DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1974.9920784

Sixty Ss were tested for short-term retention of verbal discrimination pairs consisting of three-place consonant syllables (CCCs) with high intrapair formal similarity. Each pair was shown twice with successive presentations separated by either zero, 1, 2, or 3 interpolated pairs. Different groups received either a zero-, 1-, or 3-second postresponse stimulus duration (PSD), duration of exposure of the stimulus pair following a button-pressing response. Increasing PSD from zero to 1 second led to improved retention, but the increase from 1 to 3 seconds resulted in no further improvement. Retention decreased with increasing numbers of interpolated items, and the rate of decrease was not dependent upon PSD. Contingent probability analyses showed that the probability of a correct response on the second occurrence of a pair was higher following a correct guess to its first occurrence than following an incorrect guess.