Redundancy Effects in Short-Term Memory

Abstract

Five experiments are reported whose purpose was to demonstrate that short-term memory is improved by redundancy within the material. In Experiment I “tune” containing two, three, four and five tones of differing frequencies had to be coded into digits 1–5, to indicate the order of the pitches in a tune. Performance on stimuli containing correlated amplitude and duration were compared with the uni-dimensional condition. Experiment II repeated I, but required intensity to be coded. Experiment III required pitch coding under three conditions including that when amplitude and frequency were uncorrelated, and compared the performance of musically trained subjects with nonmusicians. Experiment IV repeated III, but subjects were informed of the relation between dimensions. Experiment V involved “shadowing” the tunes by whistling simultaneously with the stimulus.

It was concluded (a) that intercorrelation improves, but zero correlation impairs short-term memory; (b) that knowledge of the relation between dimensions improves performance in the correlated condition, but does not prevent impairment under zero correlation; and (c) the performance of musically trained subjects exceeds that of controls and is unaffected by the presence of a correlated or uncorrelated dimension.