Abstract
Simple prose was presented in groups of one, three, or six words, with silent intervals between groups. The overall rate of presentation was equated for these three conditions at about twice as fast as the subjects could print in capital letters. They were instructed to continue printing until they could not remember what came next, and then to start again at once with the next word which they heard. The same passages were presented three times.
On the first presentation an error-free ear-hand span of 14 words was found. This is within the range of the extreme spans reported by Bryan and Harter, and is larger than the spans reported for other receptors and effectors. Presenting six words at a time gave only slightly larger spans than presenting fewer words more frequently. The subjects tended to give up at positions related to punctuation, presumably because they stored the material according to its syntax and meaning. The small size of the differences found between the three methods of presentation was partly attributed to this.
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