Effect of Instruction on Recall of Movements

Abstract

A 4 × 4 factorial design with repeated measures across retention intervals and instructions was employed to determine the effect of instruction on recall ability of movement information from short-term motor memory. Each of the 16 Ss received all 16 possible treatment combinations. While both retention interval and instruction showed significant effects, there was no significant interaction. The reverse-order instruction was affected by the length of the retention interval while the no-prior-item, last-distance, and drop instructions were uninfluenced. No evidence supported the trace-decay hypothesis of forgetting. Ss seem easily able to remove information from memory or ignore information input so it is not represented in memory.

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