Short-Term Memory for Tactile and Temporal Stimuli in a Shared-Attention Recall Task

Abstract

The present study examined short-term memory for tactile and temporal stimuli. Subjects were required to touch three-dimensional sample objects of different shapes and textures, presented for three durations: short, medium, or long. After the sample duration elapsed, a retention interval (5 sec.—20 sec.) occurred followed by a recall test for one of the sample dimensions of shape, texture, or time, across trials. Analysis showed that accuracy for shape and texture was high throughout testing (95–99%), but memory for perceived duration was relatively poor (60%). Further analysis indicated that poor recall on the time dimension was isolated to the medium and long samples; accuracy for short durations was consistently high (90%). In addition, a reliable response bias emerged; subjects recalled durations shorter than the actual duration presented. The results were discussed in terms of two lines of research, one indicating that haptic short-term memory is strong relative to other memory systems, and the other suggesting that the choose-short bias occurs across species.