ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the implications of these results for existing empirical generalizations about memory, and attempts to fit them into a conceptual framework. The results are interpreted in terms of a phonemically-based store of limited temporal capacity, which may function as an output buffer for speech production, and as a supplement to a more central working memory system. A number of experiments explored the hypothesis that immediate memory span is not constant, but varies with the length of the words to be recalled. The experiments that follow aim first to study the influence of word-length on memory span, secondly to explore the relative importance of number of syllables and temporal duration of a word as determinants of span, and thirdly to explore the implications of this for the question of whether the underlying memory system is time-based or item based. The time-based system, which presumably underlies the effects observed, is broadly consistent with a decay theory component of short-term forgetting.
