ABSTRACT
The author takes the opportunity to do several things: First, he reviews the logic of how echoic memory is demonstrated. Second, he considers some special relationships between the inferential problems in the first section and inferences about age decrements. Finally, he points out a promising approach to measuring echoic memory declines associated with aging and make some guesses about what we ought to expect from such research. The author considers echoic memory more as a 'model system' for aging research on memory than as an urgent priority for either applied or theoretical psychology. Indeed, he has the suspicion that changes in sensory memory with age are not very interesting. This study illustrates the direct method of showing echoic memory. Subjects tell us they have such a memory representation through their ability to retrieve information which, we have reason to believe, could not have been other than precategorical.
