ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the memory for verbal material comprises two components, one of which is labile and depends on the acoustic properties of the words while the other, which is more durable, is based on their meaning. The observed relationship between rate of forgetting and type of coding is explicable in at least three ways. The first is Material may pass from a short-term store which uses an acoustic code into a long-term semantically coded store. The second is, Material may be encoded on input either acoustically, in which case rapid forgetting occurs, or else semantically, in which case forgetting is relatively slow. The third is, Material may be encoded both acoustically and semantically on input, in which case immediate recall will show the effects of both methods of encoding, but because the effects of acoustic coding are short lived, delayed recall shows only semantic effects.
