Short-Term Memory and Incidental Learning11The preparation of this paper was facilitated by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the Institute of Human Learning, University of California, Berkeley, and by Contract Nonr 222(90) with the Office of Naval Research.

Abstract

This chapter reviews experimental methods and findings in the study of short-term retention and incidental learning. There are important continuities between the theoretical and methodological problems in these two areas. Both types of studies are concerned with basic capacities and dispositions that the learner brings to the experimental situation and that determine the initial reception and immediate storage of information. Such experiments are not primarily designed to investigate the laws governing the integration of responses and the growth of associative strength. Rather, they are concerned with a detailed analysis of some of the conditions that limit and bias the subject's (S's) responses in a learning situation. The extended practice takes its departure from these initial dispositions of the learner. In the conventional rote-learning experiment, exposures and tests follow each other in a fixed order within successive trials. When a single presentation of the learning materials is followed without delay by a test of performance, the measures of retention define the amount of immediate memory.