Structural and transient components of memory

Abstract

The decomposition of free recall serial position curves into permanent and transient components (primary and secondary memory, Waugh & Norman, 1965) is widely accepted. In this paper, a hypothesis is proposed directly relating the permanent memory component to a vector quantity which reflects sequential allocation of attention during encoding. In conjunction with a previously published model for encoding and retrieval in free recall (Hogan, 1975), the hypothesis is shown to break down predicted serial position curves into permanent and transient components, in a manner analogous to but in various ways less restrictive than the decomposition proposed by Waugh and Norman.