Dimensional Distinctiveness or Interference With Recall At Five Seconds After Stimulus Presentation?

Abstract

Knoedler, Hellwig and Neath presented measurements of the recency-primacy shift in which memory for early list items improves and memory for later items becomes worse as the retention interval between study and test increases. The authors interpreted the data to support the Dimensional Distinctiveness model. I present an alternative interpretation of their data in terms of an interference model, “Early Interference with Recall”, at five seconds after the presentation of a particular list item and show that this interpretation can qualitatively better account for the experimental data. Two predictions further separate the two models: Dimensional Distinctiveness predicts no recency-primacy shift for two-item lists, in contrast to Early Interference With Recall. As the overall time scale is changed, the former model also predicts no difference in recency or primacy while the latter shows large changes.