Evidence that short-term memory is not the limiting factor in the tachistoscopic full-report procedure

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine whether acoustic short-term memory is the factor which limits performance in the tachistoscopic full-report paradigm. Many Es have demonstrated the existence of phonemic encoding in short-term memory. The confusion errors from a tachistoscopic full-report task were, therefore, analyzed for the presence of acoustic confusions. Absolutely no evidence for acoustic confusions was found; visual confusions, however, were abundant. It was concluded that acoustic short-term memory is not the limiting factor in the full-report paradigm. © 1974 Psychonomic Society, Inc.