A psychologist flashes a sequence of five letters (such as STWLG) on a screen in front of you and then asks you immediately to count backward from 1000 by 7s. After a few seconds, she asks you to recall the five letters. This psychologist is most likely studying the ________.
A) effect of proactive interference on STM
B) use of semantic codes in LTM
C) role of decay in STM loss
D) relative effectiveness of rote and elaborative rehearsal

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This experiment is designed to study the role of decay in short-term memory (STM) loss. By distracting you with a task immediately after showing the letters, the psychologist is testing how quickly information can fade from STM when not actively rehearsed or encoded into long-term memory.

A Psychologist Flashes a Sequence of Five Letters (Such as STWLG)