Interference in short-term memory.
Gerald M. Reicher, Elizabeth Ligon, Carol Conrad · Journal of Experimental Psychology · 1969
Two experiments investigated the locus of the effects of acoustic similarity in short-term memory. In the first, acoustic similarity of words making up the to-be-remembered list was varied independently of the acoustic similarity between the correct and incorrect response alternatives. The results indicate that 5s are more likely to choose the alternative which is similar to the greatest number of items in the list. A second experiment using a onealternative yes/no procedure attempted to insure that the effects were not due to a guessing strategy and to allow the use of the signal detectability measure of sensitivity. Similarity within the list was shown to increase both hit and false-alarm rates resulting in an overall loss of sensitivity.