Diagnosing Short-term Memory Scanning Using The Systems Factorial Technology – Replication Studies

Townsend and Fific (2004) published an influential short-term memory (STM) study in which they observed individual differences in serial and parallel STM scanning. The authors employed the systems factorial technology – the novel methodology which provides strong diagnostic tests of cognitive architectures, and presented a new method of manipulating probe-to-memory item processing speed for memory loads N=2. Three variables were manipulated in this experiment: number of processing elements (N=2), phonemic dissimilarity of a target to the particular memorized item (high, low) and duration between the memorized set and a target (short-long). In the original study 10 subjects participated in about 20 sessions each. In the current research we conducted a conceptual replication of the original study: two hundred subjects participated in 1 session each, and novel memory load conditions N=1 was included. The results added a converging evidence in testing serial/parallel processing in short-term memory scanning.