Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Interference and Decay

Interference and Decay

Forgetting is a complex cognitive phenomenon influenced by several factors, among which interference and decay are particularly prominent. These processes explain why individuals often struggle to retrieve specific information from memory, leading to lapses in recall that can be observed in everyday situations.
Interference occurs when competing memories hinder the retrieval of particular information. It can be classified into two types: proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Process explanations of age-related changes in memory specificity.

Psychology and aging·2026

Same author

Neural-Context Reinstatement of Recurring Events.

Psychological science·2026

Same author

Structural and Functional Connectivity Predict the Effects of Direct Brain Stimulation on Memory.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026

Same author

Long-term representational costs of overloading working memory.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

Same author

Specialized recall procedures.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

Same author

Reconstruction of temporal and spatial order information.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026

Same journal

Testing the predictions of a distinctiveness model of memory: The production effect in backward recall.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026

Same journal

On the impact of adjacency on transposed-word effects under serial presentation.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026

Same journal

It's time to opt out: Metacognitive analysis of time regulation under uncertainty.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026

Same journal

The role of statistical learning in attentional guidance during search through naturalistic scenes.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026

Same journal

Representing objects and features in long-term memory: A case for direct feature-feature binding.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026

Same journal

Crossmodal correspondences influence adaptation during rule-based category learning of objects.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 17, 2025

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

Published on: December 5, 2014

Interresponse times in free recall.

Nathaniel R Greene¹, Shai T Goldman¹, Michael J Kahana¹

¹Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition

|July 3, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Analyzing response times in memory recall reveals spontaneous chunking in unstructured learning. This finding offers insights into how the human brain organizes information during free recall tasks.

More Related Videos

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

Published on: January 31, 2017

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Published on: June 25, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Sep 17, 2025

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

Published on: December 5, 2014

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

Published on: January 31, 2017

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Published on: June 25, 2019

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Computational Neuroscience
Human Memory Research

Background:

The order and timing of responses in free recall tasks provide valuable data for understanding human memory.
Analyzing interresponse times (IRTs) can reveal underlying cognitive processes during memory retrieval.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a statistical model of interresponse times (IRTs) in free recall.
To investigate the role of chunking in learning unstructured materials using IRT analysis.
To identify spontaneous chunking in free recall tasks lacking explicit structure.

Main Methods:

Collected a large corpus of over half a million freely recalled words from 127 young adult participants.
Developed a statistical model to analyze IRTs based on temporal, semantic, and sequential factors.
Examined sequential dependencies in residual IRTs at different lags.

Main Results:

Significant sequential dependencies were found in residual IRTs, positively correlated at lags of one and two transitions.
The IRT model provided evidence for spontaneous chunking, characterized by a slow IRT followed by fast IRTs.
Spontaneous chunking was observed even in lists lacking inherent grouping or hierarchical structure.

Conclusions:

The study demonstrates that spontaneous chunking occurs during free recall of unstructured materials.
Interresponse time analysis is a powerful tool for uncovering cognitive structures in memory.
Findings contribute to understanding memory organization and learning mechanisms.