Remembering Over the Short-Term: The Case Against the Standard Model

TLDR

Short‑term memory has traditionally been viewed as an activation‑based system that decays over time and requires rehearsal, but recent evidence suggests it is cue‑driven and challenges the standard model. This chapter reviews recent research to expose empirical and conceptual problems undermining traditional short‑term memory theories. The authors conduct a critical review of recent studies to highlight shortcomings of conventional short‑term memory models.

Abstract

Psychologists often assume that short-term storage is synonymous with activation, a mnemonic property that keeps information in an immediately accessible form. Permanent knowledge is activated, as a result of on-line cognitive processing, and an activity trace is established "in" short-term (or working) memory. Activation is assumed to decay spontaneously with the passage of time, so a refreshing process-rehearsal-is needed to maintain availability. Most of the phenomena of immediate retention, such as capacity limitations and word length effects, are assumed to arise from trade-offs between rehearsal and decay. This "standard model" of how we remember over the short-term still enjoys considerable popularity, although recent research questions most of its main assumptions. In this chapter I review the recent research and identify the empirical and conceptual problems that plague traditional conceptions of short-term memory. Increasingly, researchers are recognizing that short-term retention is cue driven, much like long-term memory, and that neither rehearsal nor decay is likely to explain the particulars of short-term forgetting.