Short-term Retention of Tactile Stimulation

In three experiments subjects were required to reproduce after varying delays the locus of a tactile stimulation delivered to the upper-side of the arm. During the retention periods subjects either performed a subsidiary, arithmetic task or rested. Recall, as measured by accuracy in reproducing the locus of stimulation, decreased as a function of retention interval, asymptoting after approximately 5 s. Performance was poorer in the subsidiary task condition than in the rest condition; however, the effect of the subsidiary task appeared to be more on subject recall strategies than on rehearsal capacity. No evidence of proactive interference effects was found, and a decay interpretation of forgetting of discrete tactile stimuli in the short-term memory distractor paradigm was favoured.