THE DECAY OF SHORT-TERM IMPLICIT MEMORY - UNPACKING LAG

McKone (1995) reported a short-lived repetition priming effect, superi mposed on long-lived priming. This short-term implicit memory survived a few intervening items and several seconds for words but decayed pre cipitously for nonwords, producing a lag x lexicality interaction. Her e, mechanisms of decay are studied by disconfounding the time delay an d interference components of lag. In Experiment 1, time delay was vari ed while number of intervening items was held constant, and vice versa . In Experiment 2, priming was plotted as a function of time delay, wi th and without interventing items. Using a lexical decision task, both experiments found independent contributions of time and interference to the decay of short-term priming. Further, Experiment 2 attributed t he lag x lexicality interaction to a particular sensitivity of nonword traces to interference. An illustration of how these effects might ar ise in the word recognition system is provided.