The time to initiate retrieval of a memory depends on recency

Abstract

Continuous recognition has long been used to study the recency effect in recognition memory. In continuous recognition, response time (RT) increases as a logarithmic function of the lag since a probe was last presented. Although this could simply be due to decaying trace strength, careful examination of response time (RT) distributions showed that the onset of RT distributions changed with the logarithm of the lag since a probe was originally presented. Each doubling of lag resulted in a shift of roughly 20 ms in the rise time of the RT distributions. To test the hypothesis that this increase was simply due to increased facility in processing the probe item, Experiment six repeated items six times. Repetition resulted in faster RTs, but did not change the effect of log lag on RT. In light of recent neurophysio-logical evidence, we consider the hypothesis that memory requires a recovery of temporal context, and the time to retrieve a prior temporal context goes up with the logarithm of the time since it was experienced.