Time-Sharing in the Continuous Distractor Paradigm: A Reexamination of the Long-Term Recency Effect

Long-term recency effects observed in the continuous distractor paradigm are often taken as evidence against the short-term store account of recency effects. In the present study, three experiments examined the function of time-sharing process in the continuous distractor paradigm. In the first two experiments, the effect of distractor difficulty on long-term recency was investigated with easy and hard distractor tasks. Distractor difficulty was manipulated in the recency portion and in the retention interval of a nine-word list and a hard distractor task eliminated long-term recency effects. In Exp. 3, distractor difficulty was manipulated across the first and the second halves of the retention interval. Long-term recency effects were larger if the first half of the retention interval contained an easy distractor task and the second half a hard task than if the order was hard-easy. These results indicate that subjects maintain recent items in short-term store and then transfer them to a long-term store by the time-sharing process during a distraction period. Long-term recency effects to a large extent depend on this time-sharing process.