PROACTIVE INHIBITION IN FREE RECALL

Several workers have demonstrated that proactive inhibition (PI) reduces recall of verbal material in short-term memory (STM), and this finding has been taken as evidence for a continuum or one-process view of memory. In addition, the phenomenon of "release from PI" has led to conflicting views of the nature of encoding dimensions in STM. The present study shows that both PI and release from PI are confined to the secondary memory component of free recall and that primary memory is not vulnerable to these effects. This finding supports a two-process view of memory.