1980/08/01 by Keith Millar, Brian C. Styles, David G. Wastell +1 · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Memory Processes and Influences #Memory and Neural Mechanisms #Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
paper · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1980.tb01755.x
Whilst research has been concentrated upon the influence of time of day upon short‐term memory, little account has been taken of its influence solely upon long‐term retrieval. Here, the concern is with access to memorized information whose initial learning has occurred long prior to, and is independent of, the immediate experimental setting. Three separate groups ( n = 18) performed a semantic classification task at 09.00, 14.00 or 18.00 h. The difficulty of retrieval was varied by requiring classification or words having ‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low dominance’ in given semantic contexts. The efficiency of retrieval (defined as a decreasing difference in latency between high‐ and low‐dominance classification speed) was found to be greater for the group who performed at 18.00 h. As physiological arousal is supposed to increase through the day, this result may reflect a beneficial effect of the higher‐aroused evening state upon retrieval efficiency. The result is directly opposite to the impairment of short‐term memory performance which occurs as the day progresses. Some implications are drawn for other research.