Short Term Memory May Be the Depletion of the Readily Releasable Pool of Presynaptic Neurotransmitter Vesicles

100%

95%

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о 70%

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65%

60%

55%

50%

Figure 3 Response time as a function of the probability of recognition (unfilled symbols)
and recall (filled symbols) from experiments on repeated learning(5) (see (1) for details). The
triangles represent the data with interference, the circles data without interference.

The linear curves found are the central findings of the earlier paper. Their simplicity
suggests that they describe a core property of short term memory. I explained the relationships
by introducing the Tagging/Retagging model of short term memory:

When presented with a word, a subject tags that word by marking long term memory
locations (Figure 4 and Figure 5). The tagging level, defined as the probability of a correct
identification, then slowly decays (Figure 6) until the word is reintroduced, at which point the
tagging level goes back up (the same word is read again and subjected to the same procedure as
the first time it was presented see Figure 7). The retagging time can be inferred from the delay in
the response and is found to be proportional to the tagging level drop from the linear relationship
between response time and probability of recall and recognition. When the tagging level of the
probe word drops to x%, the tagging level of the reference to the initial list (for recognition) and of
the word association (for recall) also drops to x%. As the exposure to the probe word retags the
probe word, the tagging levels of the list reference and word association are not increased and
the subject only responds correctly x% of the time.

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