Feedback — A determiner of forgetting in short-term motor memory

The retention of discrete movements was examined under augmented and minimal feedback conditions. The augmented condition was presented for both the criterion and recall movements and consisted of providing visual, auditory, and heightened proprioceptive cues with each movement. Under minimal conditions, no visual, auditory or heightened proprioceptive cues were provided. Absolute and constant error revealed that under augmented conditions recall accuracy was improved. The retention interval x feedback condition interaction failed significance for both sources of error indicating that there was no evidence of differential decay rates. Variable error appeared to be an informative index of forgetting. The results were interpreted to be in support of the view that a memory trace is imprinted with feedback from all modalities and that the amount of such feedback determines memory trace strength.