Abstract: Using visually serial presentation and the method of immediate free recall,the acquisition of short-term memory in normal hearing and deaf peoplefor seven types of similar Chinese lists intensified respectively were compared.In general, the total average scores of the seven lists showed no significantdifferences in the two groups, but in terms of the effects of every coded di-mensions in short-term memory processing, both groups showed that the ef-fects of the formal and sementic code were most intense and the effects of thephonetic code was relatively weaker. The two groups also showed similarlyserialposition effect, but the capacity of the secondary memory in deaf pe-ople was obviously less than that of the normal hearing group, however, thecapacity of primary memory showed nonsignificant differences in both groups.The possible mechanisms were also discussed.

Key words: Phonetic code, formal code, sementic code, serial position effect, primary memory and secondary memory