Abstract: In this experiment, research was made on the encoding mode of short-termmemory in the way of signal detectability, using Chinese characters asmaterial. The result shows that generally speaking, Chinese charactersare encoded mainly according to their forms. This conclusion differsfrom that of Conrad's, whose experiment used English letters asmaterial. Moreover, the encoding mode changes in some degree withdifferent Chinese characters committed to short-term memory. Theaforesaid result supports the hypothesis that the encoding mode ofshort-term memory varies with situations.

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