Abstract
This study aims at testing a reactivation theory of the spacing effect by reference to the principle of repetition priming. Its basic assumption is that the amount of reactivation of either working or long-term memory, which is determined by space size, at the time of succeeding presentation determines the size of the spacing effect, which should be larger in distributed presentation than in massed presentation as the memory activated at the preceding presentation decays within the space. The principle of repetition priming is that the processing time of succeeding stimulus is in inverse proportion to the activation level of preceding stimulus therefore, it was thought that processing time could reflect exactly the amount of reactivation. In the experiment with space as an independent variable, lexical decision time and free recall rate of each stimulus were measured. The results showed that lexical decision time as an index of the amount of reactivation and recall rate correlate significantly, and that the space size determined whether working or long-term memory were reactivated. All of these results support the assumptions of the reactivation theory.
