Students in a Psychology Experiment Were Exposed to Three Notes

Students in a psychology experiment were exposed to three notes of music for a very short period of time and then asked to recall them. If the instructions to recall the notes came immediately, the students usually succeeded. If the instructions came more than three seconds after the notes were played, the students were much less successful. The MOST plausible explanation for this phenomenon is that, in the latter case, ________.

A) the echo never made it to the sensory registers
B) the echo faded after being stored in short-term memory
C) the echo was already stored in long-term memory
D) the echo faded before being stored in short-term memory