L+M: Sensory Memory

How does sensory memory register information?

registers a large amount of the stimuli detected by sensory receptors (being registered, not influenced by the world yet)

How fast did the information decay from sensory memory?

less than a second

What is iconic memory?

visual information store

What is echoic memory?

auditory information store

What are the 3 steps to recall tasks?

Step 1: Subject exposed to stimuli

Step 2: Time delay

Step 3: Subject recalls some or all the stimuli from memory

Please describe the Whole Report Part of the Iconic Memory Study (Sperling 1960).

The participants are exposed to a brief presentation of letters in matrix, immediately recall as many letters from the matrix as possible

results: 4.5 out of 12 letters recalled on average as sensory memory fades quickly

Please describe the Partial Report Part of the Iconic Memory Study (Sperling 1960).

The participants are exposed to a brief presentation of letters in matrix, and must immediately recall but only for letters in the row indicated by a cue (tone - high tone indicates top row, ex.)

results: 3.3 out of 4 letters recalled on average

Please describe the Delayed Partial Report Part of the Iconic Memory Study (Sperling 1960).

The participants are exposed to a brief presentation of letters in matrix, and must immediately recall but only for letters in the row indicated by a cue (tone - high tone indicates top row, ex.) BUT that tone IS delayed by one second

results: 1 out of 4 letters recalled on average (participants are focused on the tone)

Please explain why the results turned out the way they did in the partial report performance in the iconic memory study

due to the rapid decay of iconic memory

Please further explain why we received the results we did on the iconic memory study

sensory memory holds all the letters but the information decays rapidly as you can only encode 4-5 items in the time it takes to decay