Rehearsal and recoding of information from visual sensory-memory.

Abstract

Consonant-vowel bigrams were presented in a modification of Sperling's (1960) partial-report procedure. Delay of recall and ability to rehearse were manipulated. The results showed that accuracy of recall was poorer with disrupted rehearsal and that errors in recall could be described in terms of the articulatory features of the consonants only when rehearsal was possible. The delay X rehearsal interaction was not significant. The results indicate that the iconic image persists for at least 11 sec. and that its contents may be verbally recoded for rehearsal in short-term storage.