Sensory Storage Research Articles

On selection in visual immediate memory

The efficiency of the selection of items from visual immediate memory (sensory storage) according to different criteria was studied. Selection on the basis of simple and general physical characteristics was efficient; the greater the number of distinctive features to be taken into account, and the less the discriminability between or the uniformity within the categories to be distinguished, the more difficult was selection. The level of performance was determined mainly by the efficiency (speed) of the selection process, and was comparatively independent of stimulus characteristics which, though they had to be processed and reported, did not affect selection. The results are in agreement with serial models of information processing. The retention of rejected items is discussed.

Selection in visual immediate memory.

The sampling (partial report) technique of Sperling (1960) was used to study the efficiency of selection of letters from visual immediate memory (sensory storage). Selection by location, chromatic colour, achromatic colour, and size was fairly efficient whereas selection by orientation was difficult. Some parallels between selection in visual immediate memory and selective listening are briefly discussed.

Articulation and acoustic confusability in short-term memory.

Immediate recall may be based on information stored as speech, or on a short-lived and more purely sensory kind of storage. The latter has often been called the image: the visual image probably disappears within a second or so (Sperling, 1960), while the auditory image may last for as long as 3 or 4 sec. (Mackworth, 1964). The latter phenomenon is very close to the notion of memory (Waugh & Norman, 1965), although for Waugh and Norman, primary also is considered to include very recent items which may have been articulated at presentation. The purpose of the present work was to discover whether items ostensibly retrieved from sensory storage were as susceptible to the effects of acoustic confusability (AC) as were items ostensibly retrieved from speech