PSYCH 140M Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Psychoacoustics, Sensory Memory, Memory Span
Document Summary
Sperling (1963) - delayed the presentation of the indicator tone, hypothesis: the longer the delay before indicator tone, the more visual sensory memory decays, and the poorer the subject will perform. Performance declined as the length of the delay of the indicator tone increased. Investigated nature of sensory memory, flashed array of letters for 1/20 second. Subjects could only report 4 or 5 of the letters. Each subject"s immediate memory span was basically constant, no matter how many letters in stimulus. Didn"t matter how long stimulus was shown. Sperling argued that we do store the entire image briefly, though it fades very quickly, preventing subjects from demonstrating this memory. To test his theory, he needed to come up with a way to demonstrate that subjects do see the entire array, but without asking them to report the entire array. Sperling (1963) -varied brightness of pre-field and post-field (bright/dark) Brightness of pre-field and post-field affected how rapidly performance declined.
