During this experiment you will be visually presented with a visual array of letters and numbers for a very brief time. There will be three rows of numbers, each with 4 characters. Remember as many of these items as possible. Immediately after the presentation of the array, a tone will sound indicating the row from which should report items. Type all of the characters you remember into the prompt and hit 'Enter'. A high tone (press '1' to hear it) means report the top row, a middle tone (press '2' to hear it) means report the middle row, and a low tone (press '3' to hear it) means report the bottom row.
A bar running along the bottom of the screen will track your progress. This experiment should take about three minutes to complete.
Press the spacebar when you are ready to begin!
This experiment was designed to examine how many visual items can be remembered for short periods of time. In particular, this task was designed to explore a very early type of memory refered to as 'iconic memory'.
To test this, the experiment used a partial report procedure first used by Sperling in 1960. The procedure relies on a cue, a specific tone, that plays after the memory array is off the screen.
Below you can see your average number of items recalled, and by inference, the size of your iconic memory. You can also switch to viewing the original results from Sperling's study by clicking the 'Study Data' button.