Debriefing

The results from this experiment suggest that iconic memory capacity is initially very large. At short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), when the letters and the tone cue are presented close together, participants are able to report almost all the letters in the cued row. This suggests that all the letters in the array are available for selection for about the first 100 to 200 ms that a stimulus is presented. However, as SOA is increased and the time between the letters and the tone cue gets bigger, the percentage of letters reported decreases, suggesting that iconic memory fades rapidly. At an SOA of 1000 ms (one second), participants report only a third of the letters on average. In a 3 x 3 array, this represents chance performance; the participant has selected to encode one row while waiting for the cue, and 1 in 3 times this will be the row that was actually cued.

Question for Review

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