Parallel scanning of physical and category information

Abstract

In Sternberg's memory scan paradigm, subjects were required to scan for category membership or physical identity. In Experiment I, the scan rate when checking for either type of relationship at the same time was less than the sum of the scan rates when checking for either relationship separately. In Experiment II, presenting memory sets consisting of items from a single category affected the category scan function but not the physical scan function. The results were interpreted as evidence for the capacity to conduct parallel scans of independent memory encodings when retrieving remembered information. © 1976 Psychonomic Society, Inc.