Isolating the components of very-short-term visual memory

Abstract

Very-short-term visual memory has often been measured with partial report, which uses attentional cues to measure performance as a function of cue delay. The resulting cue-delay effect is often accounted for by a limited ability to transfer information between a high-capacity and a low-capacity store. According to this transfer hypothesis, the performance measured in a typical partial report experiment results from a mixture of two components: information about the tested stimuli is transferred both before and after the cue. In the present experiment, the two components were isolated as follows. Observers attended and memorized a particular object in a multiple-object display. This display was followed by an auditory cue that indicated which of the stimuli would be tested. The critical comparison was between a stay condition, in which the auditory cue indicated the already attended object, and a switch condition, in which the auditory cue indicated a different object. The stay versus switch manipulation had a large effect. The stay condition had little cue-delay effect, whereas the switch condition yielded the usual cue-delay effect. This difference demonstrates the existence of multiple components in the processing and/or memory underlying partial report experiments. © 1991, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.