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Whole Report. “report” (remember and write down) as many letters from a brief display as possible Average in laboratory is 4.5 out of nine Class average 2.something. New version of procedure. Altered procedure: write one row of letters only—not all of the letters
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Whole Report • “report” (remember and write down) as many letters from a brief display as possible • Average in laboratory is 4.5 out of nine • Class average 2.something
New version of procedure • Altered procedure: write one row of letters only—not all of the letters • “cued” report by saying “top,” “middle,” or “bottom” • Actual letters to remember “L” “T” “W” • With whole report, class average was 2.1 / 9 (~23%)
Performance on new task • New class average with new procedure was 2 letters (=2/3 or 67%) • Huge improvement in performance • With cue, we seem to “focus on” some of the letters and ignore others; focusing in our image of the display (a memory of the display)
Rapidly fading memory of the display • A mental picture (an image) of the display of letters is created at first • But, the image only lasts a very short period of time • Image lasts long enough to report one row of letters (about 3 letters), but not long enough to report all of the letters (9 letters)
Sensory memory • It’s the rapidly fading image (or memory) of the display • “sensory” = tied to your senses • With vision, it’s called visual sensory memory (aka, the “icon”) • Difference in performance between the original procedure and the modified procedure (“partial” report) reveals the existence of sensory memory
Other sensory memories • One for hearing: audition auditory sensory memory (the “echo”) • Auditory sensory memory only lasts up to 2 seconds • All sensory memories last for a few seconds or less
Establishing existence of sensory memory • When partial report performance is better than whole report performance, then that indicates the presence of sensory memory • In class demo, partial report (67%) was higher than whole report (23%), showing the existence of visual sensory memory
Sperling (1960) experiments • He established the existence of visual sensory memory • Last graph shows that visual sensory memory lasts for only about ½ second • The icon is an example of a mental structure
Attention and the report task • T L W • A J Q • F P O • Displayed these letters briefly, then cued report to report one row only • The cue allows you to select one row and ignore others (i.e., selective attention)
Kinds of attention • Selective attention (as in partial report task): focus on one thing and ignore another • Divided attention: trying to pay attention to more than one thing at a time (i.e., multitasking)
Divided Attention • Serial versus parallel processing • E.g., two example tasks: taking notes and mentally planning dinners for each night of coming week • One possibility: people have no problem doing these two things simultaneously • Means that two separate series of processing steps occurring at the same time (called “parallel” processing)
More on divided attention • If people cannot do the tasks simultaneously, then not parallel processing • One possibility is serial processing (serial means working on only one thing at a time)
Potential Causes of serial processing • Physical: only have two eyes, only physically look at one thing at a time, only have two hands, etc. • Mental: “interference” between mental processes, structures, or representations
Mechanisms of interference • Capacity theory vs. bottleneck theory • Capacity theory = mind contains a limited amount of mental resources (kind of like mental fuel) • Bottleneck theory = bottleneck in information processing where only some information can get through