Information-acquisition rate, short-term memory, and cognitive equivalence: reply to Sperling.
The effect of stimulus luminance on visual information acquisition depends on the duration for which the stimulus is displayed. In this reply, three duration regions are described, and the accounts of luminance effects provided by Loftus (1985d) and Sperling (1986) are compared for each region. Of particular interest is why different combinations of duration and luminance produce equal performance levels. Two possibilities are considered: first, equal performance may be a logical consequence of equivalent cognitive states and second, equal performance may be a coincidental consequence of different cognitive states. I suggest that equal performance following relatively short durations results from equivalent cognitive states, whereas equal performance following longer durations results from different cognitive states.
D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011601:Psychophysics; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception