title: Iconic memory and aging.
abstract: Previous attempts to measure the capacity of iconic memory in elderly adults have been unsuccessful, demonstrating in one case that 80% of the elderly adults tested could not perform above chance level. The present experiments illustrated that the partial report paradigm designed by Sperling (1960) could be used with elderly adults to obtain such a measure. Both the young and older adults exhibited a strong partial report superiority that declined with delays in the cue interval. The effect of the perceived organization of an array on readout from iconic memory also was examined. Contrary to Merikle (1980), the differences due to the display layout were attributed to better acuity for one type of display and not to perceptual organization factors.
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D001288:Attention; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D014792:Visual Acuity; D014796:Visual Perception