Is visual short-term memory depthful?
Does visual short-term memory (VSTM) depend on depth, as it might be if information was stored in more than one depth layer? Depth is critical in natural viewing and might be expected to affect retention, but whether this is so is currently unknown. Cued partial reports of letter arrays (Sperling, 1960) were measured up to 700 ms after display termination. Adding stereoscopic depth hardly affected VSTM capacity or decay inferred from total errors. The pattern of transposition errors (letters reported from an uncued row) was almost independent of depth and cue delay. We conclude that VSTM is effectively two-dimensional.
Department of Psychology, 125 NI, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: reeves@neu.edu.
Adam
A
Reeves
Department of Psychology, 125 NI, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Quan
Q
Lei
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003463:Cues; D003867:Depth Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D055815:Young Adult
Depth; Iconic memory; Partial report; Visual short-term memory