10/22/2017 What Is Sensory Memory?

Definition and Examples

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PSYCHOLOGY COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY MEMORY RETRIEVAL AND FORGETTING

What Is Sensory Memory?

By Kendra Cherry
Updated October 16, 2017

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Alissa Hankinson / Moment / Getty Images

Sensory memory is a very brief lasting memory that allows people to retain impressions of sensory information after the
original stimulus has ceased. It is often thought of as the rst stage of memory that involves registering a tremendous
amount of information about the environment, but only for a very brief period. The purpose of sensory memory is to retain
information long enough for it to be recognized.

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10/22/2017 What Is Sensory Memory? Definition and Examples

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How Does Sensory Memory Work?

During every moment of your existence, your senses are constantly taking in an enormous amount of information about
what you see, feel, hear, and taste. While this information is important, there is simply no way to remember each and every
detail about what you experience at every moment. Instead, your sensory memory creates something of a quick "snapshot"
of the world around you, allowing you to brie y focus your attention on relevant details.

So just how brief is a sensory memory? Experts suggest that these memories last for three seconds or less.

While eeting, sensory memory allows us to brie y retain an impression of an environmental stimulus even after the
original source of information has ended or vanished. By attending to this information, we can then transfer important
details into the next stage of memory, which is known as short-term memory.

Sperling's Sensory Memory Experiments

The duration of sensory memory was rst investigated during the 1960s by psychologist George Sperling.

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In a classic experiment, participants stared at a screen and rows of letters were ashed very brie y for just 1/20th of a
second. Then, the screen went blank. The participants then immediately said as many of the letters that they could
remember seeing.

While most of the participants were only able to report about four or ve letters, some insisted that they had seen all the
letters but that the information faded too quickly as they reported them.

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10/22/2017 What Is Sensory Memory? Definition and Examples
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Inspired by this, Sperling then performed a slightly varied version of the same experiment. Participants were shown the
three rows of four letters per row letters for 1/20th of a second, but immediately after the screen went blank, participants
heard either a high-pitched, medium-pitched or low-pitched tone. If subjects heard the high-pitched tone, they were to
report the top row, those who heard the medium-pitched were to report the middle row and those who heard the low-
pitched were to report the bottom row.

Sperling found that participants were able to recall the letters as long as the tone was sounded within one-third of a second
of the letter display. When the interval was extended to over one-third of a second, the accuracy of the letter reports
declined signi cantly, and anything over one-second made it virtually impossible to recall the letters. Sperling suggested
that since the participants were focusing their attention on the indicated row before their visual memory faded, they were
able to recall the information. When the tone was sounded after sensory memory faded, recall was nearly impossible.

Types of Sensory Memory

Experts also believe that di erent senses have di erent types of sensory memory.

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