In the present exercise, you will quantify how this span is affected by the duration of the display. You may be surprised by what you observe. That is, you will notice that the span is fairly constant across a wide range of exposure durations. Sperling felt that the limitations of our span of apprehension were less likely due to visual factors and more likely attributed to the apparently restrictive nature of our information processing architecture, (i.e., our inability to remember and report more than a few items at a time). For this reason, he developed what was called the partial report technique to allow investigators to measure the capacity of sensory memory without disrupting its rapidly decaying contents.

To begin the exercise, you will follow the "on to the show" link below. Once there, you will see a number of buttons that will need to be checked. The first button you will need to check will be the number of trials. Next, type in your subject number. Any one or two-digit number will do. Finally, click the Start button to begin the demonstration. If at any time you forget these instructions, simply click on the "go home" icon at the bottom of the screen to return to this window.