Saul Sternberg’s Memory Scanning Experiments
On each trial, subjects are first visually presented a
memory set of from 1 to 6 digits one at a time for about
a second each. After a 2-sec delay, there is a warning
signal and then a single test digit is presented. Subject
presses one button if the test digit was in the memory
set, the other button if not.
Hypotheses:
Parallel search (unlimited capacity)
Parallel search (limited capacity)
Serial search