How much information will an individual store in his or her iconic memory? In a given time, individuals are able to perceive more information than they can verbally encode. This is the process by which a visual stimulus is transformed to neurons to enable the brain to store information in the immediate memory. The rate of transfer is how fast an individual can encode something in a given time, which is stored in the immediate or short-term memory. It is stated that visual input can be stored in some medium, that later will be recalled. When the duration of the stimulus is limited, information is not properly encoded from a stimulus to a verbal code and it is lost from immediate memory. This is a cognitive process. The term "icon" was introduced by Neisser (1967) to refer to the brief persistence of information from a visual display after the "display" is no longer present. Early experimenters, such as Erdman and Dodge (1898), had been concerned with this phenomenon and asked how much information could be acquired at a single fixation reading. The typical finding f

rom briefly presenting a set of letters and having the subjects report as many letters as possible (full-report) was that the perceptual span was 4 to 5 letters. In replicating Sperling's experiment we hope to see why iconic memory as well as duration recall is limited. He has shown that the duration of an icon has to do with the ability of an individual to encode the visual information. One limitation to the study of the icon is, its very brief duration. As individuals begin reporting the contents of the icon, it is already disappearing. Sperling invented the partial-report technique to overcome this difficulty. His third experiment is being replicated to understand the problem at hand. He used manipulations to control the rate at which information is verbally coded as well as the span of apprehension (memory). Consequently increasing the ability of subjects to report more of the information available to them.

The experiment was conducted with 16 MEL Lab manuals as well as formatted 3.5" disks MEL Lab. The experiments were run in MS-DOS mode; on 16 different IBM compatible computers with Microsoft Windows 95 program that are kept in the Psychology laboratory at Queens College.

To run the experiment each subject inserted the formatted 3.5" disk into the computer. Then right clicked on the start icon and selected shut down. Afterwards a screen appeared where they had to select Restart in MS-DOS mode and enter A: EXPERIMENT. With the arrow keys, they selected 1.0 Experiments in Perception from the topic menu. In an experiment selection screen, again with the arrow keys, they selected 1.2 The Duration of the Icon. Afterwards they selected the mode for the experiment, NORMAL. This mode allowed the individuals to serve as subjects in the entire experiment. From this point on the subjects followed the instructions on the computer screen; that explained the procedures for each trial and what keys they had to use for their responses.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Latin Square, Erdman Dodge, Experimental Design, F-statistic ANOVA, College/ CUNY, According Sperling's, MEL LAB, Icon Afterwards, Result Conditions, Queens College, instruction tone, tone indicated, tone indicated report, line display, indicated report, delay instruction tone, delay instruction, standard deviation, mel lab, 500 msec, duration recall, partial report, middle line display, line display low, report middle line,
Approximate Word count = 1998
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)