Iconic Memories Die a Sudden Death

• Published in: Psychological science Vol. 29; no. 6; pp. 877 - 887
• Main Author: Pratte, Michael S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2018; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Adult; Dissociation; Humans; Iconic memory; Memories; Memory, Short-Term - physiology; Mental Recall - physiology; Models, Psychological; Short term memory; Sudden death; Visual Perception - physiology; Visual task performance; Young Adult; discrete capacity; visual working memory; sensory memory; iconic memory
• ISSN: 0956-7976; 1467-9280
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797617747118

Iconic memory is characterized by its large storage capacity and brief storage duration, whereas visual working memory is characterized by its small storage capacity. The limited information stored in working memory is often modeled as an all-or-none process in which studied information is either successfully stored or lost completely. This view raises a simple question: If almost all viewed information is stored in iconic memory, yet one second later most of it is completely absent from working memory, what happened to it? Here, I characterized how the precision and capacity of iconic memory changed over time and observed a clear dissociation: Iconic memory suffered from a complete loss of visual items, while the precision of items retained in memory was only marginally affected by the passage of time. These results provide new evidence for the discrete-capacity view of working memory and a new characterization of iconic memory decay.