Cognitive Psychology Lecture 01 - Part 3 (Experimentation)

Question 1

What is the Sternberg experiment?

Answer 1

Saul Sternberg (1966, 1969) conducted a series of experiments to determine whether people scan items in short-term memory one at a time (serial processing) or all at once (parallel processing). In one study, he presented a display of from one to six different digits to a participant for 1.2 seconds.

Question 2

What was Sternberg’s original explanation for his finding?

Answer 2

Sternberg identified a linear relationship between study group size and reaction time, which allowed him to infer that scanning short-term memory for a target is serial, and that each item takes about 38 ms to scan.

Question 3

Serial and parallel processing psychology?

Answer 3

Serial and parallel processing in visual search have been long debated in psychology, but the processing mechanism remains an open issue. Serial processing allows only one object at a time to be processed, whereas parallel processing assumes that various objects are processed simultaneously.

Question 4

What is mental chronometry?

Answer 4

Mental chronometry is the scientific study of cognitive processing speed. Processing speed is measured by reaction time (RT), which is the elapsed time between the onset of a stimulus (e.g., visual or auditory) and an individual’s response.