Sperling (1960)

Question 1

What were the procedures in partial report procedure study?

Answer 1

He trained participants to recognise 3 tones:
High tone indicating the top row of display
Medium tone for the middle row
Low tone for the bottom row.

He then presented them with a series of displays for 50 milliseconds each and sounded a tone immediately afterwards to them then which row of letters to write down

Question 2

What were the findings in the partial report procedure study?

Answer 2

Participants recalled on average 75% of the letters in the cued rows. This suggest a large amount of info is available so the capacity of the sensory register was large but it decays rapidly so the duration is small.