Do masks terminate the icon?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Visual Perception
• Human Memory

Background:

• Iconic memory, defined by part-report experiments, is traditionally viewed as being overwritten by subsequent stimuli.
• Backward masking is commonly used to study the duration and decay of iconic memory.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether a cue presented after a pattern mask can still facilitate selection within a target array.
• To challenge the automatic displacement or overwriting model of iconic memory.

Main Methods:

• Participants viewed a target array of letters followed by a checkerboard mask.
• Two target-mask interstimulus intervals (ISIs) of 0 ms and 100 ms were used.
• Performance was assessed using part-report and whole-report measures across varying cue delays.

Main Results:

• At 0 ms ISI, performance was at chance level for both report types.
• A significant part-report advantage (25-30%) was observed at 100 ms ISI with short cue delays.
• The part-report advantage diminished as the cue delay increased.

Conclusions:

• Results contradict the notion that iconic memory is automatically displaced or overwritten.
• Alternative models, such as a feature-based second-stage store or a four-dimensional store, are proposed.
• Findings have implications for understanding backward masking's effect on iconic memory termination.