Is visual short-term memory depthful?
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Updated: May 3, 2026

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory
Published on: August 15, 2010
1Department of Psychology, 125 NI, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Abstract:
Does visual short-term memory (VSTM) depend on depth, as it might be if information was stored in more than one depth layer? Depth is critical in natural viewing and might be expected to affect retention, but whether this is so is currently unknown. Cued partial reports of letter arrays (Sperling, 1960) were measured up to 700 ms after display termination. Adding stereoscopic depth hardly affected VSTM capacity or decay inferred from total errors. The pattern of transposition errors (letters reported from an uncued row) was almost independent of depth and cue delay. We conclude that VSTM is effectively two-dimensional.
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