Evidence from a partial report task for forgetting in dynamic spatial memory

G. Sperling (1960) and others have investigated memory for briefly presented stimuli by using a partial versus whole report technique in which participants sometimes reported part of a stimulus array and sometimes reported all of it. For simple, static stimulus displays, the partial report technique showed that participants could recall most of the information in the stimulus array but that this information faded quickly when participants engaged in whole report recall. An experiment was conducted that applied the partial report method to a task involving complex displays of moving objects. In the experiment, 26 participants viewed cars in a low-fidelity driving simulator and then reported the locations of some or all of the cars in each scene. A statistically significant advantage was found for the partial report trials. This finding suggests that detailed spatial location information was forgotten from dynamic spatial memory over the 14 s that it took participants to recall whole report trials. The experiment results suggest better ways of measuring situation awareness. Partial report recall techniques may give a more accurate measure of people's momentary situation awareness than whole report techniques. Potential applications of this research include simulator-based measures of situation awareness ability that can be part of inexpensive test batteries to select people for real-time tasks (e.g., in a driver licensing battery) and to identify people who need additional training.