Visual Sensory Memory

Visual stimuli not only remain visible for some time after their physical offset, but information about their characteristics also persists; that is, not only does something that looks like the physical stimulus continue to persist for a brief time after stimulus offset, but information can also be extracted from the stimulus for a brief time after its offset in much the same way as when the stimulus was physically present. This latter type of persistence is usually called informational persistence. Visible persistence and informational persistence reflect related but different aspects of visual sensory memory. This chapter discusses the evidence behind this assertion and describes the current conception of these phenomena.