High-Speed Scanning in Human Memory

Saul Sternberg

Science · 1966 · 3.6K citations · 14 references

Concepts

Abstract

When subjects judge whether a test symbol is contained in a short memorized sequence of symbols, their mean reaction-time increases linearly with the length of the sequence. The linearity and slope of the function imply the existence of an internal serial-comparison process whose average rate is between 25 and 30 symbols per second.

References

14