Introduction

This program recreates (in a limited way) a famous experiment conducted by George Sperling. The experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that we store a virtually perfect copy of the visual world for a brief moment.

This hypothesis seemed to contradict the findings of other experiments. For example, it was already well known that, if a random group of 9 letters is flashed briefly on a screen, only about 4 or 5 of the letters can be recalled.

Before we go on with the story, let's try to demonstrate this finding.