Sensory memory is an agency of information storage that not only carries the mark of the sense modality in which the information originally arrived—imagery is the more general term for that—but also carries traces of the sensory processing that was engaged by the experience. Sensory memory is the brain's detailed record of a sensory experience. Thus, we can generate a visual image of an object without actually seeing it, but we cannot thereby have a sensory memory of it. Although auditory and visual verbal stimuli have received the most attention, there are other forms of sensory memory (e.g., for nonverbal shapes, touch, and smell).

Visual Sensory Memory

Research on visual sensory memory has focused on two phenomena: iconic memory and subjective persistence, descriptions of which follow below.

Iconic Memory

A single monograph by George Sperling, The Information Available in Brief Visual Presentations (1960), abruptly...