Journal of Experimental Psychology

Monograph
Vol. 79, No. 2, Part 2 February 1969

RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING IN VISUAL PERCEPTION:

SOME RESULTS AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS1
CHARLES W. ERIKSEN * AND TERRY SPENCER
University of Illinois

Inadequacies involved in the methodologies for studying rate of information

processing in visual perception were discussed in terms of current models and
knowledge of visual perception. A different methodology was introduced
based on a 10-channel tachistoscope which permitted the presentation of
letter stimuli at varying rates. The task was visual search with .9 required
to detect whether an A (target) had occurred in a sequence of letters pre-
sented on a trial. Each letter was presented for approximately 2 msec, with
the rate between letters varying from 5 msec, to approximately 3 sec. In
addition to rate the number of letters presented in a trial (sequence length)
and the location of the target in the sequence were studied. The only signifi-
cant effect was the number of letters in a sequence. Detection sensitivity
decreased with increasing sequence length. Control experiments indicated
that this change in sensitivity was not attributable to an overloading of the
encoding mechanism but rather was attributable to a change in the judgmental
task. An increase in the number of noise letters disproportionately increased
the number of false alarms relative to the hits. A simple probability model
was able to describe the obtained results with fair accuracy. Presentation
rate was immaterial. Detection was the same with only 5 msec, between
letters in the sequence as with 3 sec. Failure to find a rate effect was in-
terpreted in terms of filtering processes that operate in visual perception prior
to the encoding process.

The rate at which a human can process
information in the visual channel would ap-
pear at the first level of analysis to depend
on the number of discrete percepts that he
can experience in a unit of time and the
amount of information that can be processed
from a single percept. Limits on the discrete
rate of visual perceptions are set by the capa-
bility of the system for temporal resolution,
Bloch's law dealing with time-intensity reci-
iThis investigation was supported by United
States Public Health Service Research Grant MH-
1206 and a United States Public Health Service
Research
2
Career Program Award K6-MH-22,014
Requests for reprints should be sent to Charles
W. Eriksen, Department of Psychology, University
of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801.
1
1969 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
procity has been found to hold for temporal
durations of as much as 100 msec, or more
for perceived brightness, and recent work
(Kahneman, 1966; Kahneman & Norman,
1964) has suggested critical durations of 300
msec, or longer for form perception. If
luminance and contour information are
summed over temporal intervals of this dura-
tion, these summation intervals would set
limits on the number of noninteracting per-
ce ts that could be
P experienced in a unit of
time unless other mechanisms in the visual
system served to terminate the integration
r esg with a ch jn stimulation (Schur-
man _ ., 0 _ , , , ir\^c,\
' Eriksen, & Rohrbaugh, 1968).
Forward and backward masking in vision
 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
is interpretable, in many instances at least,
as a lack of temporal resolution in the sys-
tem. Masking is seen to be a partial sum-
ming of the test and masking stimuli into a
composite or montage that has the effect of
degrading the test stimulus (Eriksen, 1966b;
Eriksen & Collins, 1965). Depending on
stimulus parameters, masking influences can
be found for interstimulus intervals (ISis)
of 100 msec, or longer.
When rate of stimulation is varied experi-
mentally, similar temporal units are obtained.
A series of stimuli presented within an
interval of 100 msec, phenomenally may ap-
pear to be simultaneous, or under certain
circumstances of spatial proximity and shape
commensurability apparent movement is ex-
perienced (Kahneman, 1968; Mayzner,
Tresselt, & Heifer, 1967). White's (1963)
work on temporal numerosity has suggested
that the perception of discrete but successive
flashes of light occurs at the rate of one
every 80 to 120 msec.
While the visual system's capacity for tem-
poral resolution may set limits on the num-
ber of noninteracting perceptions that can be
obtained per unit of time, this does not
necessarily limit the amount of information
that can be processed. If only 10 discrete
noninteracting percepts per second can be
experienced, these could vary in their infor-
mation content. We could experience 10
successive perceptions each consisting of a
single letter of the alphabet or the 10 percep-
tions might each contain 100 letters. Even
if the likely possibility that perceptual rate
might vary as a function of the complexity or
information content in the separate percepts
is allowed for, rate of information processing
would be restricted only under the circum-
stances where the separate perceptions were
of very simple stimuli that contained little
information.
By presenting via tachistoscopic expo-
sures displays containing different amounts
of information, most typically letters or digits
(Erdmann & Dodge, 1898; Glanville & Dal-
lenbach, 1929; Lappin, 1967; Mackworth,
1963; Schlosberg, 1948; Sperling, 1963),
Es have attempted to determine the amount
of information that can be processed from a
single perception. If 5 can identify a single-
letter display in a 10-msec. exposure, how
much must the exposure duration be in-
creased for 5" to identify both letters in a
two-letter display, or all letters in a three-
or four-letter display? Definitive answers
have not been obtained primarily because
of the numerous problems that are involved
in what at first glance seems to be a simple
methodology.
The difficulties that are encountered be-
come apparent if the input-output informa-
tion flow is considered in terms of the var-
ious distinguishable subprocesses that are in-
volved. Current models of information proc-
essing (Averbach & Coriell, 1961; Mayzner
et al., 1967; Neisser, 1967; Sperling, 1963)
envisage the arrival of visual information
over the sensory channels where it persists
centrally for a short duration as a stimulus
trace, image, or as Neisser (1967) has
termed it, icon. A noting response or en-
coding process reads or scans the sensory
input and/or icon and encodes the informa-
tion into short-term memory. (Neisser pro-
vides a much more detailed and sophisticated
theory of various subprocesses involved in
the information flow, one which appears to
do more justice to the complexity of the
problem.)
The major theoretical and experimental
emphasis has been placed on the noting or
encoding process as the primary determinant
of information processing rate. Experiments
have attempted to determine not only rate
but whether this process operates serially or
in parallel (Estes & Taylor, 1964, 1966;
Estes & Wessel, 1966; Sperling, 1963). In
focusing on the rate or the serial vs. parallel
nature of the encoding process, these experi-
ments typically have ignored the possibility
that limitations on observed rate might be
attributable to characteristics of the other
subprocesses involved in the information
flow. Limitations on processing rate could
exist because of a lack of independent or
parallel sensory channels through which the
information becomes available to the encod-
ing process. Similarly the duration of the
icon makes estimates as to the speed or rate
of the encoding process difficult to obtain.
Also, limitations on short-term memory
limit 5"'s ability to reproduce responses, the
 METHODOLOGY IN RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
observable data from which rate has to be
inferred.
The relevance of these and other consid-
erations can be seen after an examination of
the methodology of experiments that attempt
to measure visual information rate by deter-
mining the increment in exposure duration
necessary to process or identify displays of
one, two, three, or more letters (digits) si-
multaneously presented. The initial problem
comes in determining the performance level
for single-letter displays. If the exposure
duration and luminance are set at a value
where 51 is 100% accurate in identifying the
presentations of single letters, there is al-
ways the question as to whether the energy
available is not greater than what ^ needed.
If more time and/or energy is available than
is absolutely required, this excess is available
for the processing of a second element.
Even if the assumption is made that the
duration is just barely sufficient for 100%
performance, this level is typically estab-
lished for stimuli or items presented in the
center of the fovea. Displays involving a
larger number of elements must of necessity
distribute these elements around the fovea
in areas that are less sensitive. Since acuity
decreases markedly even with 1 of visual
angle from the center of the fovea (Wert-
"heim, 1894), an exposure duration just suf-
ficient for 100% identification of a letter
or digit presented in the center would not
yield 100% identification for letters spaced
even 1 from the center. Displays can be
arranged so that all items fall on approxi-
mately equally sensitive foveal areas but
under these circumstances the identification
accuracy for single elements needs to be
assessed in terms of that foveal location.
This rather simple consideration has typically
been ignored by Es.
If the performance level for single-ele-
ment displays is set at a level of less than
100%, is this variation in performance from
trial to trial due to varying sensitivity of the
sense organ, error in the encoding or noting
process itself, or a combination of both?
Psychophysical threshold functions for detec-
tion certainly indicate that there is varying
sensitivity in the sensory system. So sen-
sory system noise or varying sensitivity
would need to be considered as one of the
components in the trial-to-trial variation in
identification performance.
If the identification accuracy for single-ele-
ment displays is less than 100%, then to
permit inferences as to whether encoding is
serial or parallel in nature one needs to be
able to compute the probability of the dif-
ferent elements from multiple-element dis-
plays being available through the sensory
channel for encoding. The probability of
two or more elements from a multielement
display being available for encoding would
depend on whether the sensitivity of the
foveal locations where each of the elements
falls is correlated in time. Eriksen (1966a)
and Eriksen and Lappin (1965, 1967a) have
presented evidence that foveal locations sep-
arated by 1 or more of angle do not show
a correlated sensitivity or, alternatively,
error, but other evidence indicates that foveal
locations less than 1 apart on the fovea do
show correlated sensitivity (Collins & Erik-
sen, 1967).
The relevance of correlated or lack of
correlated error for different foveal locations
to rate of information processing can be seen
in the following example: If the elements
from a multiple-element display are suitably
spaced on the fovea so as to fall on areas of
approximately equal acuity and far enough
from each other for error components or the
varying sensitivity in time to be uncorre-
lated, then the probability of n of these ele-
ments being available to an encoding process
is P" where P is the probability of a single
element being identified. This assumes that
the error involved in identifying a single-
element display is associated with the sen-
sory channel and not with the coding or
noting process. If the probability of a single
element being identified is .8 then the
probability of a given two elements
being available for encoding from a multi-
element display is .64, and of three ele-
ments .51, if exposure duration is held
constant. If encoding was able to process
all elements available through the sensory
channel simultaneously, then these prob-
abilities also would be the proportion of
trials on which two and three elements were
correctly identified. If, however, the error
 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
is correlated, then the magnitude and direc-
tion of the correlation must be known if
the availability of the elements to the en-
coding process is to be determined.
Even if these problems are surmounted,
there is the possibility that the addition of
new elements to the display interacts with
the element or elements that were present be-
fore so as to reduce the overall discrimin-
ability of any single element. In other words,
the discriminability or identifiability of a
single element such as a letter in a plain un-
cluttered field may be reduced if other letters
are simultaneously present in the field. With
the brief exposure durations that are em-
ployed, such an interaction may have to do
with inhibition or interference of contour de-
velopment of the separate elements (Eriksen
& Collins, 1965; Kahneman, 1965).
Also it is possible that increasing the num-
ber of elements in a display field may reduce
the identifiability of a single element by
means of some attentional mechanism. As
elements are added to the display, the atten-
tional field also may increase so as to en-
compass all presented items. The informa-
tion extracted from the display might remain
constant by means of extracting less informa-
tion per element but sampling or encompass-
ing more elements. An analogy can be
made to a variable power or zoom lens. At
a low-power setting the field of view of the
lens is broad but not much detail is obtained
for the different elements in the field. As
the power of the lens is increased, the field
of view decreases but there is increased detail
for the elements remaining in the field of
view.
Such an analogy has phenomenal validity.
We seem to be capable of directing our at-
tention to a wide range of events with little
detail available for any specific one. How-
ever, we can also narrow our field of at-
tention with high resolving power for the
focused objects or events. s
3
A major problem concerns the definition or
measurement of "units of information" in visual
perception. We do not really know what consti-
tutes information to visual perception under many
circumstances and there is good reason to believe
that what was information at one time may cease
to be so with increased learning or experience. For
convenience we may measure the increment in
Irrespective of whether there is interaction
at the sense organ level, a change in the
attentional field or some other possible
mechanism, there is evidence that increasing
the number of elements in the visual field
reduces the information or identifiability of
single elements. Eriksen and Lappin
(1967b) found that the presence of an irrele-
vant pair of nonsense forms reduced the
recognition of a target pair even when the
relevant or target pair was clearly desig-
nated by bar indicators. Similar results
have been obtained by Keeley (1968).
If the loss in identifiability of single ele-
ments that occurs when more elements are
added to a display is attributable to factors
on the sensory side, then the methodology
under consideration is incapable of telling
whether the encoding process is serial or
parallel unless the reduction in identification
accuracy is known. Even if the single-ele-
ment accuracy reduction is due to central
processes such as a possible change in the
attentional field, it is still possible that the
items in the field are processed in parallel;
i.e., all presented items in the display may
be encoded but at a lower individual accuracy
level than if the number of items presented
were fewer in number.
Memory is an additional factor that limits
attempts to determine the rate of encoding
in visual perception. At one level a memory-
like process enters into consideration in terms
of the duration of a stimulus trace or the
icon. The persistence of a representation of
the stimulus in the visual system for 200-
300 msec, or more following termination of
the stimulus has been amply demonstrated
(Averbach & Coriell, 1961; Eriksen & Col-
lins, 1967; Keele & Chase, 1967; Sperling,
1960). Due to the duration of the icon it is
not possible to equate the speed of encoding
a given stimulus with the duration of ex-
exposure duration required for 5 to identify four-
letter displays as opposed to one-letter ones, where
each letter is treated as a unit of information. But
this ignores the possibility that 6" also may be
obtaining information as to how many letters
were presented, their location or clustering in the
display, or that one of the letters had a defect in
stroke width. This is obviously information but
it goes unreflected in our arbitrary measure of
visual information.
 METHODOLOGY IN RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
posure. While a capital letter presented for
10 msec, may be correctly identified on nearly
all trials, the conclusion that the letter was
encoded in 10 msec, is gratuitous. Depend-
ing on the energy of the stimulation (Keele
& Chase, 1967) the stimulus representation
of the letter may have been present in the
nervous system for 200-300 msec, following
termination of the stimulus. This time, or a
large proportion of it, may have been avail-
able for the encoding process to operate.
Sperling (1963) has attempted to cir-
cumvent this problem by presenting a noise
field consisting of random arrangements of
black patterns on a white background im-
mediately following presentation of the stim-
ulus display. This "noise" field is assumed
to erase the stimulus trace and thus effec-
tively limit processing time to the actual
stimulus-field duration. Such a procedure
would prove quite useful if the erasure as-
sumption could be substantiated. However
there is quite extensive evidence that the
basis for the effect of such a noise field, as
well as backward and forward masking phe-
nomena in general, is due to the lack of
temporal resolution in the visual system.
Stimuli separated by too short an interval
in time tend to be perceived as a composite
or montage. A noise field immediately fol-
lowing a stimulus display may have essen-
tially the same effect as though the two fields
had been presented simultaneously. Thus
the presentation of a noise field immediately
following the stimulus display may have the
same effect as though the stimulus field had
been presented at a less intelligible level,
rather than erasing the stimulus trace. The
inapplicability of an erasure interpretation is
suggested by the observation that essentially
the same results are obtained if the noise field
is presented before the stimulus display in-
stead of following it (Eriksen & Collins,
1965; Schiller & Smith, 1965).
Memory also imposes a limitation on this
methodology in a somewhat different man-
ner. In terms of the proposed models of
visual information processing, stimulation
first has to be available to an encoder or
noting response through the sensory chan-
nels. Supposedly as the information is en-
coded from the sensory channels it is placed
in a brief memory store. To determine how
much or what information has been encoded
it is necessary that the memory store be
emitted by 5" as responses. Limitations of
this brief memory store restrict the inference
that can be drawn as to the rate of encoding
or whether encoding is serial or parallel in
nature. When the number of simultaneously
presented elements in a display exceeds four
or five, it becomes highly questionable
whether a performance drop as reflected in
vS"s responses is attributable to limitations
of encoding rather than to limitations in
short-term memory.
Estes and his colleagues (Estes & Taylor,
1964, 1966; Estes & Wessel, 1966) have
employed a technique that avoids the limita-
tions of a short-term memory store and has
the additional advantage of an indicator
methodology derived from the theory of sig-
nal detection (Egan & Clark, 1966). The
stimulus display consists of a 4 X 4 matrix
that contains either the capital letter B or
F as well as varying numbers of "noise"
letters. The display is presented for a brief
duration and following each presentation .9
is required to make a forced-choice response
as to whether the display contained the letter
B or F. The question of serial vs. parallel
processing in the noting response is investi-
gated by varying the number of noise ele-
ments in the display. So far this technique
has not yielded unequivocal evidence for
either a serial or parallel processing model.
Perhaps the failure of the technique is
attributable to some of the factors considered
above but it also is possible that a visual
search task such as this does not require
the complete encoding or processing of the
noise or irrelevant stimulus elements.
Broadbent (1958) in his model of informa-
tion processing has proposed a filter system
capable of screening out irrelevant stimula-
tion at a level in the processing system prior
to encoding; and recent work by Treisman
(1960, 1964a, 1964b, 1964c) has produced
rather impressive evidence along these lines.
It is possible that similar filters may be
operating in vision. The finding that a black
arrow or bar indicator designating one ele-
ment from a multielement display can lead to
marked improvement in the identification of
 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
the designated element even when the display
and indicator are present for only a few
milliseconds suggests the presence of some
filterlike process (Averbach & Coriell, 1961;
Eriksen & Lappin, 1967b; Weisstein, 1966).
The ability of 5" to detect and select the
indicator and its designated element is some-
what analogous to the phenomenon reported
by Treisman (1960) in auditory perception.
Neisser (1967) has made an impressive
argument for the necessity of preattentive
processes and feature analyzers for form
operating in parallel channels at relatively
low levels of information processing. As
he conceives them, these preattentive proc-
esses and feature analyzers operate on in-
formation inputs prior to the encoding stage.
If such preprocessing or even filtering me-
chanisms can work or operate on information
prior to the encoding stage, they would ren-
der visual search tasks such as employed
by Estes and his associates (Estes & Taylor,
1964, 1966; Estes & Wessel, 1966) insensi-
tive to discriminating between serial vs.
parallel models of the encoding process it-
self. Under certain circumstances at least
they might serve to screen out the noise or
irrelevant signals so that the encoding proc-
ess would only have to operate on the target
or the few instances where a noise signal
may get through the screening due to con-
fusability with the target. Indeed the work
of Neisser and his associates on visual search
tasks suggests such a conclusion (Neisser &
Beller, 1965; Neisser & Lazar, 1964; Neis-
ser, Novick, & Lazar, 1963; Neisser &
Stoper, 1965).
EXPERIMENT I
The main innovation of the present ex-
periment was the use of a 10-channel
tachistoscope to present successively single
elements at varying rates. To avoid the
memory problem, a search task somewhat
similar to that of Estes and his associates
was employed. The 5" was required to de-
tect the capital' letter A from among the
noise letters T and U. To assure that each
stimulus element, noise or target, fell on
essentially equal sensitive foveal areas, the
elements were presented along the circum-
ference of an imaginary circle centered on
the fixation point. Each element appeared
for approximately 2 msec, and the ISI or
rate between elements was varied experi-
mentally from 5 to 30 msec. In addition to
rate, the number of elements (sequence
length) was varied from one to nine ele-
ments per trial. Also the location of the
target element was studied as a function of
whether it occurred as the first, middle, or
last element of a stimulation sequence.
It was anticipated that the present meth-
odology would permit a determination as to
whether visual search tasks are suitable for
determining characteristics and rate for the
encoding process in visual perception and if
so, would yield information on the rate and
characteristics of encoding. If the presenta-
tion rate for single elements was slower than
the encoding or processing mechanism, per-
formance should remain at a relatively high
level but drop when the limitations for the
single-element processing rate were ex-
ceeded. Further evidence on the breakdown
of the perceptual processing mechanism
could be obtained by the interaction between
sequence length and position of the target
letter in the first, middle, or last position of
the sequence. At presentation rates not ex-
ceeding the capacity of the system there
should be little or no differential accuracy
for first, middle, or last position in detecting
the target irrespective of sequence length.
However, as the rate limitation is approached
or exceeded there should be a superior de-
tection of the target in the first position rela-
tive to the middle and perhaps the last.
Method
Subjects.Four students, two female, served as
paid 5s. All had normal or corrected-to-normal
vision and all had previously served in at least two
experiments involving visual perception.
Apparatus.A 10-channel tachistoscope was
especially designed to attack the experimental prob-
lem. Ten fluorescent lamps (Sylvania F4 T5/
CWX) were individually mounted in lightproof
boxes attached to the surface of a sheet-metal
drum and equally spaced around the circumference.
From each lightproof box a flexible optic light
guide (American Optical Co.), 4-in. inner diam-
eter and 12 in. long, extended to a machined
fitting where each was coupled to J-in. diameter
lucite rods 6 in. long. The ends of the lucite
rods extended through the machined fitting and
formed a circular pattern of diameter 1.3 visual
 METHODOLOGY IN RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
angle with the center of each light guide spaced
.42 from the centers of the adjacent light guides.
A separate light source projected at the center of
the circular arrangement and was used to provide
an X fixation point of .25. The machined fitting
provided for 35-mm. slides to be placed imme-
diately in front of the projecting ends of the 10
lucite rods and the fixation-light source. Addi-
tional space in the fitting provided for neutral den-
sity niters mounted as 35-mm. slides.
The machined fitting was mounted at the end
of a visual tunnel 18 in. sq. and 30 in. long. At
the other end of the visual tunnel was a viewing
hood, and the distance from 6"s eye to the 35-mm.
slide in front of the 10 light guides was 38 in.
The lamps were fired with 300 v. dc and at all
times had a subcritical heating voltage applied to
them to insure reliability of firing. Ten wave-
form generators (Tektronic 162) were used to
control the duration of the light pulses and nine
161 pulse-form generators controlled the ISIs be-
tween the nine separate lights.
In order to vary the order and the number of
the 10 light fields presented to S, a scrambler box
was inserted in the circuit between the light sources
and the timers. This consisted of a base in which
10 copper strips were mounted, each connected to
one of the field timers. The top of the scrambler
was similarly constructed except that the 10 cop-
per strips were at right angles to those in the base
and were connected directly to the light source
through transistorized switches. To complete the
circuit between the base and the top of the scram-
bler, 10 X 10 matrix peg boards were used. By
placing metal pins in the appropriate holes in the
peg boards any desired pattern or order of pre-
sentation of the 10 stimulus fields could be obtained.
Peg boards composing the different orders of
stimulus presentation to be used in the experi-
ment were constructed prior to the experiment and
could be quickly inserted and removed between
trials.
The stimulus slides for use in the tachistoscope
were constructed by photographing white letters
against a black background. A layout was con-
structed so scaled that when the letters were placed
in the indicated positions on the layout and the
camera was mounted in its rigid position, the
appropriate location and reduction in letter size
on the photograph was obtained. The fixation cross
was provided in the center of the layout so that
each slide contained its own fixation stimulus. The
photographing of the stimuli was done with a
camera (Polaroid 210) using negative high-con-
trast film (Polaroid 149L). As viewed by 3"
illumination of one of the light fields presented a
transilluminated letter having a contrast of better
than 98% with the surrounding ground. The letter
subtended .18 of visual angle and had a lumi-
nance of 1 mL.
Procedure.-The S was seated in a dark room
and allowed to dark adapt for 5 min. He was in-
structed to rest his head against a head holder
attached to the end of the viewing tunnel and to
fixate the cross. When the cross appeared clear
and in good focus he was to initiate a trial by
squeezing the trigger. He was further instructed
that only the capital letters A, T, and U would
be presented. The A was the target letter and the
T's and U's were to be considered noise letters.
His task was to detect on a given trial whether
an A had occurred. He was informed that on
50% of the trials an A would be present. In
addition he was told that a trial could consist of
one, three, five, or nine letters presented in se-
quence. They would occur in random positions
around the center fixation point. If he detected an
A during a trial he was to respond "yes." If no
A had been presented he was to respond "no."
In addition he was to attach a confidence rating
of 1, 2, or 3 to his yes and no responses with 1
designated as meaning he was quite confident he
had seen or not seen an A, 2 indicating some doubt,
and 3 indicating his response was essentially a
guess.
Three different treatment variables, each with
three levels, were factorially combined to produce
27 treatment combinations. The first variable was
the number of letters in the sequence. This could
be either three, five, or nine letters. The rate
variable consisted of the ISI between letters in a
sequence and could assume three values, 5, 15, or
30 msec. The third variable was the position of
the target-letter A on those trials where it occurred.
It could be either the first, middle, or last letter
in the sequence.
A total of 80 trials under each of the 27 treat-
ment combinations were obtained from each .?.
On 40 of these trials the target-letter A was pres-
ent. For each of the four sequence lengths there
were 10 different random patterns by which letters
in that sequence occurred around the central fixa-
tion point. These random patterns were chosen
with the restriction that the target letter would
occur an equal number of times in each of the 10
channels of the tachistoscope for all experimental
conditions. These 40 different random patterns
were controlled by 40 preprogrammed peg boards.
After each trial a different peg board was placed
in the scrambler to control the pattern order for
the next trial. For every pattern containing an
A there was a duplicate pattern in which the A
had been replaced by one of the noise letters.
While each 5 had 240 trials under each of the
three sequence lengths, three, five, and nine, there
were an additional 720 trials where only a single
letter was present (half A's). Thus there was a
grand total of 2,880 trials per S distributed over
36 sessions of 80 trials each. During an experi-
mental session all trials were run under a given
rate. Within a session there were 20 single-letter
trials and 60 multiple-letter trials in which the
other two variables, target position and sequence
length, were equally represented. Also within a
session the number of trials on which an A occurred
was exactly half.
Prior to the experiment proper the duration time
for approximately 80% accuracy in detecting an A
 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
TABLE 1
MEAN d, VALUES AS A FUNCTION OF THE NUMBER
OF LETTERS IN A SEQUENCE, RATE OF PRESEN-
TATION, AND LOCATION IN THE SEQUENCE
OF THE TARGET
Item Mean d, values
No. letters in sequence
1 1.64
3 1.25
5 1.04
9 .88
Rate of presentation
5 msec. 1.05
15 msec. 1.08
30 msec. 1.05
Target location
First 1.09
Middle 1.04
Last 1.04
for single-letter presentations was determined for
each 5". This duration then was used for that
6" for the letter presentation in all fields under all
treatment combinations. These letter durations
were 2 msec, for three of the 5s and 2.5 msec, for
the fourth. Midway through the experiment the
duration times were reduced to 1.6 msec, for the
three 5s and to 2 msec, for the fourth. This was
to compensate for increased accuracy due to prac-
tice effects. Since the second half of the experi-
ment was an exact replication of the first, the ad-
justment in duration times did not systematically
influence the results. Prior to beginning the ex-
periment each 6" was given two complete practice
sessions. At the beginning of each experimental
session following dark adaptation, five warm-up
trials were given. Intertrial intervals were ap-
proximately 5-10 sec. and 5 was given a 2-min.
rest after Trials 20 and 60. There was about a
5-min. rest after Trial 40 due to the reordering time
for the peg boards that controlled the pattern order
of stimulation.
Results
The primary measure of .SV sensitivity in
detecting the occurrence of the target letter
was assessed in terms of the statistic d,
(Egan & Clark, 1966). Both da and d' are
sensitivity measures derived from the theory
of signal detection, and in the present in-
stance ds was chosen in preference to d'
since it is more stable if the variances of the
signal plus noise and the noise alone distribu-
tions are unequal. The measure ds was com-
puted for each 6" under the 27 treatment
combinations and for the single-letter con-
dition. To compute these statistics 5Y re-
sponses were ordered on a 6-point continuum
varying from "yes 1" to "no 1" after the
method described by Egan and Clark (1966).
The df, values were analyzed in a four-way
classification analysis of variance (letter se-
quence length, rate, target position, and Ss).
None of the interactions approached signif-
icance, and the only significant main effect
was length of letter sequence, F (2, 6) =
9.43, p < .05. The mean ds values are
shown in Table 1 for the different sequence
lengths, rates, and target positions. The
mean da value for single-letter trials is also
shown in Table 1 although this data was
not in the analysis of variance.
Not only were there no significant effects
obtained for the different stimulation rates
or the different target positions, but as can
be seen from Table 1 the values for the three
different rates and the three different target
positions are almost identical. The only ex-
perimental variable that appears to effect .SV
sensitivity in detecting the target letter is the
number of letters presented during a trial.
Here sensitivity drops monotonically from a
da of 1.64 for single-letter presentation to
.88 when a stimulation sequence contains
nine letters.
A more detailed analysis of the sequence
length effect was made. In Table 2 the aver-
age hit and false-alarm rates for the four se-
quence lengths are shown. Hit rate stays
essentially constant as sequence length varies
from one letter per trial to nine letters. If
anything it increases slightly. False-alarm
rate, on the other hand, increases rather
markedly as the sequence length increases.
It would appear, therefore, that the loss in
sensitivity as reflected in the da measure is
due primarily to the increased number of
false alarms that occur as sequence length
is increased.
TABLE 2
AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF HITS AND FALSE ALARMS
IN DETECTING TARGET LETTER AS A FUNCTION
OF THE NUMBER OF LETTERS
IN THE SEQUENCE
No. letters in the sequence
i 3 5 9
Hits 71 74 75 75
False alarms 13 27 37 44
 METHODOLOGY IN RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
Discussion
The failure of 5"s to show improved sensitiv-
ity in detecting the occurrence of an A in a
sequence of noise letters when the individual
letters are separated by 30 as opposed to 5 msec,
could be interpreted as due to all three rates
being too fast for the encoding or processing
mechanism. This interpretation would be com-
patible with the finding that sensitivity does
decrease as the sequence length of letters in-
creases. This drop would be attributable to
overloading the processing mechanism. The
greater the overload, the poorer the perform-
ance. However the failure to obtain any effects
due to target position or to interaction of target
position with sequence length is difficult to rec-
oncile with such an interpretation.
If all three rates are greatly in excess of the
verbal system's capacity to process the informa-
tion, it would seem that targets occurring as
the first letter in the sequence should be more
readily detected than those occurring in the
middle position. They would have an advan-
tage in being processed first before the system
became overloaded. That such was not the case
seems quite clear from the obtained data.
No advantage was found for the target occur-
ring in the last position of the sequence length.
The failure of such an advantage to occur might
be attributable to the inability to distinguish
the stimulus trace of the last occurring letter
from the traces of the preceding ones due to the
short time interval between their presentations.
The failure to find rate effects cannot be
attributed to the fact that all presentation rates
led to the phenomenal experience of the letters
being simultaneously presented. While the 5-
msec. rate for all sequence lengths did lead
to the phenomenal experience of all letters
occurring simultaneously, the two slower rates
of 15 and 30 msec, did not. At the 15-msec.
rate, sequences of five letters or more were
commonly reported as experienced in sequential
order and nine-letter sequences at this rate were
almost always reported as nonsimultaneous. At
the 30-msec. rate all sequence lengths were ex-
perienced as successive stimulations.
There is a very real possibility that the re-
duction in detection of the target letter as the
letter sequence is increased is not a function of
the rapid rate with which the letters are pre-
sented or an overloading of the processing
system. Instead the impaired performance may
be the result of a difference in the type of judg-
mental task with which 5 is confronted. To
decide whether one of five presented letters was
or was not an A may be quite a different de-
cision process than to decide whether a single
presented letter was or was not an A even
though all the five presented letters may lie
processed or perceived at the same accuracy
level as for a single-letter presentation.
As was seen from Table 2 the false-alarm
rate for reporting an A when a noise letter was
presented was 13%. If this percentage is taken
as the probability of a noise letter entering S"s
acceptance region for saying A, then the prob-
ability of experiencing at least one noise letter
as an A when five of them are presented is
1 .875 or .50. Thus if is presented with
a sequence of five noise letters, even though
the rate of presentation is slow enough so that
each of the five is processed with the same
accuracy as for single-letter presentations, 5"
will experience at least one of these noise letters
as an A on 50% of the trials. This considera-
tion may well be the basis for the marked in-
crease in false-alarm rates as letter sequence
length increased.
A similar probability combination will occur
for those multiple-letter sequences containing
a target letter. If a sequence of letters contain-
ing one target letter and four noise letters is
presented, the probability is 1 .874 = .43 that
one or more of the noise letters will produce the
experience of A. Given a hit rate of 71%
for detecting an A on single-letter presentations
the probability, given four noise letters and a
target letter, that S will experience an A from
one of the noise letters but not from the target
letter will be 124%. This would mean that
6" would make the correct decision that the se-
quence contained the target letter on 124%
of the trials but his decision would be right
for the wrong reasons. The overall probability
that 5" will experience at least one A either from
the four noise letters or from the actual target
letter is approximately .84.
If perceptual or informational processing re-
mained as efficient for rapid presentation of se-
quences of five letters as it is for single-letter
presentation, the above considerations would
lead to a prediction of 5"s performance for the
five-letter sequence condition of a hit rate of
84% and a false-alarm rate of 50%. If unit
slope is assumed for the normal-normal plot
of the ROC curve and a d, is computed based
on this hit and false-alarm rate, a value of
.97 is obtained. Thus, marked decrease in dis-
crimination performance can be predicted inde-
pendent of any restrictions on the processing
rate in visual perception.
There is quite good agreement between the
10 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
TABLE 3
AVERAGE d, VALUES FOR THE SINGLE- AND FIVE-
LETTER CONDITIONS AND THE AVERAGE
PERCENTAGE OF HITS, FALSE HITS,
AND FALSE ALARMS
Condition d. Hits False hits False alarms
One letter 1.22 68 20
Five letters .88 76 24 41
predicted ds value of .97 and the obtained value
of 1.04 for the five-letter sequence. Similar
computations for the three- and the nine-letter
sequences gave predicted ds values of 1.18 and
.75, respectively. These values are also quite
close to those obtained empirically, although in
all three instances the predicted values slightly
underestimate the obtained performance.
EXPERIMENT II
If the loss in detection sensitivity is due to
a change in the nature of the judgmental task
rather than to a jamming or overloading of
the processing mechanism due to a fast input
rate, then similar losses in sensitivity at rates
that approach the intertrial interval for
single-letter presentations would be expected.
In the present experiment -S"s were again
given single-letter presentations in which
they made a decision after each letter was
presented as to whether or not the letter was
an A. In the experimental condition 6"s re-
ceived what were essentially five single-let-
ter trials but had to withold their decision
until five of these letters had been viewed;
i.e., they received five single-letter trials at
the end of which they had to decide whether
an A had occurred among the five letters
they had viewed. In addition to his decision
along with its associated confidence rating,
51 also was asked to report on which of the
five presentations he thought the A had
occurred. This provided a check on the fre-
quency with which >Ss made a correct de-
cision by experiencing a noise letter as an
A rather than the actual A that was pre-
sented in the sequence.
Method
Subjects.Five 5s, two female, were obtained
as volunteers from the graduate and undergraduate
student population and paid for their services. All
had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and two
had served in the previous experiment.
Procedure.Apparatus, stimuli, and procedure
were identical with Exp. I except for the follow-
ing changes. Only two experimental conditions
were employed. The single-letter condition was
identical with that of Exp. I but the five-letter
sequence differed in the following way: The .S"
was instructed that he was to look at five letters
and after all five letters had been viewed he was
to make the decision as to whether one of the
letters had been the target-letter A. He was in-
structed to fixate the cross and when it was in
sharp focus to press the trigger and one letter
would appear in 1 of the 10 possible locations.
He was then to refocus and again press the trig-
ger repeating this sequence until all five letters-
had been presented. Thus 5 viewed the individual
letter presentations in the five-letter sequence at
his own rate, which was about 3 sec. per letter.
Responses for both the single-letter presentation
and the five-letter sequences were again yes-no
with an associated 3-category confidence rating.
Each 6" received 200 single-letter trials and 200
five-letter trials. The target-letter A occurred on
50% of the trials in both conditions. In the five-
letter condition the noise elements were again di-
vided between the letters T and U. Similarly
the noise trials for the single-letter presentation
were evenly divided between these two noise let-
ters. For the five-letter condition the critical ele-
ment occurred equally often in each of the five
temporal positions, and in both the single- and
five-letter conditions the target occurred equally
often in each of the 10 channels of the tachistoscope.
There were 20 different temporal spatial orders
in the five-letter condition randomly permuted to
form 10 sequences, 1 given in each session and
5 containing an A. For the single-letter trials,
10 random sequences of 20 single letters also were
employed where half of the letters were an A in
each sequence.
Prior to the experimental sessions an exposure
duration yielding 75-80% accuracy with single-
letter trials was established for each 6" (range
1.6-2.0 msec.). Each 5" was given one practice
session prior to the 10 experimental sessions.
In addition to a yes-no decision with its asso-
ciated confidence rating, 5s under the five-letter
condition also were required to designate when they
made a yes decision as to which of the letters they
thought was the target. Since 5s frequently re-
ported that two or more of the letters looked like
A, they were further instructed to make their de-
cision as to which letter was the A on the basis
of their highest confidence.
Results
Table 3 shows the mean ds values for the
single- and five-letter conditions along with
the associated hit and false-alarm rates.
Also shown is the number of false hits for
the five-letter condition. This corresponds
to the number of times Ss correctly reported
 METHODOLOGY IN RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
that an A was in the five-letter sequence but
designated incorrectly which of the five let-
ters it was.
A one-tailed t test for correlated means
shows the difference between the mean d8
values between conditions to be significant
beyond the .03 level. Only one of the five
5s failed to show an appreciable drop in
sensitivity between the one- and the five-
letter conditions.
Although there is a significant decrease in
the di measure of sensitivity between the
single- and the five-letter conditions, the
magnitude of the decrease is not quite as
great as between the corresponding condi-
tions in Exp. I. There a difference of .60
was obtained. However, a t test of the dif-
ferences between the differences across the
two experiments does not approach signif-
icance, t (7) = .68, p > .30.
Discussion
The results of this experiment show that
there is a decrease in the sensitivity of detect-
ing the target A when 5" has to base his de-
cision over five letters even when the rate at
which the individual letters are presented is so
slow as to approximate the rate of single-letter
presentation trials. The reduction in sensitiv-
ity between the single-letter and the five-letter
condition is not quite as great as was obtained
in Exp. I but comparison across the two experi-
ments shows that the difference in amount of
loss could well have arisen by chance.
A certain caution in interpreting this com-
parison of the amount of loss between the one-
and five-letter conditions across the two experi-
ments is appropriate. Unfortunately, S"s in
Exp. II were at a lower sensitivity level for
the one-letter condition and the comparison
assumes that the ds statistic is an equal interval
scale of sensitivity. At least it seems safe to
conclude that the rapid presentation rates used
in Exp. I were not the sole basis for the loss
in detection sensitivity as the length of letter
sequence increased.
The hit and false-alarm rates increased in the
same way as in Exp, I for the five-letter condi-
tion. Here the hit rate shows a somewhat
larger gain than before. However neither the
hit nor the false-alarm rate increases as much
as a straight probability model predicts based
on the assumption that each letter in the five-
letter condition is processed with the same
accuracy as exists for the single-letter condi-
11
tion. Using the hit and false-alarm rates ob-
tained for the single-letter condition, predictions
of .90 and .67 are obtained for the hit rate and
the false-alarm rate in the five-letter condition,
both somewhat higher than those actually ob-
tained. These hit and false-alarm rates would
lead to a predicted da of .69, a lower sensitivity
than was obtained.
Note that there is an appreciable number of
correct detections based on 6"s responding to a
noise letter rather than a target. This is in
accord with the theoretical analysis of this
judgmental situation. The probability of one
or more of the four noise letters being experi-
enced as an A and the real A not being detected
is .19 as compared with an obtained p of .24.
As in Exp. I, Ss' performance on the five-
letter condition is better than to be expected
from our theoretical analysis of the judgmental
situation. While the discrepancies may be due
to chance, they have been consistent in all four
comparisons; and this leads to some doubts as
to the adequacy of the theoretical analysis and
the likelihood that some as yet unidentified com-
ponent may be entering into the decision
process. A possible factor that could lead to
less detriment than predicted in detection sensi-
tivity is that the larger sample of noise letters
obtained in the multiletter conditions serves as
some kind of judgmental anchor that leads to
improved identification of the target A. It is
well known that comparative judgment is gen-
erally superior to absolute judgment. Com-
parisons between the stimuli experienced in a
multiletter trial may resemble a comparative
judgment task, whereas the single-letter pre-
sentation would be characterized more in terms
of absolute judgment.
EXPERIMENT III
This experiment was a replication of Exp.
II with the exception that in the five-letter
condition -S" was informed immediately after
one of the five letters that it constituted a
critical letter and he was to make his decision
as to whether or not it was an A. If S1 has
to view five letters every trial but makes his
decision of "A or not A" only for the desig-
nated letter, then the task should be essen-
tially the same as that for single-letter pre-
sentation except for the possible advantage
of having some of the characteristics of a
comparative judgment. Since S knows
which are the noise or irrelevant letters,
these letters should not contribute to an in-
12 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
TABLE 4
AVERAGE d, VALUES AND AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF
HITS AND FALSE ALARMS FOR THE SINGLE-
AND FIVE-LETTER CONDITIONS
Condition d. Hits False alarms
One letter 1.24 70 20
Five letters 1.21 70 22
crease in his false-alarm rate nor to spurious
hits.
Method
Subjects.Five 5s, two female, were drawn from
the graduate and undergraduate student popula-
tion and were paid for their services. All had
normal or corrected-to-normal vision and had had
previous practice in visual psychophysical studies.
Three of them had served in one or the other or
both of the previous experiments.
Procedure.The procedure was identical to that
of Exp. II except that in the five-letter condition
one of the five letters was indicated as the critical
one immediately after it occurred. The indication
was made verbally by E. This indicator occurred
before the next letter in the sequence and 5" was
required to continue viewing the remaining letters
and, as in Exp. II, withhold his response or decision
until after all five letters had been viewed.
Results
The average da values and average hit and
false-alarm rates are shown in Table 4. As
can be seen there are no appreciable differ-
ences on any of these statistics between the
one- and the five-letter conditions. Ob-
viously none of the differences approach sig-
nificance.
Discussion
These results provide no support for the
possibility that the multiple-letter conditions in
the previous experiments may have resembled
a comparative judgment task which counter-
acted in an undetermined amount the predicted
loss in detection sensitivity. When 5" knows
which of the five letters in the sequence requires
the decision as to whether or not it is an A,
there is no difference in performance to that ob-
tained when each presented letter requires this
decision. It is possible, though unlikely, that
any gain in discrimination that could accrue
from being able to compare the critical letter
with the noise letters on a trial is counteracted
by such variables as 5" having to delay his re-
sponse until five letters have been presented,
a duration interval of some 15-20 sec. That
these two effects would exactly cancel each
other seems quite remote.
EXPERIMENT IV
At this point if we examine the results of
the three preceding experiments the follow-
ing tentative conclusions are suggested: The
first conclusion is that on a form detection
task such as was employed, the rate at which
the individual letter forms are presented to
-5" is immaterial in determining detection per-
formance. The target letter is detected about
equally well when the letters are presented
at the rate of 5 msec, between individual let-
ters in the sequence as when several seconds
occur between them. The second conclusion
is that the loss in detection sensitivity as the
number of letters in a sequence increases is
attributable to a change in the judgmental
situation rather than to a limitation on the
processing rate of the individual items in
the sequence. Essentially this change in the
judgmental task results from the increased
probability on multiletter trials of a noise
letter being experienced as an A, or alter-
natively, entering the A acceptance region.
Corollary results of the three experiments
would seem to rule out an interpretation of
the encoding or noting mechanism becoming
jammed or overloaded with longer letter se-
quences irrespective of rate.
The purpose of the fourth experiment was
to verify further these conclusions. A dif-
ferent and larger sample of 6"s was run on
the single-letter and nine-letter sequences.
The nine-letter sequences were presented at
the rates of 30, 90, and 150 msec, between
individual letters as well as under the spaced
condition where 5 viewed each letter at
essentially the single-trial rate.
Besides the advantages of replication, this
design permits a precise comparison of the
detection sensitivity under rapid rates of pre-
sentation with that obtained under a spaced
presentation that approximates a single-trial
rate. It also permits a more precise com-
parison between detection-sensitivity rate.
In addition it permits a more precise com-
parison between detection sensitivity when
the letters are presented singly and S makes
a judgment after each letter and the condi-
 METHODOLOGY IN RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
tion where nine letters are viewed at essen-
tially the single-letter rate but 5 reserves his
decision as to whether or not an A occurred
in the sequence until all nine letters have
been presented. Previous comparisons of
this loss were based not only on five-letter
sequences but also, due to differences be-
tween the groups on single-presentation de-
tection sensitivity, there was some question
about the comparability or validity of the
comparisons since they involved the assump-
tion of an equal interval scale on the ds
sensitivity measure.
The inclusion of the 90- and 150-msec.
rates in this experiment served to bridge the
gap between the previous observations on
the 30-msec. rate and the spaced single-trial
rate. Even though comparable reductions
in sensitivity may occur, it still is a possibil-
ity that the tasks are different and the
reduction in sensitivity occurs for different
reasons. By bridging the rate gap these un-
certainties can be greatly restricted.
Method
Subjects.Six male students, five graduate and
one undergraduate, served as paid volunteers. All
had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and one
S1 had served in Exp. III.
Procedure.Only two sequence lengths were
studied, single letter and nine letters. Again in
the single-letter condition only one letter was pre-
sented in a trial following which 5 made his judg-
ment as to whether or not the presented letter
had been an A. For the nine-letter sequences, a
trial consisted of the occurrence of nine letters
following which S made the judgment as to whether
one of them had been an A. These nine-letter se-
quences were presented at four different rates,
30, 90, and 150 msec., and at the spaced rate
where the single letters occurred at approximately
the rate involved between single-letter trials. For
the single-letter sequences and at all four rates
for the nine-letter sequences, half of the trials
contained the target letter and the remaining trials
consisted of random arrangements of the noise
letters T and U.
There was a total of 90 trials under each of the
five experimental conditions. For each of the four
rates in which the nine-letter sequences were pre-
sented, there were 10 different spatial-temporal
patterns of stimulus presentation. In these pat-
terns of stimulation the target letter A occurred
equally often in all temporal and spatial positions.
As in the previous experiments 5s were given
practice under all experimental conditions before
beginning the 10 experimental sessions. A stimulus
duration was determined for each >? that would
13
TABLE 5
AVERAGE d, VALUES AND PERCENTAGE OF HITS
AND FALSE ALARMS FOR THE SINGLE-LETTER
CONDITION AND FOR THE NINE-LETTER
CONDITION AT EACH OF THE FOUR
PRESENTATION RATES
Nine letters
Item Single
letter
30 90 ISO
msec- msec. msec. Spaced
d, 1.5S .81 .51 .59 .95
Hits
False alarms
76 75 66
50
66 m
20 44 43 46
yield approximately 90% identification accuracy for
the single-letter condition. This exposure dura-
tion was then used as the duration of exposure of
each letter in all experimental conditions for that
5". These exposure durations ranged from 1.6 to
2.5 msec, for the individual S"s. Each experimental
session consisted of 10 warm-up single-letter trials-
followed by 10 trials under each of the five con-
ditions. The order of the five conditions was
counterbalanced over sessions for each 5". The
order of the 10 trials was randomized over sessions
to minimize learning effects. After each trial S
reported yes or no as to the presence of the target
letter along with his associated confidence judg-
ment on the 3-point scale.
Results
The da statistic of detection sensitivity was
computed for each S for the nine-letter se-
quences under each of the four rates of
presentation and subjected to a two-way
analysis of variance (rates and 5s). The
effect of rate was significant, F (3, 15) =
4.59, p < .05, but the S variable was not.*
The average d8 values for the nine-letter se-
quences under each of the four rates are
shown in Table 5. Also included in Table 5
is the average ds value for single-letter pre-
sentations.
Compared to the single-letter condition,,
the nine-letter sequences yield appreciably
poorer detection at all four presentation
rates. Within the nine-letter sequence, the
30-msec. and spaced rates yield the most
sensitive detection of the target letter and
poorest detection is obtained at the 90-msec.
rate. The difference between the 30-msec.
4
The lack of significant 6" effects in these experi-
ments is attributable to the preexperimental deter-
mination of an exposure duration of a single letter
for each ,9 that yielded approximately 80% identi-
fication accuracy.
14 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
TABLE 6
AVERAGE PERCENTAGE CORRECT DECISIONS WHEN
TARGET OCCURRED AMONG FIRST FOUR AND
LAST FOUR TEMPORAL INTERVALS IN THE
NINE-LETTER CONDITION FOR EACH
OF THE FOUR PRESENTATION
RATES
Rate
Temporal
position
30 msec. 90 msec. ISO msec. Spaced
1-4 88 87 81 91
5-9 87 78 75 95
rate and the spaced rate does not approach
significance, t (5) = .82, p > .40, but both
values are significantly different than that
obtained for the 90- and 150-msec. rates.
The hit and false-alarm rates which also
are shown in Table 5 are commensurate with
the previous findings. The false-alarm rate
shows an appreciable increase between the
single-letter and the nine-letter sequences.
Within the nine-letter sequences the hit and
false-alarm rates correspond with the dif-
ferences in the ds measure of sensitivity.
It had been anticipated that poorer detec-
tion would be obtained for the 90- and 150-
msec. rates due to the problem of 5" main-
taining his fixation over the long trial dura-
tion and maintaining his accommodation in
the appropriate plane. In the spaced condi-
tion S proceeded at his own rate which
allowed him to readjust his fixation between
the occurrence of each letter and to assure
that his accommodation was in the plane of
stimulation. In the 30-msec. rate all nine let-
ters were presented in a time of less than 250
msec., whereas for the 90-msec. rate a trial
lasted nearly 730 msec, and over 1,200 msec,
for the 150-msec. rate (eight ISI values of
150 msec, plus nine durations of letter pre-
sentation of approximately 2 msec. each).
Eriksen (1966a) had previously found that
when two forms were presented for identifi-
cation separated by varying ISIs, identifica-
tion of the second presented form decreased
at ISI values in excess of 400 msec.
Evidence as to whether the decrease in de-
tection for the 90- and 150-msec. rates could
be attributed to eye movements and drift in
accommodation was obtained by comparing
detection accuracy for those trials when the
target A occurred among the first four pre-
sented letters as opposed to when it occurred
among the last four. Percentage correct re-
sponses were computed for each 5 under
each of the four rate conditions for those
trials on which the target A occurred among
the first four presented letters and among the
last four presented letters and these percent-
age values were then analyzed in a three-way
analysis of variance (presentation rate, first
four vs. last four temporal positions, and
S"s). As would be expected the rate variable
was again significant, F (3, 15) = 4.37, p <
.05. More pertinent to the question, how-
ever, was the significant First Four as
Opposed to Last Four Temporal Positions
X Rate interaction, F (3, 15) = 11.18, p <
.01.
Table 6 presents the average percentage
correct decisions when the target A occurred
among the first four temporal positions as
opposed to the last four for each of the four
presentation rates. As is seen, there is little
variation in correct responses among the four
rates when the target occurred in the first
four temporal positions. However percent-
age correct decisions are poorer at the 90-
and 150-msec. rates when the target occurs
among the last four temporal positions. This
result is quite consistent with what would be
expected if 5"s accommodation was drifting
over these long temporal intervals and eye
movements were occurring.
Discussion
Results of the present experiment replicate
in a very satisfactory manner the findings of the
preceding studies. The average ds value ob-
tained for the single-letter condition is very
close to the value obtained in Exp. I for the
comparable condition, and the reduction in de-
tection sensitivity at the 30-msec. rate in the
present study is quite comparable to that ob-
tained in Exp. I for the nine-letter sequence
at the same rate. The reduction in detection
sensitivity for the nine-letter spaced condition
when compared with that for the single-letter
condition substantiates the conclusion drawn
from Exp. II that the loss in detectability with
high input rates obtained in Exp. I was not due
to the rate per se but to a change in the judg-
mental task. This conclusion is further sup-
ported by the very similar detection perform-
ance at the 30-msec. rate and for the spaced
 METHODOLOGY IN RATE OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
condition for the nine-letter sequences in the
present experiment.
The drop in detection at the 90- and 150-
msec. rate would seem well accounted for in
terms of eye movement and accommodation
drift over the long trial durations. On the basis
of prior work, it was anticipated that per-
formance loss would occur when viewing inter-
vals exceeded about 300 msec. This duration is
"beyond the latency for eye movements, and also
many S's experience accommodation drift over
viewing intervals of these durations and longer.
These considerations become serious methodo-
logical problems when viewing time needs to
exceed 150-300 msec, and the task involves a
sensitive criterion.
The difference in judgmental task when 5
must view sequences of letters and delay his
judgment as to whether or not an A has
occurred until all letters in the sequence have
been viewed, as opposed to judging immediately
after each letter occurrence, is rather well pre-
dicted by a simple probability model. Applied
to the data of the present experiment the prob-
ability model predicts a ds of .64 for the
nine-letter sequence at the 30-msec. rate and
for the spaced condition. This value is some-
what lower than the empirical values of .83
and .89, although within sampling error. This
latter can be estimated by computing the stan-
dard error of the hit and false-alarm rates of the
single-letter condition, the values from which
the predictions are derived. Hit and false-
alarm rates corresponding to 1.65 standard de-
viations above and below the obtained values
for the single-letter condition were used to
generate the 95% confidence bounds of the
predicted values for the nine-letter sequences.
The range of these ds values is .49-.S4. The
obtained value for 30 msec, is within this range
but the spaced condition is slightly above the
upper value. However the difference is small
and is not significant when the sampling error
of the obtained value is also considered. The
da values for the three-, five-, and nine-letter
sequences of Exp. I fall within the predicted
range when similar computations are made
from the single-letter data of that experiment.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
With the exception of slight effects attribu-
table to the eye movement and accommodation
drift, we have been unable to find any effect of
input rate. The 5s are as able to detect the
occurrence of a target A in a sequence of
letters presented 5 msec, apart as when several
seconds elapse between individual letters in the
15
sequence. This would suggest that the encod-
ing mechanism proposed in current theories
(Averbach & Coriell, 1961; Mayzner et al.,
1967; Sperling, 1963) can scan through or
encode nine letters as efficiently in 50 msec.
as in 25 sec. This interpretation would almost
certainly preclude a serial encoding process.
Either a multichannel encoder would seem to
be required or modification of the information
processing models is required when they are
extended to visual search or detection tasks
such as employed by Estes and his associates
and in the present experiments.
We would seem to be faced with the con-
clusion of either a multichannel encoder with
at least nine parallel channels or the existence
of filters such as proposed by Broadbent (1958)
and Treisman (1964a). Attention or "set" can
be conceived as setting up filters at lower stages
in the information processing system to screen
out irrelevant stimuli. Thus only a restricted
subset of the input information is available to
encoding and a moderate increase of irrelevant
stimuli or information would have but little or
no effect on the encoding load.
Bower (1965) recently has suggested the
applicability of a filter process to the inter-
pretation of visual search data; and Neisser
(1967), although critical of the filter concept,
has made a strong argument for multichannel
feature analyzers and preattentive processes that
operate on information prior to encoding. Irre-
spective of where or what hypothetical proc-
esses are involved, the present results would
seem to require a parallel processing of inputs
some place in the system when search behavior
is involved.
REFERENCES
AVERBACH, E., & CORIELL, A. S. Short-term mem-
ory in vision. Bell System Technical Journal,
1961, 40, 309-328.
BOWER, T. G. R. Visual selection: Scanning ver-
sus filtering. Psychonomic Science, 196S, 3, 561-
562.
BROADBENT, D. E. Perception mid communication.
New York: Pergamon Press, 1958.
COLLINS, J. F., & ERIKSEN, C. W. The perception
of multiple simultaneously presented forms as a
function of foveal spacing. Perception and Psy-
chophysics, 1967, 2, 369-373.
EGAN, J. P., & CLARK, F. R, Psychophysics and
signal detection. In Joseph B. Sidowski (Ed.),
Experimental methods and instrumentation in
psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966.
ERDMANN, B., & DODGE, R, Psychologische Unter-
suchungen iiber das Lesen. Halle, Germany: M.
Niemeyer, 1898.
16 CHARLES W. ERIKSEN AND TERRY J. SPENCER
ERIKSEN, C. W. Independence of successive inputs
and uncorrelated error in visual form perception.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1966, 72,
26-35. (a)
ERIKSEN, C. W. Temporal luminance summation
effects in backward and forward masking. Per-
ception and Psychophysics, 1966, 1, 87-92. (b)
ERIKSEN, C. W., & COLLINS, J. F. Reinterpreta-
tation of one form of backward and forward
masking in visual perception. Journal of Ex-
perimental Psychology, 1965, 70, 343-351.
ERIKSEN, C. W., & COLLINS, J. F. Some temporal
characteristics of visual pattern perception. Jour-
nal of Experimental Psychology, 1967, 74, 476-
484.
ERIKSEN, C. W., & LAPPIN, J. S. Internal per-
ceptual system noise and redundancy in simul-
taneous inputs in form identification. Psycho-
nomic Science, 1965, 2, 351-352.
ERIKSEN, C. W., & LAPPIN, J. S. Independence
in the perception of simultaneously presented
forms at brief durations. Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology, 1967, 73, 468-472. (a)
ERIKSEN, C. W., & LAPPIN, J. S. Selective atten-
tion and very short-term recognition memory for
nonsense forms. Journal of Experimental Psy-
chology, 1967, 73, 358-364. (b)
ESTES, W. K., & TAYLOR, H. A. A detection
method in probabilistic models for assessing in-
formation processing from brief visual displays.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science,
1964, 2(52), 446-454.
ESTES, W. K., & TAYLOR, H. A. Visual detection
in relation to the display size and redundancy of
critical elements. Perception and Psychophysics,
1966, 1, 9-16.
ESTES, W. K., & WESSEL, D. L. Reaction time in
relation to display size in correctness of response
in forced-choice visual signal detection. Percep-
tion and Psychophysics, 1966, 1, 369-373.
GLANVILLE, A. D., & DALLENBACH, K. M. The
range of attention. American Journal of Psy-
chology, 1929, 41, 207-236.
KAH NEMAN, D. Exposure duration and effective
figure-ground contrast. Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 1965, 17, 308-314.
KAHNEMAN, D. Time-intensity reciprocity in
acuity as a function of luminance and figure-
ground contrast. Vision Research, 1966, 6, 207-
215.
KAHNEMAN, D. Method, findings, and theory in
studies of visual masking. Psychological Bulle-
tin, 1968, 70, 404-425.
KAHNEMAN, D., & NORMAN, J. The time-intensity
relation in visual perception as a function of ob-
server's task. Journal of Experimental Psychol-
ogy, 1964, 68, 215-220.
KEELE, S. W., & CHASE, W. G. Short-term visual
storage. Perception and Psychophysics, 1967,
2, 383-386.
KEELEY, S. M. Visual detection as a function of
attentional demand and perceptual system error.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
Illinois, 1968.
LAPPIN, J. S. Attention in the identification of
stimuli in complex visual displays. Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 1967, 75, 321-328.
MACKWORTH, J. F. The relation between the vis-
ual image and post-perceptual immediate memory.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior,
1963, 2, 75-85.
MAYZNER, M. S., TRESSELT, M. E., & HELPER,
M. S. A provisional model of visual information
processing with sequential inputs. Psychonomic
Monograph Supplement, 1967, 2(7, Whole No.
23), 91-108.
NEISSER, U. Cognitive psychology. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967.
NEISSER, U., & BELLER, H. K. Searching through
word lists. British Journal of Psychology, 1965,
56, 349-358.
NEISSER, U., & LAZAR, R. Searching for novel
targets. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1964, 19,
427-432.
NEISSER, U., NOVICK, R., & LAZAR, R. Searching
for ten targets simultaneously. Perceptual and
Motor Skills, 1963, 17, 955-961.
NEISSER, U., & STOPER, A. Redirecting the search
process. British Journal of Psychology, 1965,
56, 359-368.
SCHILLER, P. H., & SMITH, M. C. A comparison
of forward and backward masking. Psychonomic
Science, 1965, 3, 77-78.
SCHLOSBERG, H. A probability formulation of the
Hunter-Sigler effect. Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 1948, 38, 155-167.
SCHURMAN, D. L., ERIKSEN, C. W., & ROHR-
BAUGH, J. Masking phenomena and time-inten-
sity reciprocity for form. Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology, 1968, 78, 310-317.
SPERLING, G. The information available in brief
visual presentations. Psychological Monographs,
1960, 74(11, Whole No. 498).
SPERLING, G. A. A model for visual memory tasks.
Human Factors, 1963, 5, 19-31.
TREISMAN, A. M. Contextual cues in selective
listening. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 1960, 12, 242-248.
TREISMAN, A. M. Monotoring and storage of
irrelevant messages in selective attention. Jour-
nal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior,
1964, 8, 449-459. (a)
TREISMAN, A. M. Selective attention in man.
British Medical Bulletin, 1964, 20, 12-16. (b)
TREISMAN, A. M. The effective irrelevant material
of the efficiency of the selective listening. Amer-
ican Journal of Psychology, 1964, 77, 533-546. (c)
WEISSTEIN, N. Backward masking and models of
perceptual procession. Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 1966, 72, 232-240.
WERTHEIM, T. t)ber die indirekte Sehscharfe.
Zeitschrift fur Psychologic, 1894, 7, 172-187.
WHITE, C. T. Temporal numerosity and the psy-
chological unit of duration. Psychological Mono-
graphs, 1963, 77(12, Whole No. 575).
(Received May 8,1968)