Final answer:
In Sperling's partial report condition, participants successfully recalled a high number of letters from a briefly shown grid when cued by a tone, suggesting the existence of a short-term visual sensory memory with a larger capacity than initially thought.
Step-by-step explanation:
During Sperling's partial report condition, a classic experiment in cognitive psychology, participants were shown a grid of letters for a brief period, typically about 50 milliseconds. After the letters disappeared, a tone was played to indicate which row of letters the participant should recall. This tone sounded at various delays after the letters were no longer visible. In the partial report condition, participants were able to recall the indicated row with high accuracy, even when the tone was delayed for a short time. This finding contrasted with the whole report condition, where participants were asked to recall as many letters as possible from the entire grid and performance was much poorer. The results of the partial report condition suggested that a visual sensory memory (iconic memory) held a detailed image of the visual stimulus for a brief period before it faded or was overwritten by new stimuli. This has important implications for understanding the capacity and duration of sensory memory.