Iconic store and partial report

The iconic store has recently been challenged on the grounds that data in its favor may have resulted from some procedural artifacts. The display-instruction compatibility and perceptual grouping hypotheses were reexamined in two experiments with the partial-report paradigm. When care was taken to rectify some procedural problems found in Merikle’s (1980) study, it was established that the iconic store (as a hypothetical mechanism) can still be validly entertained. This report demonstrates one important procedural point in studying the iconic store with the partial report task, namely, that subjects must be given more than token training on the partial-report task.