A replication and extension of the Eriksen and Steffy (1964) experiment on short-term visual storage

Eriksen and Steffy (1964) were critical of short-term visual storage effects (STVS) because they were unable to find any evidence for them. In their first experiment they found instead great interference in performance over the same ISIs in which STVS is usually found. Their second experiment eliminated the interference by avoiding a bright second flash, but it still produced no evidence for STVS. Keele and Chase (1967) demonstrated that Eriksen and Steffy’s second condition failed to find STVS because the memory load was too small, and perhaps because the luminance was too low. However, the design of Eriksen and Steffy’s second experiment is not the one typically used to find STVS. Eriksen and Steffy’s first experiment was replicated here, and a second condition was added in which each S was also tested in a light adapted version. Interference was found in the former, as Eriksen and Steffy also found, but not in the latter. Little STVS was found in either of these conditions, presumably for reasons similar to those demonstrated by Keele and Chase.