On your way to class, you notice a dog barking at a passing car. You see the car, smell its exhaust, hear the dog. All this information coming through your sensory systems registers in your sensory memory, the first in a series of stages in the information-processing model of memory.
But what happens to information once it enters your sensory memory? Sensory memory is difficult to study. Research such as George Sperling’s classic experiment involving iconic memory helps us understand how sensory memories are registered and processed.