Sensory memory lasts about:

• A. About 1 Second
• B. About 2 Minutes
• C. About 5 Seconds
• D. About 30 Seconds

Answer: (A)

Sensory memory is the brief, immediate registration of sensory input that hasn’t yet been processed into awareness. It lasts only a tiny instant, enough to hold a lot of detail briefly so the brain can decide what to pay attention to next. A common way this is summarized is that sensory memory lasts about one second, which fits roughly as a general rule across senses.

There are differences by sense: visual sensory memory (iconic) tends to endure only about a quarter to half a second, while auditory sensory memory (echoic) can last a couple of seconds. Despite these nuances, the overall idea is that this memory is extremely short, far briefer than short-term/working memory (which can hold information for about a minute without rehearsal) and long-term memory (much longer, from minutes to years).

Because of how fleeting sensory memory is, attention and encoding are what determine whether information moves into longer-lasting memory. The other time frames—two minutes, five seconds, or thirty seconds—are well beyond the typical duration of sensory memory, so the one-second estimate is the best general fit.