“The attentive synthesis of any particular letter or figure takes an appreciable time, of the order of 100ms…If a whole row of letters is to be identified, they must be synthesized one at a time… To "identify" generally means to name, and hence to synthesize not only a visual object but a linguistic-auditory one… Hence the span of apprehension is limited to what can be synthesized, and then verbally stored.”

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 103; As cited in: A.H.C. Van der Heijden (1996)

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Ulric Neisser 10
American psychologist 1928–2012

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