sensory memory
brief storage of information from each of the senses, in a relatively unprocessed form beyond the duration of a stimulus, for recoding into another memory (such as short-term memory) or for comprehension. For instance, sensory memory for visual stimuli, called iconic memory, holds a visual image for less than a second, whereas that for auditory stimuli, called echoic memory, retains sounds for a little longer. Also called sensory-information store (SIS); sensory register.