Echoic memory is the brief sensory store for auditory information. Sounds linger in this system for a few seconds after the physical stimulus has ended, allowing the listener to “hear” them again internally.

The duration is typically estimated at three to four seconds—long enough to make sense of a spoken sentence even if attention was momentarily elsewhere. If someone asks “What did I just say?” and you can still recover the words, you are drawing on echoic memory. The capacity is relatively large, but the trace fades rapidly unless it is attended to and transferred into working memory.

Echoic memory is modality-specific; it is distinct from the visual sensory store known as iconic memory. Neuroimaging and lesion studies link it to auditory cortical areas. Disruptions can impair the ability to follow rapid speech or to integrate successive sounds into coherent percepts.

The fading echo of a sound after it has stopped is not merely residual vibration. It is an active neural representation that gives hearing its temporal continuity.