Michaelia Gilbert



Modality and Immediate Recall Accuracy: Comparing Visual, Auditory and a Combination of Visual and Auditory Stimuli in Short Term Recall

Michaelia Gilbert

Hanover College

Psychology 333

Dr. John Krantz

April 10, 2007

Introduction

Everyday people are bombarded with visual and auditory stimuli. The average college student is given lists to memorize, lectures to recall, and sometimes during a lecture the information is also presented on a blackboard or projector screen. The researchers in this study started with the research question, “How is immediate recall accuracy influenced by how information is presented?” More specifically, researchers were interested in which modality (visual, auditory or a combination of both) would produce greater immediate recall of information. After reviewing their class text and several scientific articles, the researchers developed two hypotheses. First, it was thought that participants would have greater immediate recall accuracy when stimuli were presented both visually and aurally at the same time. Secondly, it was thought that participants would have greater immediate recall of stimuli solely presented aurally over those solely presented visually, but that this recall would be less than the visual/auditory stimuli. Furthermore, it should be noted that the researcher’s were not looking at whether or not the brain’s short term store is a “short term memory” or a “working memory,” but were just solely concerned with how modality effects the recall of the short term store.

There are numerous studies that have looked at the visual and/or auditory presentation of stimuli, and how such presentation affects the recall of information. In a classic study, Conrad used the “Memory Span” experiment to demonstrate that participants make errors in recall based on the “auditory rather than visual characteristics” of the stimuli (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). In this experiment participants were presented with a series of letters, and in the first condition the letters were presented visually, while in the second condition the letters were presented aurally over a background of white noise (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). Furthermore, some of the letters were chosen because they sound alike (i.e. M,N;C,V). Conrad recorded the accuracy of participant recall as they tried to recall the order in which the letters were presented, and he found that participants made more errors when the letters presented sounded alike (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). These errors were made regardless is the stimuli were presented visually or aurally, thus suggesting that the short term store of the brain works primarily through audition, even when stimuli are presented in a different modality.

Other studies have also demonstrated the tendency for short term memory stores to rely more on the auditory presentation of stimuli as compared to the visual presentation of stimuli. Penney (1975) states that immediate recall is better when stimuli are presented aurally than when stimuli are presented visually. Furthermore, in serial recall, participants are more likely to remember the last three stimuli when the list has been presented aurally than when it has been presented visually (Penney, 1975). Moreover, Penney (1975) believes that there are two separate stores, one visual and one auditory, within the brain’s larger short term store. Of these stores it is believed that that auditory store has a greater capacity than the visual store. This supposition comes from research indicating that the auditory store can recall a greater number of items more accurately than the visual store (Penney, 1975).

Moreover, researchers have also proposed two stores within the larger short term store, and one such person is Paivio (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). Paivio is credited with creating the dual-coding hypothesis, which suggests that the brain contains “two codes and two storage systems” (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). One of the storage systems is visual while the other is verbal. According to Paivio, these two systems can work together in the processing of stimulus information; however, in general, one store processes more than the other (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). A prime example of the two stores working together is in the processing of a concrete word (one that can be easily imagined, such as “apple”). Such a word is read, which activates the verbal store, and the word also elicits an image, which activates the visual store. It is believed that when a word is concrete, it will have greater recall because the both stores are processing the information and increases the words availability (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). Paivio’s theory could be expanded to include Penney’s (1975) auditory and visual stores, so that when a word is presented both aurally and visually, recall could be enhanced because both stores are working simultaneously, thus increasing availability and recall.

Additionally, Baddeley describes how the rehearsal of information that is presented visually and aurally differs (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). According to Baddeley, how many items a person is able to recall is directly related to how long it takes a person to rehearse the information and the rehearsal of the information is dictated by the modality of the stimuli (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). Auditory or verbal stimuli are rehearsed using what Baddeley calls the phonological loop, whereas visual information is rehearsed using the visuospatial scratchpad (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). If one of these rehearsal styles takes longer than the other, then recall is going to be effected. For example, if it takes longer to rehearse information in the visuospatial scratchpad than in the phonological loop, then the phonological loop will produce a more accurate recall of information. Overall, the current researchers took into account the previous research when devising hypotheses and creating an experiment that could accurately test these hypotheses.

Method

Participants

The participants in this study were 34 college students from a small mid-western college, of which 84 percent were female. The age range of the participants was 18 to 23 years of age, and each participant was able to fully comprehend written and spoken English. The participants were recruited through word of mouth, flyers posted in the psychology lounge of the college, and through the use of a social networking website. Lastly, some of the participants received extra credit from their professors for their participation in this study.

Equipment

There was a myriad of equipment used in this study. The slideshow presented to participants was created using the 2003 version of Microsoft Office PowerPoint. The slideshows were projected using a Projector Sharp Notevision 5 (serial number XG-NV5XB), and were projected onto a projector screen with a resolution of 1024 x 780. The audio portions of the slideshows were presented using Boston Speakers (model BA265). Finally, a Sony Vio laptop computer, model PCG-9231, was used to facilitate in the presentation of the slideshows.

Stimuli

For this study there were three separate conditions, and each condition varied in the amount of stimuli that it contained. Condition one, or the “visual condition,” contained two stimuli: a white background and words. The words were in black, size 22 times new roman font and were in the center of the slide. Each word was presented for approximately two seconds, and the slideshow continued through a list of nine words (Table 1). Condition two, or the “verbal condition,” contained two stimuli as well: a white background and a spoken word. The words were spoken by a female voice, and after two seconds a new word was spoken until the list of nine words were completed (Table 1). In condition three, the “visual/verbal condition,” there were three stimuli: a white background, a word, and a spoken word. The actual word was presented in the center of slide, and was in black, 22 point times new roman font. The word was presented for approximately two seconds. While the word was being presented visually, it was also being spoken by the female voice. The voice used in the visual/verbal condition was the same voice used in the verbal condition. The slideshow continued until all nine words for the visual/verbal condition had been presented (Table 1). None of the words presented in the conditions were repeated, and each word was a concrete, familiar word. Furthermore, all of the words were simple and presented using the English language.

Procedure

For this study participants were randomly assigned to complete the conditions in one of three different orders depending on the hour at which they arrived to complete the study. Random assignment was used in order to control for order and fatigue effects. Participants who arrived in the first hour of the study completed the visual condition, the verbal condition, and then the visual/verbal condition. Participants who arrived in the second hour of the study completed the verbal condition, the visual/verbal condition and then the visual condition. Finally, participants who arrived in the third hour of the study completed the visual/verbal condition, the visual condition, and then the verbal condition.

Additionally, in each condition participants were instructed to pay attention to the words as they were presented. Prior to the presentation of the stimuli, participants were told that once a slideshow was done, they would be asked to recall the words. However, the order in which they recalled the words were not important, what was important was that they try to remember all of the words. Once given the instructions, participants were presented a slideshow. Immediately after the slideshow was presented, the researchers would ask the participants to recall the words presented to them. This process repeated itself for each of the three conditions, with participants recalling the words after each individual condition. The researchers recorded how many words a participant was able to recall and then calculated a participant’s overall accuracy for each condition.

Results

Figure 1 displays the mean accuracy of participant recall across each of the three conditions. These means were calculated by averaging the recall accuracy of each participant across the three conditions. Using these means, a one-way within subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to test for simple main effects. Table 2 displays the results of this ANOVA. Overall the results show that there are no simple main effects across the modality of word presentation, F(2,58) = .668, p. = .517. While no significant simple main effects were found, Figure 1 does show a slight increase in recall accuracy in the visual/verbal condition. The implications of such an increase will be discussed later. Furthermore, it should be noted that the mean recall accuracy for the visual condition and the verbal condition were almost similar at 63 percent and 64 percent respectively.

Discussion

While the current evidence is not sufficient enough to support the researchers’ hypotheses, several things were learned while doing this study and there are several explanations as to why the results are not significant. De Beni and Moe (2003) suggest that words that are easily visualized and verbalized may actually interfere with recall because they create interference with the visual and auditory channels. The channels are overloaded with information, and therefore are not able to recall the words as easily as when the words are more abstract (De Beni & Moe, 2003). Therefore, it might be interesting for future studies to use more abstract words when testing recall accuracy across modalities.

Another reason why the current hypotheses are not fully supported could lie within the previous research on which this study was based. Penney (1975), Conrad and Baddeley all emphasized the importance and greater recall power of an auditory short term store (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). The current researchers took this into account when devising a hypothesis that predicted auditory stimuli would have greater recall accuracy than visual stimuli. However, it could be that previous researchers have overestimated the recall power of the auditory store, and in reality, both the auditory and visual store are capable of the same amount of recall. The current results suggest little difference between the visual and verbal conditions, with only one percent separating the mean accuracy of each condition. It would be prudent for future studies to look into this claim, and to further study the differences, or lack thereof, between the visual and auditory stores.

Lastly, there is an increase in mean recall accuracy for the visual/verbal combination condition. It could be, as mentioned earlier, that the word choice limited the results of this study, and had more abstract words been used, this increase could be more significant. Furthermore, this subtle increase, while not significant, does lean towards supporting the dual coding hypothesis. When both the visual and the verbal stimuli were combined participants did have greater recall, which is what Paivo suggested would occur (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005). Future studies may want to examine how recall accuracy within the visual/verbal combination condition would change if words were more abstract, taking into account the finding of De Beni and Moe (2003). Overall, while the results tend subtly support the dual-coding hypothesis and the researchers’ own hypotheses, more testing will need to be done in order to determine if there is any significance to these findings.

References

De Beni, R. & Moe, A. (2003). Presentation modality effects in studying

passages: Are mental images always effective. Applied Cognitive Psychology,

(17)3, 309-24.

Penney, C. (1975). Modality effects in short-term verbal memory. Psychological

Bulletin, (82)1, 68-84.

Solso, R.L., MacLin, M.K, & MacLin, O.H. (2005). Cognitive Psychology. Boston:

Pearson.

Table 1:

Lists of words used across the three conditions.

|Word order |Visual only |Verbal only |Verbal and Visual |

|1 |ROSE |CLOCK |BALL |

|2 |TRUCK |BAG |RAKE |

|3 |DANCE |TRAIN |HAIR |

|4 |LIME |NEST |CAMEL |

|5 |BRIDGE |KITE |SOCK |

|6 |CHURCH |HAMMER |SHELF |

|7 |APPLE |CAN |GLASS |

|8 |CHAIR |STAR |MOUSE |

|9 |DUCK |TREE |RING |

Table 2.

The results of a one-way analysis of variance of the mean recall accuracy across the three conditions.

Source | |Type III Sum of Squares |df |Mean Square |F |Sig. | |modality |Sphericity Assumed |.033 |2 |.016 |.668 |.517 | | |Greenhouse-Geisser |.033 |1.774 |.018 |.668 |.500 | | |Huynh-Feldt |.033 |1.882 |.017 |.668 |.508 | | |Lower-bound |.033 |1.000 |.033 |.668 |.420 | |Error(modality) |Sphericity Assumed |1.413 |58 |.024 | | | | |Greenhouse-Geisser |1.413 |51.455 |.027 | | | | |Huynh-Feldt |1.413 |54.568 |.026 | | | | |Lower-bound |1.413 |29.000 |.049 | | | |

Figure 1: Mean percent accuracy of participants’ immediate recall across the three conditions.

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