Inverting the modality effect in serial recall.

Full Abstract

Differences in recall ability between immediate serial recall of auditorily and visually presented verbal material have traditionally been considered restricted to the end of to-be-recalled lists, the recency section of the serial position curve (e.g., Crowder & Morton, 1969). Later studies showed that--under certain circumstances--differences in recall between the two modalities can be observed across the whole of the list (Frankish, 1985). However in all these studies the advantage observed is for recall of material presented in the auditorily modality. Six separate conditions across four experiments demonstrate that a visual advantage can be obtained with serial recall if participants are required to recall the list in two distinct sections using serial recall. Judged on a list-wide basis, the visual advantage is of equivalent size to the auditory advantage of the classical modality effect. The results demonstrate that differences in representation of auditory and visual verbal material in short-term memory persist beyond lexical and phonological categorization and are problematic for current theories of the modality effect.

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Author information

Author/s: Beaman, C Philip (CP);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Reading, UK. c.p.beaman(-atsign-)reading.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Clinical Trial; Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial

Journal: The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology (Q J Exp Psychol A), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Apr; vol 55 (issue 2) : pp 371-89

Dates: Created 2002/06/05; Completed 2002/06/28; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12047050, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Attention
Female
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term

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