The modality effect refers to the robust finding that memory performance differs for items presented aurally, as compared with visually. Whereas auditory presentation leads to stronger recency performance in immediate recall, visual presentation often produces better primacy performance (the inverse modality effect). To investigate and model these…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to test whether a group of older postlingually deafened cochlear implant users (OCIs) use similar verbal memory strategies to those used by older normal-hearing adults (ONHs). Verbal memory functioning was assessed in the visual and auditory modalities separately, enabling us to eliminate possible modality-based…

Three experiments examined the immediate free recall (IFR) of auditory-verbal and visuospatial materials from single-modality and dual-modality lists. In Experiment 1, we presented participants with between 1 and 16 spoken words, with between 1 and 16 visuospatial dot locations, or with between 1 and 16 words "and" dots with synchronized…

This article notes the convergence of recent thinking in neuroscience and grounded cognition regarding the way we understand mental representation and recollection: ideas are dynamic and multi-modal, actively created at the point of recall. Also, neurophysiologically, re-entrant signalling among cortical circuits allows non-conscious processing to…

The study examined whether the modality effect is caused by either high visuo-spatial load or a lack of temporal contiguity when processing written text and pictures. Students (N = 147) viewed pictures on the development of tornados, which were accompanied by either spoken or written explanations presented simultaneously with, before, or after the…

The study attempted to determine whether the failure of Down Syndrome (DS) individuals to show the modality effect (the tendency to show better short-term memory for brief sequences of auditory rather than visual information) is due to the verbal-expressive demands of oral responding in memory tasks. DS, nonretarded (NR) and MR (non-DS mentally…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of training, modality, and redundancy on the participants' ability to apply and recall a historical inquiry strategy. An experimental research design was utilized with presentation mode as the independent variable and strategy application and strategy recall as the dependent variables. The…

This study examined the role of visual and auditory presentation in memory encoding processes of 80 second-grade children, using the release-from-proactive-interference short-term memory (STM) paradigm. Words were presented over three trials within one of the presentation modes and one taxonomic category, followed by a fourth trial in which the…

Two experiments examined preschoolers' visual and verbal coding processes in a pictorial short-term memory task. Results of both experiments indicated that high visual similarity had a deleterious effect on recall accuracy regardless of the verbal codability of the stimuli. (Author/JMB)

This paper summarizes two studies which examine children's free recall of letter sequences in an auditory presentation. In both studies, sequences of six or eight letters were presented to 80 third-grade and 80 eighth-grade pupils, at the rate of one item every other second or four items per second. In the first study, where recall was either…

Two studies were conducted to investigate the assumption that elementary age deaf children are qualitatively different from hearing children in the manner in which they prefer to process events in memory. (Author/SBH)

The ability to recall and organize actions was studied in a sample of 80 children ranging in age from 5 to 11 years. Eight different auditory or visual commands were successively presented for 10 trials in each modality in a free-recall task. (Author/JMB)

Results suggest that Ss store some of the auditory and visual information in modality-dependent memory systems and that storage order determines recall accuracy. (Author)

A total of 120 children (aged 5, 9 and 11 years old) performed a spatial recall task utilizing either visual or auditory items. Results showed that visual recall was significantly superior to auditory recall at all age levels and all serial positions regardless of cue modality. (Author/JMB)

The study investigated the effects of modality preference, mode of instruction, and verbal feedback on immediate and delayed recall of new words in 72 elementary age learning disabled students. (Author/PHR)